Themes: Orphans, Crimes Against Humanity, Americans Abroad
Main Cast: Montgomery Clift, Aline MacMahon, Jarmila Novotna, Ewart G. Morrison, Ivan Jandl, Wendell Corey, Mary Patton
Release Year: 1948
Country: CH/US
Run Time: 105 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Although Montgomery Clift shot this film following Red River (1948), it was released six months earlier and the combined success of both immediately made him a star. The film, which was the first to be made in Europe after WWII with an American director and cast, was partially based on Europe's Children, a book of photographs by Therese Bonney documenting the orphans of the war. Shot in the American occupied zone of Germany, much of the film, the product of years of research, was based on actual incidents. It opens at the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration camp at which war orphans, who have been found wandering through bombed-out ruins, are given temporary housing. The severely traumatized children, many of whom are survivors of concentration camps whose parents are dead, find normal communication almost impossible. Karel Malik (Ivan Jandl), a young Czech boy, is one of these. His mother, Hanna (Jarmilia Novotna), lost contact with him when they were in Auschwitz and she now travels from one refugee camp to another in search of her son. While being transported in an ambulance, some of the children, including Karel, break out and scatter. American G.I. Ralph Stevenson Clift finds him wandering aimlessly, takes him back to his base to feed him, and begins to teach him English. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Review
Fred Zinnemann's semi-documentary film on the plight of WWII orphans has moments of banality, but remains a sobering meditation on the incalculable damage wrought by war with a startlingly fresh performance by Montgomery Clift. The filmmakers' decision to divide the film into two sections -- one, a relatively detached documentary complete with voiceover narration about the UN's relief work with the children, and another dealing with Clift's relationship with the boy Ivan Jandl -- gives the film a somewhat uneven quality despite the virtues of both approaches. Although many of the children are death camp survivors, their experiences are touched upon only by inference, with the desperate escape from the ambulance a register of their unabated terror. The naturalness and absence of cliché in Clift's performance, which lends an unforced credibility to his efforts to care for the boy, was a striking departure at the time and would become highly influential with other actors. Clint Eastwood, strangely enough, has cited this as the performance that had the greatest impact on his own career. Indeed, Clift's presence is so strong that compared with the work of the opera star Jarmilia Novotna, who plays the boy's mother, it seems strange that the boy should finally be reunited with her. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Will Rogers, Jr. - Tom Fisher; Leopold Borkowski - Joel Makowsky; Claude Gambler - Raoul Dubois
Credit
Fred Zinnemann - Director, Hermann Haller - Editor, Robert Blum - Composer (Music Score), Emil Berna - Cinematographer, Lazar Wechsler - Producer, Paul Jarrico - Screenwriter, Richard Schweizer - Screenwriter, David Wechsler - Screenwriter
One oft cited feature of this film is that many of the scenes were shot amidst the actual ruins of post-war German cities, namely Ingolstadt, Nuremberg, and Würzburg.[1]
The next morning, the children are interviewed by UNNRA officials to try to identify them and reunite them if possible with their families. One boy responds to all questions with, "Ich weiß nicht" ("I don't know"). The boy is Karel (Ivan Jandl). He grew up in a well-to-do Czech family. The Nazis had deported his sister and doctor father, while the boy and mother were sent to a Nazi concentration camp. They eventually became separated. After the war, Karel survived by scavenging for food with other homeless children.
The next day, the children are split up into groups and loaded into trucks and ambulances to be transferred to other camps. The children in Karel's group are at first terrified because the Nazis often used ambulances to gas victims, but are eventually coaxed into the vehicle. During the trip, the smell of exhaust fumes causes the children to fear they are being gassed. They panic; Karel's friend Raoul manages to open the back door of the ambulance, and the children scatter in all directions. Karel and Raoul are chased by two of the UNRRA men. The boys try to swim across a river. Raoul drowns, but Karel survives by hiding in the reeds near the shoreline.
Later, Karel encounters an American army engineer, Steve (Montgomery Clift), who takes care of him. He starts teaching the boy English. Because Karel cannot speak at first, Steve names him Jim.
Once Jim feels more secure, he starts to remember his mother and the last time he saw her, near a fence in the concentration camp. He runs away one evening thinking the fence is nearby. Jim finds a fence at a factory, but cannot find his mother among the workers going home.
Steve eventually finds Jim and tells him that his mother is dead (Steve has reason to believe she had been gassed) so he will stop searching for her. He also informs Jim that he is going to try to adopt him and take him to America to start a new life there.
As it turns out, Karel's mother, Mrs. Malik (Jarmila Novotna) is not dead. In a parallel story, she has been searching for her son. She begins working for Mrs. Murray at the same UNRRA camp where her son had been processed. After a while though, she resigns to resume her forlorn search for Karel.
That same day, Steve leaves the boy at the UNRRA camp because he has a job waiting for him in America. He hopes to send for the boy once the paperwork is completed. Mrs. Murray remembers the boy from when he was there before; she begins to suspect that Jim is Mrs. Malik's son. She hurries to the train station to bring Mrs. Malik back, but is too late. The train has already left. Then, she sees Mrs. Malik on the train platform; she had changed her mind and decided to stay. Mrs. Murray arranges for her to greet the newest group of children.
The film ends with Jim joining the group. Mrs. Malik begins to organize the children and bids them to follow her. Jim walks past without recognizing her. Mrs. Malik almost makes the same mistake, but then turns and calls, "Karel!" and the boy and his mother are reunited.
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised it highly, calling it, "an absorbing and gratifying emotional drama of the highest sort".[2] Crowther thought that Clift got "precisely the right combination of intensity and casualness into the role".[2]Clint Eastwood singled out Clift's performance as the one that had the greatest influence on his own acting career.[3]
Menschen am Sonntag •Redes •Friend Indeed •They Live Again •Tracking the Sleeping Death •That Mothers Might Live •The Story of Doctor Carver •Weather Wizards •While America Sleeps •Help Wanted •One Against the World •The Ash Can Fleet •Forgotten Victory
1940s
Stuffie •The Great Meddler •The Old South •A Way in the Wilderness •Forbidden Passage •Your Last Act •The Greenie •The Lady or the Tiger? •Kid Glove Killer •Eyes in the Night •The Seventh Cross •Little Mister Jim •My Brother Talks to Horses •The Search •Act of Violence
