Best movie questions of 1942

Please vote as you browse around to help the best rise to the top.

Bambi picture

Question: Why wouldn't Bambi's mother tell him that the Great Prince of the Forest is also his father?

Answer: Probably so he would not think he is superior to the other fawns and try to lord over them. She would have told him about his father when he was older. This is also a literary plot device by setting up a dramatic reveal at a crucial time (right after Bambi's mother is killed) that Bambi learns his father is the Great Prince. This has a greater emotional punch.

raywest

More Bambi questions

Answer: She was married then, and discovered that Lazlo was still alive.

scwilliam

More Casablanca questions
Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon picture

Question: During this period (World War II), could anyone, without having to give any personal information, really request a person's address just by making a phone call, as Holmes does in this film?

Big Game

Answer: It's possible. Even during WWII, people were less savvy about protecting personal information, particularly as asking for a home address seems innocuous enough as opposed to giving out government or military info. Of course, this is a movie, so some liberties are taken to serve the plot.

raywest

More Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon questions
Random Harvest picture

Question: I have several questions. In Random Harvest Ronald Colman is a First World War veteran. A war accident left him with amnesia and no memory of his previous life. He meets Greer Garson, they fall in love and marry. Several years later Ronald Colman crosses the road without looking, is hit by a car and knocked unconscious. Regaining consciousness he recalls that he is Charles Rainier, a wealthy landowner and industrialist, but he now has no memory of his life when he was an amnesiac and married to Greer Garson. Is such "double amnesia" possible? Ronald Colman meets Greer Garson again and employs her as his secretary, so he sees her and converses with her daily for several years, but his amnesia is such that he never recognises her as his wife. She could tell him about his missing years and their marriage, but she must never do this because the shock would be too great for him. Does this make any sense? Surely, if any woman met her long-lost husband, who said "I have amnesia and I can't remember who I am", wouldn't she instinctively reply "You're my husband"?

Rob Halliday

Answer: Amnesia the way it is often portrayed in movies, including this one, is impossible. People who do suffer from it, usually from some traumatic event, regain their memory relatively quickly. Double amnesia as portrayed in this movie could never, ever happen. This movie is total fiction, though people did, and still do, believe amnesia happens this way.

raywest

Answer: I have seen other films and read stories about people with amnesia. In 1965 and 1966 there was a "western" television series "A Man Called Shenandoah", wholly based on this premise. In the aftermath of the American Civil War Robert Horton is discovered unconscious on the prairie. When he revives he has no memory of who he is. He roams the west, unsuccessfully trying to discover his identity. I think he had some atrocious bad luck. Just as somebody was about to tell him who he really was they would get run over by a train, or shot in the back. The television company dropped the series after 34 episodes, so we never did find out who he really was.

Rob Halliday

More Random Harvest questions

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.