Classic Golden-Age tear-jerker starring Ronald Colman and Greer Garson in the third big Hollywood adaptation of a James Hilton novel. With "Lost Horizon" having previously starred Colman and "Goodbye Mr Chips" having previously featured Garson. I guess this pairing was something which was meant to be...which coincidentally brings us to the plot of this particular feature, directed by Mervyn LeRoy.
Colman is the hospitalised First World War army officer suffering from amnesia and who one day just walks out of the countryside asylum where his condition was being treated by a kindly doctor. He wanders into the local town of Melbridge where he crosses paths with Garson's song and dance girl who duly takes him under her wing to prevent him being taken back to the asylum. While there's a noticeable age gap between the two, they fall in love and have a child, basing themselves in an idyllic country cottage where Colman discovers he has a bent for writing. Three years on, while visiting Liverpool to apply for a newspaper job as a reporter, he's involved in a minor road accident, the outcome of which is that he recovers his memory and learns that he's from gentrified stock and the heir to a country pile and thriving family business in all of which he now immerses himself, completely forgetting, or so it seems, the more modest, but happier wife and life he has unwittingly left behind. The question is how will this obviously doting couple ever get back together, especially when his adoring, pretty niece can't wait to grow up to marry him.
You have to swallow a whole lot of coincidences and unlikely occurrences along the way before getting to the expected big-kiss happy ending, like when Colman still doesn't twig Garson as his previous wife and mother of his child even after she's worked full-time for him and then married him, (I suppose that should be remarried him, although she did get their first marriage annulled, believing him dead) or how they both separately end up at the small countryside town where they first met, but it's all so skilfully directed and acted that you're rooting for them both all the way.
There's definite chemistry between Colman and Garson, age-difference notwithstanding, although the middle-aged Colman does seem noticeably more awkward in his scenes with the ill-fated Susan Peters, where she seems very young indeed.
A big hit during the Second World War, with its celebrations of love, family, duty and honour understandably connecting with its wartime audience, it's an easy film to like if you can suspend your disbelief as it goes.
Colman is the hospitalised First World War army officer suffering from amnesia and who one day just walks out of the countryside asylum where his condition was being treated by a kindly doctor. He wanders into the local town of Melbridge where he crosses paths with Garson's song and dance girl who duly takes him under her wing to prevent him being taken back to the asylum. While there's a noticeable age gap between the two, they fall in love and have a child, basing themselves in an idyllic country cottage where Colman discovers he has a bent for writing. Three years on, while visiting Liverpool to apply for a newspaper job as a reporter, he's involved in a minor road accident, the outcome of which is that he recovers his memory and learns that he's from gentrified stock and the heir to a country pile and thriving family business in all of which he now immerses himself, completely forgetting, or so it seems, the more modest, but happier wife and life he has unwittingly left behind. The question is how will this obviously doting couple ever get back together, especially when his adoring, pretty niece can't wait to grow up to marry him.
You have to swallow a whole lot of coincidences and unlikely occurrences along the way before getting to the expected big-kiss happy ending, like when Colman still doesn't twig Garson as his previous wife and mother of his child even after she's worked full-time for him and then married him, (I suppose that should be remarried him, although she did get their first marriage annulled, believing him dead) or how they both separately end up at the small countryside town where they first met, but it's all so skilfully directed and acted that you're rooting for them both all the way.
There's definite chemistry between Colman and Garson, age-difference notwithstanding, although the middle-aged Colman does seem noticeably more awkward in his scenes with the ill-fated Susan Peters, where she seems very young indeed.
A big hit during the Second World War, with its celebrations of love, family, duty and honour understandably connecting with its wartime audience, it's an easy film to like if you can suspend your disbelief as it goes.