1/27/2024 0 Comments Random harvestLeRoy was right when he wrote in his autobiography that between Colman and Garson, “the English language was never spoken more beautifully on film.”Ī personal favorite of LeRoy, Colman, and Garson’s, Random Harvest is the kind of film that lingers on your mind long after it ends. Garson, for her part, brings to Paula the sweetness and resilience that ultimately drives the story. Perhaps it was because of Colman’s own experience fighting in WWI that he was able to give Smithy such a haunted quality. Just a single sentence or look from them is enough to break your heart from the emotional gravity it carries. In every scene, Garson and Colman illustrate these intense concepts with stunning grace and sensitivity. Lushly romantic, Random Harvest is, in the end, a film about pain - the pain of loss, of remembering, of loneliness, of war, and of love. Greer Garson and Ronald Colman’s tremendously moving performances help to legitimize the material to the point where you don’t even question anything that happens, as you become all too willing to believe in the fairy tale being delicately woven before your eyes. While the story may sound ridiculous, LeRoy sweeps you into the fog and shadows and sunshine that surround Paula and Smithy. Mervyn LeRoy’s 1942 film Random Harvest is an arresting example. Having forgotten Paula, Smithy returns to his family and moves on with his life… but fate has one more trick up its sleeve when Paula reappears in a way that allows her to reconnect with her husband.Īlthough “melodrama” seems to be a dirty word, especially in our current cynical times, classic Hollywood had a gift for crafting transcendent melodramas that embodied deep emotions without shame or condescension. But their blissful existence is shattered when Smithy goes to Liverpool and recovers his memories after an accident. Over time, the two of them fall in love and marry. She surmises that he escaped from the asylum, but she sees something in Smith, or Smithy as she affectionately calls him, and befriends him. He enters a tobacco shop where he encounters the gorgeous, lively entertainer Paula. The village is bustling with people as they celebrate the end of World War I, no one paying attention to the frail soldier. Taking a walk in the foggy night, Smith notices that the front gates aren’t being guarded and he slips out. No family has claimed him in one agonizing scene, an elderly couple are shown Smith to see if he’s their son, both sides horribly disappointed that he isn’t. In 1918, an amnesiac soldier named Smith is still recovering at an English asylum after months of dealing with shell shock. Greer Garson and Ronald Colman in Random Harvest
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