A post-Valentine’s Day nod to true love and a classic film scenario where love triumphs over all — including over a loss of identity. Two of the most compelling aspects of Random Harvest (1942) are the total absence of proof of identity leading to a new life, and the possibility that a person could fall in love with someone whom he forgot he had already fallen in love with previously.

There is a third element, though, which makes the plot twist intriguing, and that is the selfless and honorable attitude which the characters played by Greer Garson and Ronald Colman undertake out of their respect for each other. The improbability of such a film being made today makes this movie irresistible to its fans.

Today we live in a society where we are drowning in documentation of our existence and where thieves make a living trying to steal or exploit our personal information. Thus, it is hard to imagine a time when all Ronald Colman had to do was show up as a patient with amnesia for nobody to be able to determine who he really is. He is called John Smith for the sake of convenience by the asylum staff, where he is taken to recover from his horrific experiences as an officer in World War I. He has no ID with him, and that makes him nobody.

Greer Garson, playing against type for once as an earthy music hall performer, takes the confused Colman, who runs away from the asylum, under her wing. They fall in love, marry and begin a life together, which ends abruptly when the bump on the head he gets from being knocked down by a taxi is all it takes for Mr. Colman to remember he is Charles Rainer, a wealthy aristocrat. Not only does Charles Rainer own a wallet with an ID card in it, he owns an estate with servants. He is Somebody, all right.

The plot takes a fascinating turn when Charles Rainer, forgetting all about poor bereft Greer Garson, returns to his ancestral home and resumes his life as an executive at the family firm. Years pass, and he asks his secretary to step into his office. We are amazed to see it is Greer Garson who walks in with her dictation pad. She tracked him down, and wanting to be close to him again, applied for the job. For a former dance hall girl, she’s a pretty good administrative assistant.

She is transformed, no longer the earthy, cheeky music hall lass, but sober, mature and as elegant as…well, as Greer Garson. Colman, for his part, seems at home as lord of the manor, despite his endearing earlier persona of a bewildered and boyish lost person.

Garson does not tell Colman that they were married and once had a child who died. She hopes he will remember his former (or, rather, interim) life on his own. Colman does not remember her, but eventually proposes a marriage of convenience for his political career, which she accepts.

That neither attempts to seduce the other for fear of taking advantage of a valued friendship is perhaps the most improbable feature of this movie, and one that makes its being remade today likely impossible. The current film industry would regard such a situation as naïve and not to be believed by present day audiences, yet it is this very sentimentality that packs a punch.

Ironically, it is this gallantry that most furthers the action and sexual tension of Random Harvest. Their keeping each other at arms’ length, venturing only a chaste kiss on the cheek, is enough to keep the viewer wondering how the story will end. That Colman does remember his love for her in the end seems almost anti-climactic and could have been drawn out at least a few moments more before the end credits. The buildup to that moment has been magnificent. Throughout the film their characters are faced with choices, and it is the interesting choices they make that move the plot along, not the overused “hand of fate” idea which has left him without a past and her without a future.

We might muse which of the elements of this romantic tale would seem most difficult transfer to film today: the agony of their loss, the chaste romance of tenderness and respect, or a world without a paper trail, microchips, or retinal ID scans, where we cannot prove to others, or to even ourselves, who we really are.

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time: Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century, available online at Amazon, CreateSpace, and the author. Website: www.JacquelineTLynch.com.