Random Harvest (1942)

If you can get past the fact that Ronald Colman is a bit too old to play the main character in Random Harvest, a nominee for Best Picture of 1942, you will quickly find yourself entranced by a sad, beautiful love story between a man who has lost his memory and the woman who stands by him even when he forgets who she is. Colman, with that marvelously fluid voice of his, is Smith (or "Smithy"), who has lost his past thanks to shell shock from World War I. Greer Garson, a possessor of quite a beautiful voice in her own right, is the woman who rescues him from life in an asylum only to lose him again after several years of idyllic existence. These two actors are so well matched, and their chemistry is so strong, that they make Random Harvest one of the most romantic films of the 1940s.

Colman's Smith is at the Belbridge County Asylum recovering from his injuries when the war ends. He has faced one disappointment after another as people have come to the hospital looking for lost sons and husbands; no one recognizes him. When the guards leave their posts to celebrate the end of the war, he walks out of the asylum and into the streets of town, where he is quickly overwhelmed by the crowd. He's in his military uniform, so he's treated with a great deal of respect and generosity, but the crowd gets to be too much for him. Thankfully, Garson's Paula takes him to her dressing room to get a break from the noise of the streets. She decides to take care of him when he readily admits to his mental problems. She just thinks that he needs to be on the outside and he'll recover. She's the one who dubs him "Smithy."

After a guard from the asylum comes looking for Smith in town, Paula takes him to the countryside, abandoning her life as a stage performer in order to be with him. Before they depart, we're actually treated to one of her numbers, a truly awful song about a girl named Daisy that she performs in a deep Scottish brogue. If that's the quality of the material she has to perform, she's probably made the right choice in leaving the stage behind and assuming control of Smithy's life. He seems to be much calmer and even starts writing articles for a newspaper in Liverpool. He wants to ask her to marry him, but she says to him, "Do I always have to take the initiative?" That must have been a rather bold statement to make in a film in 1942, given its potential implications. They marry, have a child, and begin to enjoy a peaceful life in the country.

While in Liverpool for a job interview for a permanent post at a newspaper, Smith is hit by a car as he is crossing the street. A series of images of the war, including exploding bombs and attacks in foxholes, indicate that he's experiencing a flood of memories from his past. He realizes that he's really Charles Rainier, and he's lost three years of his life since the end of his service. He's also forgotten all about Paula and his child. He returns to his family's home, Random Hall, on the day of his father's burial and gradually starts to assume control of the family business. He even picks up an admirer, a girl named Kitty (played by Susan Peters), who is only 15 but seems to know just what she wants in a future husband. I should point out here that Colman was in his 50s when this film was made, and he looks far too old to have been merely a captain in the army and much too old to have some 15-year-old girl chasing after him. No amount of make-up can erase the obvious gap in their ages. Colman is really a good actor, and he is very effective in the role, but I just couldn't accept the romance between these two. Maybe that's what the film's creators were hoping too: that we'd see what a better match Garson's Paul is for him.

After the passage of a few years, we see him talking to his secretary, the efficient Miss Margaret Hanson, who is (of course) Greer Garson. She has seen his photograph in a newspaper and come to work for him in the hopes that he will remember her. Their child has died, and she's been unsuccessful at a series of jobs, so she imagines that he will recognize her when he sees her. He doesn't, though, and his announcement of his impending marriage to Kitty shocks Paula. She's still in contact with Smith's doctor from the asylum, but the doctor advises her not to tell Smith who she is during such a delicate time. He worries about the possible consequences for Smith's health of such a confrontation. Realizing that he will marry someone else without ever realizing who she is, Paula has Smith declared officially dead so that she can move on with her life (and he won't be considered a bigamist).

There are moments when Smith has momentary flashes of his years with Paula. A piece of music at the wedding rehearsal, for example, is all the signal Kitty needs to realize that he loves someone else even if he doesn't remember who it is. She leaves him, and he then starts to devote himself to his career. He's even elected to Parliament, but he tells Paula that he cannot be an MP without her support. He proposes marriage, not in a romantic sense but as a "sincere friendship." Perhaps out of a desire to regain his love, she agrees. You know that she's going to be frustrated that he still doesn't recognize who she truly is and that she's going to be upset when their relationship remains platonic rather than becoming romantic. It's an amazing performance that Garson gives her. She's got to show us just how much it pains her to be by the side of the man she loves but not have him realize it.

