The Search

Worth seeking for an early Montgomery Clift performance --he's already running laps around his contemporaries, working in a different, more naturalistic register that hasn't yet calcified into tics and mannerisms.

MGM on a rare trip abroad to make a unpolished and wonderful 'feel good' movie in the ruins of Nazi's destruction! Scenery was was unglamorous as it gets, being shot in the bombed landscape of Germany. But it was a fitting for this search, with a mother and son being separated during the war, trying to find each other. And it's all delivered simple and real. But as an example of it being unpolished came the ending. I wouldn't have minded crying a few more tears before "The End" came rushing in.

Another great find! Montgomery Clift could have easily taken standard leading man roles, but he gravitated to more rich character roles. This time he's helping a young Czech boy find his mother in post-WWII Europe. Incredible footage on location.

Ivan Jandl is intermittently affecting as the boy, but Clift offers little else than good looks, and the script is tacky.

A film with a lot of good points but not quite enough for special distinction. I really like its depiction of refugees in the postwar world (some of it was actually shot in wartorn German cities, which lends a sense of realism) and Clift's performance, while somewhat limited by the material he has to work with (he spends most of his screentime just hanging out with a little boy), is quite good.

Mine with less sugar, please.

the kid was pretty annoying, and the story would have made for bad fodder in a different universe, but clift makes this movie a keeper.