Jill Esmond – Movie Musings

A perfectly judged star vehicle, very slight and competent but entertaining enough

Director: Irving Pichel

Cast: Monty Woolley (Howard), Roddy McDowell (Ronnie), Anne Baxter (Nicole Rougeron), Otto Preminger (Major Diessen), J. Carrol Naish (Aristide Rougeron), Lester Matthews (Mr Cavanaugh), Jill Esmond (Mrs Cavanaugh), Peggy Ann Garner (Shelia), Merril Rodin (Willem), Maurice Tauzin (Pierre), Fleurette Zama (Rose), Marcel Dalio (Focquet), Odette Myrtil (Madame Rougeron), Marcelle Corday (Madame Bonne)

Talk about a part tailor-made for its lead. We need a curmudgeonly old duffer, with the twinkly charm of an avuncular uncle and a secret heart of gold – get Monty Woolley on the blower! In this Nevil Shute adaptation, he plays Howard, caught up in the 1940 German invasion of France while on a fishing holiday. With great reluctance, he agrees to escort Ronnie (Roddy McDowell) and Shelia (Peggy Ann Garner), children of a League of Nations diplomat, across France. Along the way, as well as dodging the Germans, he picks up a shell-shocked French orphan and a scrawny Dutch child and recruits the help of an old ‘acquaintance’ of his son, Nicole (Anne Baxter). Will Howard dodge the Germans and escape?

Woolley eases into this crusty old-timer with consummate ease – after all it’s essentially a twist on his star-making turn in The Man Who Came to Dinner, and Howard might as well be the twin of Since You Went Away’s Colonel Smollett. But he can sell the heck out of characters like this, duly picking up an Oscar nomination. Introduced reluctantly helping Shelia with her homework – a running gag is Howard’s complete lack of knowledge of American geography, insisting Rochester is a state – he’s prickly around the kids, but not too prickly. Leaving us in no doubt that his gruff distance will soon melt on the road. Which of course it does, despite the occasional abrupt grumbling.

Not least since Woolley brings out a tender concern at how these kids are being exposed to the horrors of war. Little flashes of sadness as they see a dead body for the first time, and the sad understanding that crosses his face when he inspects the shell-shocked Pierre. Howard has a hard-won understanding of war, Woolley stiff of lip as he confesses the death of his RAF pilot son, mixed with pride that it took ‘three of them’ to take him down. It’s clear shepherding these children becomes, for him, the war service he was considered too old to do. We already know he’s got a determined never-say-die spirit, imperiously telling a surrender-monkey who joins him to listen to Churchill (a truly terrible voiceover impersonation) that he best never speak to him again.

Woolley is front-and-centre of nearly everything good in The Pied Piper, an otherwise fairly straight-forward mix of road movie, family adventure and war movie. It’s got a smoothly adapted script by Nunnally Johnson and competent, if uninspiring, direction by Irving Pichel. I found the film’s recurrent use of various predictable refrains – most irritatingly ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ – incredibly grating after a while. Most of The Pied Piper is all too obviously shot on studio sets, spiced up with the odd piece of stock footage. (Not surprisingly, considering it was shot while the world was tearing itself apart). Following in the spirit of its woeful Churchill radio impersonator, there are some desperately wobbly plane models super-imposed over a bombing raid on an evacuation convoy. It’s a swift and pacey film – but also a rather slight one.

Because The Pied Piper is only willing to go so far in showing the horrors of war. It will let its precocious children see a dead body but not us. The sense of peril, about what might happen to Howard if caught, isn’t quite there. Perhaps because it’s somehow implausible that anyone caught on the French-Swiss border in 1940 would think their best option was crossing occupied France rather than shooting across the border to Switzerland (those League of Nation parents must have been kicking themselves). The danger of Nazi pursuit only kicks in half-way through the film – until then, Howard doesn’t even bother to conceal his nationality. It’s not helped by The Pied Piper (like most 40s war films) totally failing to wrap its head around what a concentration camp is.

There is an episodic feeling to the film’s half, before most of the second half settles into a single location, with our heroes under the thumb of Otto Preminger dutifully trotting out one of his occasional angry Nazis. Along the way they pick up Anne Baxter, wrapping her tongue around an “ooo la la” accent that sticks out even more when several other members of the cast (including Marcel Dalio as a defiant fisherman) are actual refugee expats. But then part of the film’s family appeal is there isn’t too much peril.

The final act does introduce some – the introduction of a firing squad threat feels suddenly quite extreme – but also resolves all problems with the sort of contrivance that feels a bit like the story has been painted into a corner and without any other way to get out of it. There is a romantic innocence to it in some ways, the hope that any character could have a secret, sentimental weakness that might make them do a good thing. And the capture of our heroes does allow Woolley to showcase another weapon in his arsenal, his ability for proud, stiff-backed defiance in the face of evil.

The Pied Piper is sweet, charming, flies by quickly and offers a perfect, tailor-made star turn. The kids, thankfully, manage to not be too grating (in fact you even kind of wish Roddy McDowell and Peggy Ann Garner were given more to do). It’s a surprise to find a story so slight as this breathing in the vaulted air of the Oscar Best Picture short list, but it’s hard to argue against the relief of watching everyday heroism in the midst of war.