There are clues all around Smith, if he would only pay attention. He's been carrying a key that was found on him when he was struck by the car in Liverpool. He doesn't know what it fits, but it's always on his key chain. He sees a necklace he gave Paula when they were enjoying their romantic days in the countryside, but it fails to register with him. Paula has even tried jogging his memory by having him look for evidence of why he was in Liverpool, anything to bring Smith back to her. It's a very odd series of circumstances, resulting from his attempts to settle a strike at the Melbridge Cable Works, that leads to him having increasing awareness of what happened to him during those three years he was Smith instead of Rainier.

No doubt a modern viewer of Random Harvest would question the likelihood of so many coincidental occurrences, and the film does sometimes stretch credulity. However, it really isn't the mystery of what happens that draws us into these people's lives. It's the love they have for each other and our growing desire to see them reunited as they once were. We perhaps empathize with Paula the most as the movie progresses because she is our surrogate in wishing to have Rainier's memory restored to him. What we know now about repressed or lost memories might make the ending itself seem unlikely, but emotionally, the payoff is tremendous. There's a joy to be found in Rainier's pushing the key into the lock of the cottage he shared with Paula--make of that whatever metaphorical importance you'd like--and her calling him Smithy (and him recognizing her as his wife). Only a cynic would argue with the outcome of that last scene in Random Harvest.

49th Parallel (1942)

The story of 49th Parallel, also known as The Invaders, is an original one, not a historical one. The tale of several Nazis stranded in the Canadian wilderness in the early years of World War II would have been just realistic enough for Canadian and United States audiences to fear the possibility of a Nazi invasion. At the time of the film's initial release, the United States had not yet formally entered the war; that would not occur until December of 1942 after the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, what 49th Parallel makes clear (and what I suspect its makers intended) is that the Nazi threat was worldwide.

The film begins with a Nazi submarine attacking a Canadian ship carrying crude oil that could be used for Allied battleships. The Nazis are interested only in raiding such ships for supplies, though, so they refuse to take on any of the survivors from the sinking Canadian ship. We're meant to understand the brutality of the Germans from this brief introductory sequence, and it's quickly followed by a discussion of plans to take over a trading post in the Hudson Bay, where the submarine has fled to hide. Instead, the submarine is destroyed, leaving six crewmen, the search party, stranded in the mountains.

What follows are the adventures of those six men as they cross Canada in an attempt to reach the at-the-time-neutral territory of the United States. We see a series of vignettes of the complications that arise when a group of Germans try to pass unnoticed during wartime. For example, the first encounter with Canadians involves a fur trapper named Johnny (played by Laurence Olivier with a, um, “vigorous” French-Canadian accent). He's back at the trading post after 11 months in the wilderness and is incredulous that the English and French are fighting on behalf of the Poles. When the Nazis show up, they bring the war directly to his remote location and make him understand the need for solidarity against the German threat. Unfortunately, Johnny and several others are shot and killed when the Nazis steal an emergency plane, but the Nazi who pilots the plane dies after the plane crashes when it runs out of fuel, and the movie quickly starts to seem like a game of "Ten Little Indians." ("Six Little Nazis," I suppose, would be the more appropriate title.) One by one, the Nazis are discovered and killed or captured, no doubt a nod by the filmmakers to the strength of Canadian patriotism (or what they hoped would be the patriotic response of the Canadians). The film itself is dedicated to Canada and to the Canadian people.

There's an extended sequence involving a Hutterite community that the Nazis happen upon after meeting a young girl named Anna (played by Glynis Johns, her voice just as recognizable as ever). The Hutterites are German immigrants who have founded several communal spaces in Canada, and for a time, the Nazis think they may have found some like-minded folks. Lt. Hirth (Eric Portman), the ostensible leader of the band of remaining Nazis, even gives a speech at one of the Hutterite gatherings. He talks to them about German pride and racial purity, and it's obvious he's trying to recruit them into the Nazi movement. However, many of the Hutterites, particularly their leader, Peter (Anton Walbrook), left Europe because of the kind of thinking represented by Hirth and his cohorts; they are pacifists by nature. And Anna's father was even killed by the Nazis; that's why she is now in Canada. One of the Nazis, Vogel (Niall MacGuiness), starts to regret his involvement in the Nazi movement, and he even takes up his previous beloved trade as a baker. The Hutterites want him to join them, but the remaining Nazis sentence him to death as a traitor and execute him in the woods. It's a chilling moment in the film to watch them shoot someone who was previously their colleague.

