The Search

This superior movie made the world aware of the plight of these children and money poured in to the UNRRA to help their plight.

The Search is not only an absorbing and gratifying emotional drama of the highest sort, being a vivid and convincing representation of how one of the "lost children" of Europe is found, but it gives a graphic, overwhelming comprehension of the frightful cruelty to innocent children that has been done abroad.

Zinnemann is honest in his depiction of the raw, unfiltered emotions of displaced children, making The Search one of the most searing examinations of war’s impact ever put on screen.

The first movie Montgomery Clift made (but second released) was Howard Hawks' all-time Western Red River. In the interim, director Fred Zinnemann stole some thunder by showcasing the actor in this semi-documentary about European children left homeless and without parents after World War II, filmed on location in the then-U.S. Occupied Zone of Germany. [23 Oct 2009, p.3D]

Although there's a slight suspicion that (as in Rossellini's work from this period) the plight of children is being used as a sort of emotional shorthand, the integrity and moving effect of this piece is never really in doubt.

This simple film was made in the American zone of Germany, principally in and around the rubbled remains of Nuremberg. Only four of its actors are professionals, the others having been recruited on the spot.

The emotion got to many viewers, even though the manipulated suspense and the sentimental softening prevent the film from doing anything like justice to its subject.