THE SEARCH takes us on location to the blasted ruins of postwar Germany and gives one small, wrenching example of the sorrow saga millions faced across Europe in the wake of the crushing of Hitler’s Third Reich. A nine-year-old boy, nameless with only a concentration camp tattoo on his arm and a case number from relief workers, is semi-adopted by a G.I., ‘Pvt. Ralph Stevenson’ (Montgomery Clift, 27, debut) while his mother (Czech opera singer Jarmila Novotna, 39) desperately goes from city to city trying to find the boy. He’s revealed to be a Czech named ‘Karel Malik’, played by 10-year-old Ivan Jandl, also from Czechoslovakia.
Superbly directed by Fred Zinnemann, this critically acclaimed 1948 drama draws residual notice for introducing compelling newcomer Clift (new to film, he’d been on stage since he was 13) and his unorthodox acting style, kind of enhanced naturalism, equal parts calm and nervous, opening the way for Brando, Dean and a flood of new ‘sensitive rebels’. He’s good here, but the movie belongs to young, perfectly picked Jandl and the atmosphere-reality of the settings, the shattered cityscapes of Munich, Ingolstadt, Nuremberg and Würzburg. Gripping without being forced, innately sympathetic without falling into easy sentiment, it’s a humanistic slice of individual loss and flickering hope swept up in plight on a titanic scale. Robert Blum’s moving symphonic score adds to the emotional core.
The fine work won an Oscar for Best Story (Richard Schweizer, David Wechsler) and a special Juvenile Academy Award was given for Jandl. Clift was nominated for Best Actor (his first), Zinnemann for Direction (his first), Schweizer & Wechsler for their Screenplay (which Clift and Paul Jarrico tinkered with, uncredited). It only earned enough to place 147th on the year’s box office stats, but since it cost just $250,000 to shoot, the $1,800,000 gross made for a healthy return. A star was born, a story told. *
“You have no idea how useful it’s going to be for you to know English. You can go where ever you like. Everybody knows what ‘OK’ means. You can use English all over the world. Not, not just America: Canada, Africa, Australia, India. Even in England, they understand English…well, sort of.”
104 minutes, with Wendell Corey and Aline MacMahon. Also making a strong impression is another child who name we can’t find in cast lists, as the frightened lad who used Malik’s name to disguise his identity.
This kid was spot on–but who was he?
* The Communist government installed in Czechoslovakia would not let Jandl go to the States for his award. It was delivered to him in Prague. The Search was remade in 2014, with the plot moved to the Second Chechen War.
Though audiences were small for this, Clift’s other 1948 entrée was Red River, the year’s #1 attraction. It was actually filmed before, in ’46, but release was delayed and The Search beat it to the draw. Five years later, Zinnemann enlisted him for an edgier sort of soldier, another vexed private, in From Here To Eternity.
Movies ala Mark 