I won't recount every moment in the film that leads to the end of another Nazi, lest it truly sound like "Ten Little Indians." Let me just say that one of the more intriguing sequences involves an indigenous festival and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police encouraging everyone in the crowd to look at their neighbor as possibly being a suspected Nazi: "Look closely at your neighbor." I wondered if there were a comment there about the paranoia surrounding Nazis and the attempts by some people to point fingers at almost anyone they find suspicious, but it's played too seriously for me to imagine that's what the film's creators had in mind.

Leslie Howard, of all people, shows up in the guise of Philip Armstrong Scott, a wealthy man who likes to carry a Picasso and a Matisse with him while out in the woods to fish and to write a book about the tribal customs of the Blackfoot Indians of Canada. Well, who doesn't want the comforts of home in a tent in the wilderness? Doesn't everyone carry several oil paintings and books by writers like Thomas Mann to read at night around a campfire? The remaining pair of Nazis taunt him for his cowardice (really, his effeminacy, I suspect, if not his effete nature) and, after tying him up, they destroy his paintings and burn his books and his unfinished manuscript. Of course, the men with whom Howard's Scott are staying rescue him, and they hunt down and kill one of the two Nazis.

That leaves only Lt. Hirth, and it's up to Raymond Massey, a hobo on a train, to stop him. I know. This is starting to sound like one of those all-star disaster movies from the 1970s where you could play "Guess the Star." Aside from those playing the fleeing Germans, all of these actors have very brief moments on screen. They amount to little more than a cameo appearance at times, but they certainly are no more than supporting roles. That means, of course, that much of the movie is seen through the eyes and actions of the Nazis. The movie walks a very thin line sometimes between depicting the Nazis as horrible, brutal killers and in showing them in a sympathetic light, such as when they have to sell their gloves for food in Winnipeg. I suppose that could be considered fair-minded of the film makers, but it also leaves quite an uncomfortable feeling at times, too.

Much of the film was shot in the Canadian Rockies, including a sequence at Banff National Park. The cinematography of the countryside is breath-taking. It's enough to make you want to hop on a train and ride through the wilderness yourself. The insertion of maps throughout the film to indicate where the action is taking place is an inspired choice, probably the work of the film’s editor, David Lean, who would later become of the greatest directors. What 49th Parallel accomplishes, interestingly, is placing men who represent an unnatural evil (Nazism) inside the natural beauty of Canada. I don't know if the makers of 49th Parallel meant to draw that connection, but given that the film's title refers to the dividing line between Canada and the United States, it's impossible not to consider it when watching the film. It's certainly an unusual piece of propaganda from the World War II era, and it's intriguing to watch just for the ways in which the ordinary people of a country could have an impact on the outcome of a war.

Oscar Win: Best Original Motion Picture Story

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Motion Picture and Best Screenplay

Mrs. Miniver (1942)

I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried at the end of Mrs. Miniver, winner of the award for Best Picture of 1942. This movie, made almost immediately after the events that it depicts, earns its emotions honestly. It is a war movie, to be sure, but one that concentrates on what happened on the home front in England during the air attacks by the Germans. Instead of numerous battle scenes, what you get instead is the way that the English people dealt with their situation in typically heroic fashion. I wasn't particularly prepared to be as moved as I was, but watching these "ordinary" people adjust to the horrors of war is a powerful experience.

The movie starts in 1939, just as Hitler's armies invade Poland. It shows how the people of England kept in touch with the events on the Continent, knowing that these events could and probably would directly affect them as well. The focus for much of the film is the Miniver family. The father (Walter Pidgeon) is an architect who becomes a leader in the patrol that keeps watch at night during the war; he also participates in a rather daring boat attack on Dunkirk, using only the small boat that his family owns for punting about on the river. The mother (Greer Garson) tries to hold her family together, but even she contributes directly to the war effort when she discovers a downed German pilot, manages to get his gun, and turns him over to the police.

