Grandma Nana
Added 11/16/2009
Greer Garson did a beautiful job in this movie. Always enjoyed it and am now happy to own it for frequent viewing.
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WHAT A GOOD MOVIE!!
Added 10/9/2009
MY GRANDFATHER TOLD ME ABOUT THIS CLASSIC AND WAS SO EXCITED WHEN I RECEIVED IT!! THE STORY IS SO INTERESTING.
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A WWII propaganda blitz
Added 9/24/2009
A fictionalization of the German bombing of England during
the beginning of WWII. Greer Garson is very beautiful in the title role,
but the black and white movies bundled with this make it clear
this is a war package produced with the clear intension
of supporting England against Germany.
When she captures a young German aviator
who is the same age as her son and
has his German ideals much has her son has his English ones,
she shows very little understanding or compassion.
For my book this kind of political movie in war may be necessary,
but it shouldn't be classed with other Oscar winners?
I've seem some WWII films that were pretty much out and out lies
for the war effort, much as German propaganda films were
on the other side. When you look like and act like the bad guy,
how do you tell the players without a menu?
In WWII there was no allowed protest against the war...?
The zoot suit riots were the only protests that I know of.
It is not about if the war was right or not, but
that with putting the American Japanese in camps,
in WWII it was hard to tell Nazis from Americans
by behavior? In an era when the press is pretty controlled in the USA,
it helps to be able to identify political propaganda
that is passing for fact
(Where are the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?).
Human rights don't end when war begins.
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Nice movie
Added 8/10/2009
I watched this by accident at a friend's place. It is nice for beautiful scenic locales, nice acting esp by Walter Pidgeon, the little kids and the old lady who plays the royal family, very watchable once. I was left with two questions after that movie, it is named after Mrs Miniver but it is wholly not clear what she did that was so unique and outstanding, other than perhaps deal with the German pilot. Second, it is patriotism served up in true english style (Am sure if you are english or know about this beforehand that is no surprise but to me it was), So all said and done if you are English you'd probably like it a whole lot better. I am not english and i have no sentiments for a country that colonised so many other countries and routed their culture. To me it was nice for scenery and some nice acting that is all.
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Mrs Miniver
Added 8/9/2009
The film, "Mrs. Miniver", is perhaps one of the best movies concerning the English in WWII. Greer Garson is the one of the best actresses of this era. Walter Pidgeon is also a consumate actor of his time. "Mrs. Miniver" was voted the best picture of the year, and was awarded six Academy Awards by the Motion Picture Academy. These reasons should be enough to recommend this movie to anyone, but the story is a wonderful and human experience concerning the innocent lives of ordinary citizens during a war that touches all, and how the English people bore the ravages of the conflict with the fabled English "stiff upper lip". A movie heartwarming for its time, but mirrors the lives of families whose sons, husbands, dads,uncles, etc. go off to any war and must cope with these same events.
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What movies are meant to be!
Added 11/13/2009
Random Harvest is truly one of the most romantic, well written and acted movies of all time. This movie captures the essence of why we go to the movies. Ronald Colman, an amnesiac from the Great War, is found by Greer Garson, in her most engaging of all films, wandering the streets, and she cares for him. She helps him heal with love despite the best psychiatric care available to wounded soldiers, and they fall in love and marry and then she becomes pregnant. His pre-War brilliance begins to emerge, and he is hired to write for a newspaper in Liverpool; while securing the job, he is struck by a car and his memory returns...and he forgets his life with her. In one of the most clever plots ever, they are reunited, but he is still unable to remember her. It's heart wrenching, but the finale still makes me cry. I met Greer Garson in 1976 at my college where she and her husband were benefactors (College of Santa Fe in NM), and she aired this movie to the college for the students to enjoy! (I sat right in front of her crying my eyes out!) She loved it too! She was wonderfully generous to the College of Santa Fe and its students. Despite her fame and great beauty even late in life, she was so kind to everyone. She shared a story about Random Harvest; she told me that she would call Ronnie when RH was played on late night TV in the New York area to reminisce about how wonderful RH still was many years later! I believe she said this was her favorite film, and it is one of mine. I even named one of my dogs, Smithy!
