Fortunately for Colman, it turns out he is the heir to an upper class estate. Garson hunts him down, but instead of telling him who she is, she plays dumb and becomes his secretary. Time passes. Colman becomes engaged to cutie Susan Peters, but she calls it off because he isn't infatuated with her. Instead, Colman weds Garson, a sham marriage to advance his political career, which is extremely successful.
How others will see it. Random Harvest apparently received mixed reviews from critics of the day. Nonetheless, it was a box office success, and was nominated for seven Oscars. Greer Garson wasn't nominated, but it was hardly a crushing disappointment, since she won Best Actress that year for Mrs. Miniver. That film won Oscars in most categories where Random Harvest was nominated, leaving the latter film empty-handed.
The imdb.com user ratings are high. In particular, older audiences and women enjoy the movie. You are expected to cry tears of joy, and if you believe this will happen to you when seeing this film, then it has been made for you. Or, at least, with your demographic in mind.
How I felt about it. Random Harvest is well made. It is well directed, well acted, well photographed, well written. But it is not really a good movie. Actually, it doesn't come close.
How can this be? How can a movie, made with such care and craft, and beloved by so many, come up short? Particularly when it is so engrossing.
Well, let's begin with obvious, and go from there. First of all, Ronald Colman is too old for the role. He was 50 when the film was made, 13 years older than Garson, and too old to pass himself off as a former World War trench soldier in 1917. In 1918, that would make him about 25, and maybe younger.
Secondly, there is the problem of his amnesia. First he has total amnesia, and three years later immediately gains it all back but, at the same time completely loses all memory of the past three years. Fifteen years later, it all comes back. It is all too difficult to believe, particularly when you have spent much of that 15 years with the same woman you were married to (and inseparable from) for those three years.
Then, there are the two main characters. Garson and Colman aren't really human beings. Not any that I have met. They are too nice, and too polite. I don't believe that anywhere at anytime, not even in England during the Great Depression, that two people can be perfect all the time, even in private. They can be in the movies, of course, which is exactly my point.
Which brings us to the cinematic depiction of True Love. In fiction, there is one person, and one person only, on the entire planet who can be your One True Love. That's the way it is between Garson and Colman. Even though he is a penniless, middle-aged escapee from the mental ward, and can barely put together a sentence, Garson realizes that he is the One. On the other hand, Colman can't comprehend that she is the One, even when he has twice been married to her for three years. Yet the memory comes back to him because he is in a village that he was once in for a few hours some 15 years before.
On the other hand, Susan Peters suddenly realizes that she is not the One for Colman, all because he stares at her vacantly for a moment. After spending years plotting her romantic conquest of Colman, she then dumps him, even though he is a very wealthy man, as well as the nicest man in the world. Earth to Susan: marry him anyway. He doesn't seem to mind.
I also have to add that Colman does very well for a man sleepwalking through life. Give me the estate? I'll take it. Have me run the family business. All right. You want me to run for Parliament. Okay. You're offering me a cabinet post, Mr. Prime Minister. I'll accept it. Thank you for knighting me, King George. Politeness alone will take you very far, it seems. At least in the movies.
Random Harvest was the high point in the career of Susan Peters, the lovely second female lead. It was her only Oscar nomination. In 1945, a hunting accident left her paralyzed from the waist down. She returned to acting, but her health declined, and she died in 1951, at the age of 31.