The Minivers have three children, but only the oldest (Richard Ney) is key to the overall plot. He joins the Royal Air Force and keeps getting called to duty just when he's had a chance to reunite briefly with his family. He also falls in love with and marries the granddaughter of the town's wealthiest resident, Lady Beldon (the incomparable Dame May Whitty). His new bride (Teresa Wright) understands very well the possible sacrifices she might be asked to make as the wife of a pilot, a remarkably mature attitude for someone who is only 18 years old.

The ending of the film takes place in the remains of the town's church, which has almost been completely destroyed by bombs. The sermon for the day has to do with why the town has lost people who are considered innocents, why they have been the victims of the bombing instead of soldiers or pilots. It's a stirring moment when the vicar describes World War II as everyone's war. No doubt this film, particularly the ending, helped enormously with bolstering American sentiment for joining the war. I won't tell you who among the Minivers is lost in the bombing, but it's heartbreaking to watch the remains of the family joining together at the end.

Garson won the award for Best Actress that year, and you can certainly see why. I always liked her, even when it was only her voice that I heard ("The Little Drummer Boy," for example). Allegedly, she gave the longest acceptance speech in Academy history, but since they weren't televised back then, we have no film record of it. I'd love to see it sometime, though. Wright, as Carol Beldon Miniver, was chosen Best Supporting Actress, beating out Whitty for the award. In fact, five members of the cast were nominated that year, one of those few times when there was a nomination from a film in every acting category.

There are really three Mrs. Minivers in the film, by the way. Garson, of course, is the first one and perhaps the one that the title refers to. However, upon her marriage, Carol becomes Mrs. Miniver as well, a fact that Garson's character points out. The third is a rose, a beautiful one, that one of the townspeople names in honor of Garson's character. It's a fitting tribute to her as she embodies the best traits of the English people, a true "English rose." And, in a similar fashion, this film honors those same attributes.

The Talk of the Town (1942)

The Talk of the Town was nominated for Best Picture of 1942. That was one of the years with 10 films making the final cut, and I'm glad that this film was included because it is very enjoyable. This is a funny movie that takes on the serious topic of how the law is applied differently for people of different backgrounds and social classes. That may seem like an odd combination of tone and topic, but in the hands of Cary Grant and Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman as the lead performers, it's all done with a delicate touch.

Grant plays Leopold Dilg, who is in hiding from the police because he has been charged with arson and murder in the burning of the mill in town; of course, he's really been jailed because his political beliefs clash with those of the mill owner, one of the most powerful men in town. He winds up in the home of a childhood sweetheart of his, Nora Shelley (Arthur). Unfortunately, on the night that he arrives, so does the law professor who has rented Nora's home so that he can finish work on a book. The professor, Michael Lightcap (Colman), wants solitude from the outside world, yet Leopold's case keeps interfering, particularly after Leopold starts to pass himself off as the gardener Joseph and starts having conversations with Lightcap about the nature of the law. (Watching Leopold and Nora try to keep Lightcap from discovering Leopold's true identity is one of the funniest recurring gags in the film.)

In some ways, The Talk of the Town is a movie about a romantic triangle. Both Lightcap and Leopold vie for the attentions of Nora, a schoolteacher who is, thankfully, free during the summers to act as a go-between for the two men. This isn't quite a true screwball comedy, however, especially given the darkness of the subject matter at times. Yet Grant, in particular, is adept at both his physical comedy moments and the serious legal discussions with Colman's professor. I know that Jean Arthur is usually credited as being one of the greatest comic actresses in the movie, but she doesn't seem to be quite as talented as, say, Irene Dunne might have been in the part. Still, she brings a delightful sense of bouyancy to the role. And Colman, saddled with what must necessarily be the most serious role, handles the task with a delicate touch, earning his character's laughs through some careful phrasing and subtle gestures.

Arthur's Nora must choose one of the men by the end of the picture, and I won't spoil it by telling you who it is. One of the great pleasures of watching this film is seeing her go back and forth between the two men in terms of which holds her attention more. I'm not sure you'd necessarily be able to guess her final choice based upon what happens throughout the film; it's that carefully balanced.

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

I could spend most of this blog about The Magnificent Ambersons discussing Agnes Moorehead's performance. She is a marvel here, as she was in almost every one of her movies. What a pity that so few people have seen her film work and only know her from her performance as Endora on Bewitched. If you watch The Magnificent Ambersons, nominated for Best Picture of 1942, you'll see her in one of the most amazing performances ever captured on film, and it isn't even one of the lead roles. It's a relatively small supporting part.

