Random Harvest (1942) – DVD

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Ronald Colman, Greer Garson, Philip Dorn, Susan Peters
screenplay by Claudine West, George Froeschell and Arthur Wimperis
directed by Mervyn LeRoy

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Random Harvest isn't really a good movie, but it's strangely satisfying. Though its double-amnesia contrivance would perhaps embarrass an episode of "Diff'rent Strokes", it's impossible not to be a little touched–if not by a literal interpretation of the plot, then by the yearning for the titanic reconciliation facilitated by its crisis. As it takes away, gives back, and takes away again in its narrative rush to final release, the film's grasp of the Freudian fort/da dynamic becomes prime fodder for a Psych-101 term paper. You're never sure which part of the equation is more important, but its primitive game of deprivation and wish fulfilment is too powerful to dismiss. And while Random Harvest borders on camp, it's sincere (or oblivious) enough not to cross the line.

Based on a novel by James Hilton (of Lost Horizon fame), the movie posits the tragedy of Charles Rainier (Ronald Colman), a wealthy industrialist left with a nasty case of amnesia after enduring some trauma on the battlefields of the Great War. Breaking away from the asylum, he befriends music-hall singer Paula (Greer Garson), who predictably falls in love with him, dubs him John Smith, and encourages the writing talents that were thwarted in his previous life. Unfortunately, he's hit by a car once the two have settled down to start a family, restoring his blocked memory and erasing all knowledge of Paula. But this is a melodrama, meaning that Paula will wait for him in ridiculously masochistic ways–and suffer silently as he makes plans to marry a much younger woman.

Not, you'll agree, the stuff of sober pontification. Everything is turned up way past the proverbial eleven, and not in an ironic, Douglas Sirk sort of way, either–it's an artifice believed in so innocently and completely that it's hard to blow it off as trivial. Garson and Colman entering their cozy studio-bound marriage house, with its papier-mâché tree (replete with makeshift apple blossoms), should set off aesthetic alarms for its phoniness (especially as the tree remains unchanged when Colman revisits it years later), and yet the exaggerated surface heightens the sentiment instead of invalidating it. Because it knows that this is an emotional climax for the Terence Davies types in need of the release, the film does its best to honour that desire by pulling out all the stops.

Unless you count the Freudian game-playing mentioned earlier, there's little thematic interest to be had from Random Harvest: it's naked and on-the-surface, leaving sophisticated viewers high and dry should they want to dig for deeper meaning. That being said, the production team's careful ministrations to the brute emotional needs of its audience are hard to write off. It's not exploitative, it's not blown off in an afternoon, and it's not sloppy; this is a well-oiled emotional-release machine. If it conjures images of Huxley's Feelies, let it also conjure images of Davies's enraptured alter ego in The Long Day Closes. It might rot your teeth, but it'll also stick to your bones.

THE DVD
Though Warner's fullscreen DVD presentation of Random Harvest is marred by a seemingly out-of-register image during the early scenes, both it and mild print debris clear up in time to leave us with a positive impression of the studio's restoration efforts. More disappointing is the consistently damp Dolby 1.0 mono audio. Vintage extras are as follows:

Don't Talk (21 mins.)
A style-free but fascinating 1942 entry in the "Crime Does Not Pay" series, Joseph M. Newman's Don't Talk pits Feds against wartime saboteurs looking to derail shipments of precious mechanical cargo. Although pretty stiff compared to the feature, the talk of how-could-Americans-do-this could have come straight out of President Bush's mouth. Plus ca change…

Marines in the Making (9 mins.)
A tiny short devoted to the rigours of Marine life, with enough shirtless fighting and formation fetishism to gladden Claire Denis's heart. Featuring the "this is my rifle" number familiar to Kubrick fans from Full Metal Jacket, it's an interestingly straight look at what ironists would later manipulate.

Lux Theatre Adaptation – 1/31/44 (55 mins.)
Colman and Garson reprise their roles for this abbreviated radio adaptation. Shorn of its visual component, the story doesn't come alive, especially in this greatest hits version, but it's no less intriguing as a curio.

Rounding out the package: a Greer Garson trailer gallery previewing Random Harvest, Goodbye Mr. Chips, and Mrs. Miniver.

126 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0, French DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner