![]() Ecstatic, Paula and Smithy decide to stay on in Clevedon for the time being, where they hire rooms at the local hotel. Sam’s all right, and doesn’t intend to press charges against Smithy. They fetch up at a picturesque little town called Clevedon, from where Paula phones the Biffer to check on Sam. She drags Smithy off to the railway station and gets both of them onto a train to Devon. Paula doesn’t wait to see what condition Sam’s in. When she comes back, it’s to find that Smithy’s knocked out Sam, who tried to stop him. So Paula, kind and concerned as always, gathers up her things, tells Smith to wait for her, and goes to pay Biffer. In the very next breath, she sees Smithy isn’t up to going anywhere or doing anything on his own. He takes back the offer of a job, and Paula tells Smithy that he’d better leave before the people from the asylum come for him. She doesn’t tell Smithy she’s the one who’s wheedled Sam into it.īut a chance remark by a policeman at the bar alerts Sam: he realises Smithy has escaped from the asylum. Paula also tells him that her boss, Sam (Rhys Williams) has offered to give Smithy a job with the touring company. When he comes to, he finds himself being looked after by Paula and the Biffer. Smithy, who’s exhausted, passes out during the revelries that succeed the show (everybody’s still celebrating the end of the war). When it’s time for her to go on stage, she puts a chair out for him on the landing so he can watch her dance. ![]() Since she can’t figure out what to do with Smithy, (he’s obviously unable to manage on his own), Paula takes him to her dressing room. She chatters nineteen to the dozen with Smith (she calls him `Smithy’), putting him at his ease, and tells him she’s a music hall dancer. ![]() She takes him off to the Melbridge Arms, where the bartender, the `Biffer’ (Reginald Owen) is her friend. In fact, seeing the state he’s in, Paula takes Smith under her wing. Smith is standing in the shop, undecided, when another visitor-a pretty girl called Paula Ridgeway (Greer Garson)-tells him he’d better get out, because the tobacconist has certainly gone to phone the asylum. The woman realises he’s escaped from the asylum, and she slips away inside. He’s so unsure of himself that when the woman behind the counter asks what he wants, he stammers and gets frightened. In Melbridge, Smith enters a tobacconist’s. In all the excitement, the asylum guards go out to join the celebrating crowds, and leave the wicket gate open. As he’s walking, there’s a hullabaloo (World War I has just been declared over, and everybody’s spilling out onto the streets, rejoicing). Smith is equally, if not more, disappointed: he’d hoped for someone to call his own, even if he can’t recognise them.Ī peasouper of a fog is coming on, but Smith puts on his overcoat and goes for a walk in the asylum’s grounds. One day, an elderly couple whose son went missing at Arras come to see if Smith’s their son, but turn away, disappointed. He’s a diffident, unhappy man, mentally groping in the dark for his own identity, drawing deeper into himself with every passing day. He doesn’t even remember his name, so they call him Smith. He’s lost his memory and has no idea who he is. In the autumn of 1918, in the Melbridge County Asylum, the military wing is home to an officer (Ronald Colman) who was wounded in the trenches at Arras in 1917. And then again yesterday, just because it was so wonderful. That said, here’s one utterly lovely romance I saw a few weeks back. The ride into the sunset, or the fadeout on a heart-and-soul smooch, is of paramount importance. It mustn’t consist of just staring, pop-eyed and with a silly grin, at each other. The romance mustn’t be the type that pops up out of the blue, just by two people looking at each other. I am an unashamed romantic-but I have some stipulations.
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