Two superb leading performances hold together a romantic confection of a film

Director: Mervyn Le Roy

Cast: Ronald Colman (Charles Rainier/”Smithy”), Greer Garson (Paula Ridgeway/ “Margaret Hanson”), Philip Dorn (Dr. Jonathan Benet), Susan Peters (Kitty Chilcet), Henry Travers (Dr. Sims), Reginald Owen (Biffer), Bramwell Fletcher (Harrison), Rhys Williams (Sam), Una O’Connor (Tobacco Shopkeeper), Aubrey Mather (Sheldon), Margaret Wycherly (Mrs. Deventer), Arthur Margetson (Chetwynd Rainier), Melville Cooper (George Rainier), Alan Napier (Julian Rainier), Jill Esmond (Lydia Rainier)

Random Harvest is one of the most fondly remembered romances of Golden Age Hollywood – if you want yearning dedication bought to life, this is the film for you. It might also be one of the barmiest films ever made, stuffed with so many outlandish plot developments, hilarious logic gaps and hand-waved contrivances it would put a Netflix soap to shame. You can see why Syndey Pollack and Anthony Minghella eventually abandoned remakes: you can’t imagine a modern audience going with Random Harvest’s essential loopiness and not laughing somewhere along the line. Which is not to say it isn’t beautifully made and winningly bought to life at times.

It’s the final days of World War One, and amnesic soldier “John Smith” (Ronald Colman) can’t remember anything about his life. On the final day of the war, he sneaks out of the asylum and runs into music hall performer Paula (Greer Garson). She takes a shine to “Smithy” and decides to save him. They run away to the country, fall in love, get married, have a baby, he starts to write, goes to Liverpool to start a journalism career… and gets hit by a cab. The collision restores his original memory – but also causes him to forget everything about Paula and his life as Smithy. Instead, he restarts his original life as industrial heir Charles Rainier, presumed dead by his family. While he lives this life for years, Paula takes a job as his secretary “Margaret”. Will he remember who she is?

It says a lot that that summary only scratches the surface of a plot that throws in the kitchen sink in attempting to ring as many tear-soaked tissues out of you as possible. Smithy and Paula carry out their little memory dance over the course of over twenty years. It’s the sort of a film where millionaire Charles only thinks about investigating what might have happened to him in Liverpool when nudged to do so after over a decade. Where the couple enter a ‘marriage of convenience’ as the memory-free Charles and fake Margaret. Where Charles’ owns a major factory in the town where our lovers first met, but neither (a) stepped foot there in 15 years (since the moment he does his memory starts to return) and (b) the heir to the town’s major employer wasn’t recognised by anyone while living in an asylum five minutes walk down the road.

Take it on the merits of logic and conventional narrative and Random Harvest crashes and burns. But this isn’t a film about those things. This is a classic weepie that stole the hearts of a war-torn nation in 1942 (it was the biggest hit of the year). Powered by two committed and emotional performances, if it hits you in the right mood its probably irresistible. The sort of long-term adversity that makes Romeo and Juliet’s look like a casual dalliance (so full of tragedy, the death of their son is literally a throwaway moment). It’s framed with a great, sensual beauty by Mervyn LeRoy and powered by an emotionally throbbing score by Herbert Stothart that’s just the right side of sickly.

Ronald Colman’s performance is quiet, measured and vulnerable (especially in his “Smithy” performance). From the start, he has eyes of hesitant, unknown sorrow and stumbles into a relationship with Paula like a new-born discovering life. Threads of his gentleness and excitability work their way into his Charles persona, tinged this time with the natural confidence of wealth. Nevertheless, Colman makes Charles a man who has dealt with unnerving amnesia by actively not thinking about it, carrying on a watch-chain the key to his “Smithy” home as a subconscious reminder. It’s a fine performance – so much so you can overlook he’s twenty-five years too old (the restored Charles forgoes returning to university, something that looks long gone for Colman).

Just as fine is Greer Garson, fully embracing an emotional roller-coaster as Paula. Introduced as a good-natured music hall singer (and Garson sings a high-kicking She’s Ma Daisy number in possibly the shortest skirt the Hays Code ever allowed), Garson’s warm and playful Paula is drawn towards “Smithy” in ways she almost can’t understand. But it’s a wonderfully different side for an actress so often associated with self-sacrificing wives and mothers: Paula is vivacious, forward and seizes the things she wants from life. It’s the second half – the patient, yearning desperation of “Margaret” hoping her husband will remember her – that leans more into her Mrs Miniver wheelhouse, but Garson mixes this with a real lingering, desperate sadness tinged with just enough hope that her husband might just recognise her.

Both performers overwhelmingly lift this otherwise (frankly) slightly contrived film into something rather sweet and endearing. It is, however, a film that would be even more so if it was shorter: the general morass of missed opportunities, misunderstandings and wrong ends of sticks being grasped would be easier to sustain over 90 than 120 minutes. It’s a rare film that covers so much ground over so much time that it’s lead character is declared dead twice.

The second declaration is Paula gaining that status for “Smithy”, dissolving their marriage and removing (you suspect for Hay’s Code reasons) the risk that Charles might accidentally commit bigamy by marrying his young niece. This is a lovely performance of youthful idealism and earnest devotion from Susan Peters (a tragic accident shortly after curtailed her promising career), and if the whole years-long subplot of the possibility of Charles marrying his besotted niece is a narrative cul-de-sac the overall film would be better without, it does at least mean we get the pleasure of Peters, performance captured forever.

But Random Harvest remains a pure romance: where no less than two women spend decades of their life in selfless, one-sided devotion for the lead and he still comes across as the sort of saintly man cheered by his own factory workers for sorting out a strike. The whole confection is a very fragile thing, but LeRoy carries this fully-loaded glass ornament with pure skill and the performances of Colman and Garson set the bar for classic Hollywood tragic romance. Minghella and Pollack were right – our cynical age can’t believe the nonsense – but on its own terms it still works.