The Search (1948)

The Search (Fred Zinnemann, 1948) "Ich weiss nicht" It's the only thing that comes out of the mouth of a small Czech boy (Ivan Jandl), a refugee from a concentration camp, now in post-war Germany. He is mostly silent and that makes it hard for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration to identify him and try to reunite him with family. His only mark of identification is an arm tattoo from Auschwitz—A24328. All the UNRRA staff can do is to keep him fed, clean, and safe...until something, or someone, turns up. Anything else would make looking for a needle in a haystack look easy. But, they keep trying. If no one turns up, the kids move to another location...maybe there, a miracle will happen.

But, they can't stop the kid's memories. When he gets put on a transport to go to another UNRRA site, the memories of the trip to Auschwitz kick in. Uniforms. Ambulances. Like the Nazis used. He and another kid bolt and when they get to the river, the other kid falls in and drowns. His body is found, as well as the cap of the Czech kid, so the assumption is both boys drowned.

But, the boy, Karel, is alive. And he makes his way through the ruined city scratching out an existence among the rubble and refuse.

Unbeknownst to him, his mother, Hanna Malik (Jarmila Novotna) has also survived the camps and is searching for him throughout the UNRRA facilities. And the chances of finding her boy are as unlikely as him finding her. At one Catholic orphanage, she finds that there's a young boy named Karel Malik...but the boy is not hers—he merely responded to the name when no one else did. She goes to find another facility and another chance at hope, finally arriving at the center where Karel was first staying, only to learn that he drowned during his escape. Hanna refuses to give up hope, even in the face of being presented Karel's cap found in the river.

Meanwhile, Karel has found something—a jeep. One being used by Army engineer Ralph Stevenson (Montgomery Clift). Ralph has seen these kids before, but this kid speaks no English, doesn't say anything, and "Steve" determines that he'll try and find out who he is and where he came from. Giving the kid the name "Jim," he sets him up in the billet he shares with Jerry Fisher (Wendell Corey), who's about to be sent back stateside and starts a rudimentary course on English. When Fisher's wife and kid visit, it jogs Karel/"Jim"'s memory that the last time he saw his mother was when they were segregated at Auschwitz, with one last kiss through the chain-link fence separating them. "Steve" concludes that the kid's mother is dead. But, he'll keep looking...and adopt the kid to bring him back to the States if all else fails.

That the two will be re-united is slim, but Zinnemann's film keeps teasing with close calls and missed chances that raise the stakes and increase the tension. It would be maddeningly Hollywood if it wasn't staged in the obvious hell-scape of post-war Germany and shot almost like a documentary (the crew consisted of merely ten Swiss technicians)...and if the performances by all concerned weren't so naturalistic that they feel lived in, rather than performed. It's Clift's first released movie—he'd already filmed Red River—and he's so loose and relaxed—always chewing gum—that you might confuse him for a regular G.I. that the camera just happened to find. Aline MacMahon as the most visible member of the UNRRA seems like a government drone, spouting platitudes, but keeping just enough reserve to keep the hopelessness at bay. Novotna and Jandl are both Czech—and Jandl really couldn't speak English when the movie's filming started, so Clift was teaching him for real—so, the film feels like a cross between a documentary and an Army Training Film. 

To think this was the film Zinnemann made after My Brother Talks to Horses! Those two films couldn't be more different in tone and verisimilitude, the first laden with studio artifice and ladled on saccharine and the second, lean and spare and natural, almost neorealist. The Search serves as the turning point of the director's career, creating something fast, cheap, and compelling, while not under the watchful eye of home studio M-G-M. It's one of those special movies that seems to subvert all expectations and turns into a classic despite all odds, and another one of those post-War films about trying to pick up the pieces and putting something back together...after the world has been torn asunder.