Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

I love this movie so much

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

. . . RANDOM HARVEST provided the blueprint for thousands of men to subsequently establish multiple households with multiple wives. Sure, technically "Smithy"\Charles commits double marriage with the SAME WOMAN (so that the censors would remain happy). But it's not hard to read between the lines. When you enjoy Dale Carnegie Get Rich Quick training, you learn to compartmentalize your life (think Bernie Madoff). Though the military man in this movie harvests his women serially due to his randomly alternating realities, it doesn't take too much imagination on the viewer's part to tweak the plot and shorten the time between towns\households\wives from this flick's lengthy 3 to 15 years down to a more reasonable 3 to 15 days or hours. Though some men have been known to reap their RANDOM HARVEST among as many as four or five separate families, this strikes me as being too stressful, not unlike a show performer trying to keep five stacks of plates perpetually spinning atop five tall poles (sooner or later, some china is going to shatter). However, if an amnesiac can "randomy harvest" the same woman twice, how hard can it be for someone with all their marbles to seed and harvest two or three a few fields miles apart?

In many ways "the" most outrageous amnesia story ever told yet, ironically (or should I say "iconically?") also one of the most successful. And memorable. True love. Passion. Everything you could ever want. And then, bang, he disappears. Patiently, she tracks him down. And tracks him. And tracks him. And finds him. And discovers that he lost his memory and is now a very successful businessman who, strangely, never married. The big meeting. He does not recognize her at all. (This was considered a 6-hankie movie by the way, and we just used up 4). So, aware he might never actually know who she is, she takes a job by his side. Because something is better than nothing. Many modern reviewers have criticized current TV dramas for "manipulating the viewer shamelessly." I am guilty of this myself. But the pattern, the template, for viewer manipulation was set here, decades ago. Yes, the acting was spectacular. I mean, OMG, Greer Garson! And Ronald ("a far far better thing I do") Coleman! You could watch these two sort laundry and it would still be a good film. But, fact is, the last 30 minutes or so of the film are spent with the audience always on the edge of its chair hoping that ANY MOMENT he will recognize her. And he does, sort of. Critics have said the ending under-performs the film. It does, but, think about it, with that kind of setup, ANY ENDING WOULD UNDERPERFORM. This is one of the must-sees.

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.

I'd been looking forward to this for several years. It was no disappointment at all. Hilton's novel is long and episodic and to a certain extent so is the film, but it never strays from its narrative and maintains its leisurely pace without seeming either pushed or dragging. This was made in the throes of war and the "English" environment was meant to woo the international (and particularly American) audience, however indirectly. Part of it was rather unashamedly "tea cozy" and "Hollywood quaint" in depicting the English scene, a bit too cutesy or endearing and too often cloying to the senses. We had the white picket fence, the tree all in flower, primroses round the path - no wishing well though... and thank heavens no Greyfriar's Bobby to melt the hearts of the kids and chew up the scenery to boot. The performances were excellent and the script beautifully organized.Ronald Colman was a bit old for the part but Garson was splendid throughout. I can fully understand that this was her favorite film. I'm ordinarily not a big fan of Le Roy or Hilton but this was truly a lovely trip.Curtis Stotlar