Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 302: Thu Oct 29

Random Harvest (LeRoy, 1942): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 5.40pm


You know that top ten favourite (as opposed to greatest) films list you compile? This movie will never leave mine. It's the Sunday after I graduated; it's a gorgeous, hot summer's day. The Time Out TV film reviewer has recommended a 1940s weepie on the BBC that afternoon. There are two scenes in this film, one just after midway after a crucial plot twist occurs and the final one, that are pure cinematic swoons. I cannot recall a theatrical screening since I first saw this on TV in 1982 and nothing is going to stop me being there. Random Harvest also screens in NFT1 on October 28th. You can find the details here. The movie is being screened in the BFI Love: The Power of Love season.

Chicago Reader review:
A shell-shocked World War I amnesiac (Ronald Colman) marries a music-hall singer (Greer Garson), but ... I'm interrupting this review so you don't read a spoiler. James Agee compared watching this 1942 MGM feature, derived from a James Hilton story, to eating a bowl of shaving soap for breakfast, but it has a kind of deranged sincerity and integrity on its own terms, and it acquired a slew of Oscar nominations. 
Jonathan Rosenbaum 

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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