NR | 1 h 44 min | Drama | 1948
This film opens with a text acknowledging that much of the filming was in the United States-occupied post-World War II Germany with permission of the U.S. Army and cooperation of the International Refugee Organization (IRO). Sure enough, Polish-born producer Lazar Wechsler and Austrian-born director Fred Zinnemann draw on their European-Jewish heritage to bring a reverential authenticity to the entire production.
In the film, in war-stricken Czechoslovakia, fascist forces target free-thinking individuals. They detain Mrs. Hanna Malik (Jarmila Novotna) and her little son Karel Malik (Ivan Jandl) in a concentration camp and kill (offscreen) her husband and daughter. The chaos of camp life soon tears mother from son. Later, in a postwar dust-and-debris Germany, Karel ends up with thousands of children isolated from their parents or orphaned.
Missing Children
Unknown to them, distraught Hannah wanders occupied Germany looking for Karel, pressuring the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) Central Tracing Bureau for the slightest lead on her missing son. Although devastated with news that Karel had drowned while escaping from a refugee transit camp, Hanna isn’t about to give up her search.
As practiced as he appears on screen, this was Clift’s debut year in film. Jandl couldn’t speak English, so, he memorized and mouthed his dialogue. But for Clift’s patient presence on set, Jandl couldn’t have emoted as convincingly as he did. Their onscreen chemistry is magical; you can feel Jandl’s dependence on, and gratitude toward, Clift. Unsurprisingly, Jandl won a special Academy Juvenile Award, Clift won a Best Actor nomination, and Zinnemann a Best Director nomination.
Humanity Hiding in Plain Sight
Zinnemann suggests that humanity often hides in plain sight. Karel and the other children are wary of entering ambulances bound for refugee camps. Are the red crosses emblazoned on vehicles just a Nazi ruse? After all, those crosses look like the deceptive ones that lured their families to gas chambers, except, these men, though uniformed, are sensitive and respectful.
Hanna’s a woman and, as mother, the closest relative Karel can possibly have. Steve’s a man and no relative; he is, in fact, a complete stranger. Yet Karel acknowledges Steve’s fatherly affection as much as he admits his longing for his mother’s love.
No matter how tough Steve seems, including insisting on English lessons ahead of the planned trip to America, he has Karel’s interests at heart. In one scene, Karel has overturned Fisher’s goldfish bowl while trying to flee. The fish flip and flop on spilt water, as if going somewhere but unable to go anywhere. Fisher must scoop them into a bucket to keep them alive. Likewise, Steve chases Karel around the room to bodily keep him back where he can stay alive and be nurtured back to normalcy.
Fascists typically destroy history and traditions such as the family. So, as ambulances ferry the children through Germany, the camera takes us through entire blocks of ruin that were probably once homes, hospitals, shops, churches, museums, schools, and art conservatories. When the children flee that convoy afraid that death camps lie ahead, they unwittingly hide in mountains of rubble: broken stairways going nowhere, roofs blown apart begging for the sky to stand in as a canopy, doors opening into nothing, or windows shutting out nothing.
There’s a poignancy to that shot. As the children seek refuge in what are now mere fragments of their history, it seems that by their very presence they might preserve what’s left of it and somehow build it back. Seemingly defenseless, in their tender defiance, those children look invincible.
