Buffronioc One of the wrost movies I have ever seen

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

ramin99 I couldn't care less about the amnesiac man and his fate. Watching him trying to talk and the woman caring so much about a total stranger while soft music was playing over cardboard landscapes was too much for me.I couldn't watch the whole film out of boredom but I read it's* synopsis. I don't believe in selective memory loss and so I consider the plot nonsensical. First he looses* his memory then he gets what was lost before, but than* again he looses* other memories because of a convenient accident so the plot can go on to make a sappy love story.And lead actor is wrong for the part, he is way to* old to be a soldier. It would have been easy to find who he was after the shock. Just look for missing 3 star generals. It usually takes 30 years to be promoted to that rank and this guy looks about 50.And someone tell me why was a beautiful and kind woman like the lead actress conveniently single without any love interest in her past?*Intentional errors in accordance with Internet protocol.

Spondonman Most times it's the book which is better to read than seeing the film and vice versa on rare occasions, for example Hitchcock's 39 Steps was better than Buchan's. All personal taste of course! To me Random Harvest is in between – the book by James Hilton was excellent but the MGM film was too, albeit it was altered significantly to fit into a 2 hour time frame. All works of fiction are fantasy but the film is definitely more fantastic and the audience has to seriously suspend reality for the duration. I've seen it lots of times now, the lustrous and heartwarming atmosphere always sucking me in.War veteran Ronald Colman suffering from loss of memory stumbles blindly out of an asylum in 1917 and into the arms of Greer Garson who helps him make a new life until he unfortunately regains his memory a few years later. MGM gave it their all - the studio production values from the outset were sky high and now it's an absolutely gorgeous nitrate composition to look at thanks to HD. Colman & Garson also gave it their all and are also gorgeous to look and listen to especially when Colman starts talking properly – my, was he lucky bumping into her in the cigarette shop in the side street! They make it all seem so romantically believable and that such endless self-sacrifice always gets rewarded in the end no matter how long it takes. The usual laughable olde Hollywood picture of immutable master servant relations and the proper working class deference shown to men and women of pedigree I pass over, except to say Thanks Guvnor And Gord Bless You Sir!In short, it's a wonderful film, perhaps the best of its kind and hopefully worth your time as it is mine and many others. Imho the "random years" for the movie industry were approximately 1914-1950 but there's no chance of the memory of those years ever being completely recovered.

classicsoncall The Kleenex inspired finale will doubtless appeal to romantics seeking a happy ending, but I always have trouble putting films like this under the microscope. There's so much suspension of disbelief necessary to pull this one off that it becomes a distraction. It begins with Paula's (Greer Garson) virtual pick-up of a World War I veteran (Ronald Colman) who can't even remember his name. This is not my idea of rational behavior, and for Paula to persevere in this romance and virtually smuggle her 'Smithy' out of Melbridge County doesn't seem the best way to embark on a new life together. But not leaving well enough alone, the story then goes on to have Colman's character restore his pre-War memories and reclaim his former past, but in the process forget about his marriage to Paula. When she turns up as the secretary to the new Industrial Prince of England, it was almost too much to bear for this reality based viewer. I won't even go into how the newly married couple managed to set up a household in the English countryside with no visible means of support. This was, you'll remember, before he set out for London for that job interview with The Mercury, and Paula had long since left her position with the dance hall troupe.For the sake of a better review, I'd have to sweep virtually all of this impossible stuff under the rug, along with fifteen year old Kitty's (Susan Peters) starry eyed obsession with a man easily three times her own age, only to throw him over without a second thought when she 'suddenly' came to her senses. Certainly the characters deserved better than to be held hostage to a desire to find normalcy once again. Though the film held firm those traits of enduring love and loyalty, it just wasn't convincing enough for me. For their part, Colman and Garson hold up their end with portrayals that work magic if you're not particularly concerned with realism. I wish I could be more positive, but this one just didn't work for me.

dbdumonteil I have a tendency to like LeRoy's thirties movie best ("I'm a fugitive from a chain gang" "they won't forget" "Waterloo bridge" ) but "random harvest " is a superb melodrama which does not forget the zeitgeist of the time:mysterious past ,lapses of memory,Freudian sides were present in many Hitchcock,Lang ,Siodmak and Tourneur of the time.Le Roy's is psychoanalytical melodrama (whereas theirs were thrillers) Greer Garson was Le Roy's favourite actress at the time :she had been Edna Gabley who devoted her life to orphans ("Blossoms in the dust") and the same year Wyler's "Mrs Minniver" followed by another Le Roy's work "Madame Curie" (to think that there are French critics who do not like that movie!)So it is surprising to see a cast against type Greer Garson portray a music hall dancer (she manages quite well though).She won't stay in the job for long anyway and the rest of the movie shows Greer Garson in her usual role :an actress who never overplays -which in melodramas can be dreadful- and plays with restraint and sensitivity.The structure of the movie is bizarre ,there are several parts with sometimes a lack of connection between them ;take Garson's reappearance after the greedy family episode .Few scenes in the pure melodrama genre leave the viewer ill at ease like this one.In its own way ,it predates the second part of "Vertigo" .The end of the movie is what we have got to call "catharsis" ,or how the hero finally comes to term with his past .Ronald Coleman may seem a bit too old in the first scenes but as the movie at least spans a decade or more ,it's not a big problem,except may be for the short romance with his distant niece .Melodrama buffs cannot ignore "random harvest" .