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The greatest tearjerker of it's era? Could be.
Added 9/13/2009
Not many novelists have had a better and more fruitful relationship with Hollywood than James Hilton, author of the 1941 novel on which this film, starring Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, is based. Hilton's 1933 bestseller "Lost Horizon" was turned into one of the great romantic fantasy-adventures (nominated for 7 Oscars) of all time by Frank Capra in 1937; his 1934 "Goodbye Mr. Chips" was filmed in that well-regarded year of 1939 by Sam Wood, also received 7 Oscar nominations including a win for Robert Donat as Best Actor; Hilton won an Oscar himself for his screenplay of "Mrs. Miniver" three years later, which also won the Leading Actress award for Greer Garson, and Best Picture. Everything he touched for a decade or so seemed to turn to gold - or at least silver.
"Random Harvest" isn't quite as well remembered as the other films I mentioned, though it also received a lucky 7 Oscar bids, winning none in that year of "Miniver"'s dominance. It's the story of a shell-shocked World War I veteran (Ronald Colman - at 51 just a might too old to be convincing as a young soldier in the early parts of the film) who escapes from a mental hospital during the confusion and celebration of Armistice Day and falls in with a young dancehall performer, Paula (Garson), who christens the memory-impaired and stuttering man "Smithy". An accident in which Smithy knocks down a man as he's being searched for leads the two to leave the town of Melford and travel west to a small village in the hopes of Smithy getting well and retrieving his memory. He doesn't, but he and Paula soon fall in love, marry, and have a child, and he begins a career as a writer. On his way to meet a publisher in Liverpool, he gets hit by a car, falls down, and remembers who he was - but loses his recent past, and Paula. How Smithy, now wealthy scion of industry Charles Rainier, and Paula find each other again you should find out for yourself.
Simply put, "Random Harvest" is my favorite tearjerker of it's era. LeRoy's direction and the camerawork are simple, smooth and never ostentation - sure it's got the typically lovely MGM "house style" but this is a film entirely focused on character, feeling, memory, loss. If you've never seen it before, or never read the book, there's quite an amazing couple of "shock" scenes which are hard for me to judge properly now having seen the film 8 or 10 times but which do seem absolutely right in this kind of melodrama - nothing is really overdone here despite a certain silliness in the concept as the film runs towards it's glorious ending. The film removes a good chunk of the political content that the book is full of - which is probably all for the best when it comes to current audiences, it feels much more relevant as a purely romantic story about two individuals struggling to find the real truths in each other. The whole structure of the film is different as well - the novel is told in flashbacks, which would in the film be hard to do without the central revelation coming too soon; and the role of Kitty, Charles Rainier's young niece who falls for him and is about to marry him, is lessened somewhat in the film (though her central importance as a reminder to Charles that "something" is missing in his new life, something from those years he has lost, remains) while a whole subplot involving Smithy and Paula living with a clergyman in London is removed entirely. As I said - the concentration is entirely on the love story and as such it achieves a resonance and intensity that is awfully rare.
Much of this intensity is of course attributable to the lead performances of Colman, measured and never getting to the Barrymore-esque hamminess that he could be prone to, and especially Garson who I think gives the performance of her career here. Her Paula is the essence of the good, self-sacrificing person taken to a fairly ridiculous extreme - but Garson pulls it off with intelligence and real energy, she's a powerful force of life throughout and doesn't waver when "Smithy" eventually comes into his own as her equal - and she makes you believe that she could, in fact, wait a good chunk of a lifetime and singlemindedly work towards a dream that in the end seems almost mystical as it turns fantasy to awakening...
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Random Harvest
Added 9/11/2009
I've have always enjoyed this movie. It was time to have a copy for my library. Greer Garson is so lovely and charming. Ronald Coleman is a WWI soldier who has lost his memory. Greer Garson is a show show who helps him out. This is a love story about these two individuals who become separated and how they are brought back.
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