Moorehead plays Fanny, the sister of Wilbur Minafer. Wilbur has married Isabel Amberson (silent screen star Dolores Costello), daughter of an upper class family. Isabel had wanted to marry the dashing and impulsive Eugene Morgan, played by Joseph Cotton, but her father objected to such an arrangement and she chose Wilbur instead because he would provide stability. Years later, after Wilbur's death, Eugene returns after having made a fortune as an automobile manufacturer and begins courting Isabel again, only to have her son intercede this time. George Minafer has fallen in love with Eugene's daughter, Lucy Morgan (Anne Baxter). Through the assistance of his aunt Fanny, who was obviously in love with Eugene herself, George manages to scuttle the romance between his mother and Eugene.

What makes Moorehead stand out among a stellar cast is the range of emotions she puts on display. You can easily sense the desire she has for Eugene when he returns. Watch her face light up when she realizes that he is downstairs in the Amberson home or when she is in his company on the automobile ride in the snow. Yet she also has the capacity to be vengeful, spiteful. Her temper seems to be triggered with ease. And when she confronts the death of her sister-in-law, you can see how all of the mixture of feelings she has felt come rushing back to her. She was a remarkable actress, and few ever achieved her level of greatness, in my opinion.

I haven't mentioned yet that this was the film Orson Welles directed after Citizen Kane. There is much already written about how the studio, facing unfavorable comments from preview audiences, chopped out almost a third of the film and destroyed the portions that had been edited out. We will likely never see the film the way that Welles intended, a fate that he would have to encounter time and time again throughout this career, but what remains demonstrates a clear sense of the power he wielded as a director. He doesn't act in this film, but he does provide the voice-over narration, using typical Welles-ian humor in the introduction of the cast that occurs at the end of the film.

I'd still recommend seeing The Magnificent Ambersons even if it is a flawed masterpiece. Certainly, the happy ending that the studio tacked on doesn't fit the rest of the film, which is very bleak and somewhat depressing in its themes and tone. However, you won't soon forget the performances or the real sense of how one family can destroy itself through its greed and hunger for power.

Kings Row (1942)

Kings Row was a nominee for Best Picture of 1942. Ostensibly, it's a film about five children in a small town whose lives have taken some remarkably different paths as they grow up. However, the main focus is on two of those children, the ones played as adults by Robert Cummings and Ronald Reagan (yes, the two men). Cummings plays a man named Parris studying to become a doctor with a specialization in psychiatry; he is, perhaps unsurprisingly, in love with the daughter of the specialist he studies with (played by Claude Raines with his usual gusto) in his home town. Reagan is a sort of playboy, a guy named Drake who dates a lot of different women while waiting for his full inheritance so he can become a businessman.

Much of the plot is about the interactions of these two characters with three women in the town, all of them women the men have known since childhood. One is, of course, the daughter of the strange psychiatrist, and she's locked away in her father's mansion for most of the movie without a full explanation as to the reasons for her confinement. (There's always something suspicious going on when a girl has to be locked away, isn't there? Too bad we never quite know what it is in this case.) Another is a girl who loses her virginity to Reagan's bad boy; her father is the local quack doctor (hold that thought for just a moment). The third is a girl from the "wrong side of the tracks" (no, quite literally, in this case). After Drake is forced to take a menial job on the railroad, the two of them fall in love, and she stands by him even after a work-related injury leads to the doctor (yes, that one) amputating both of his legs, perhaps out of anger for Drake's treatment of his daughter years before. Sounds a bit like a potboiler, doesn't it? However, thankfully, Parris returns after studying psychiatry in Vienna (where else does one study psychiatry around 1900 if not in the hometown of Sigmund Freud?) to help everyone begin the healing process. It plays much better than I've made it sound here.

I want to single out Reagan's performance, in particular, as one of the best things about this movie. He's quite charming during his earlier scenes, and after tragedy befalls him, he manages to make the audience feel the depth of his suffering. This was probably his best role, and it's credited as being the one that made him a star. The look on his face when he realizes that he has been swindled out of his fortune demonstrates that he was indeed a good actor. And his scenes at the end of the film reveal just how emotionally and not just physically wounded Drake is. I was never that fond of Reagan's politics, but you can see in a film like Kings Row why he was so popular even as a politician. He has a likable quality to him that seems genuine.