THE SEARCH

This is a truly amazing movie. It's the first movie by Montgomery Clift to be released to theaters and it garnered him an Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor. The young Czech boy, Ivan Jandl, was only 11 years old when the movie was released. He received the 1949 Academy Award for a Juvenile Performance. The story centers around this boy as being a nearly mute survivor of Auschwitz. He can not be identified. Fearing for their safety, he and another boy escape from the people who are trying to identify him. He is found by a soldier (Clift) who, believing that his mother is dead, tries to learn who he is and ends up wanting to adopt him and take him back to the United States. You will cry frequently watching this movie. It's worth it.

This movie has always been a favorite of mine. I had no idea it was Montgomery Clift's first movie. It takes place at the end of WWII, and Germany is devastated. Children are homeless and being round up by the military authorities so they may be sent to their native countries and relocated to their families (for those lucky enough to find their families). 2 boys escape, and one meets an untimely fate. The other escapes recapture ( he makes a run for it because he thinks they're going to be gassed by carbon monoxide the same way the Nazis did by putting people in the back of trucks where they were suffocated). For days or weeks he lives in the rubble / ruins of the city until he meets a soldier (Clift) eating a sandwich on the side of the road. The boy approaches Clift, who gives the boy his sandwich. The kid eats ravenously, and says nothing (the entire time up to now. He's still in shock from having been in Auschwitz).Clift says goodbye, but before he drives off something inside tells him he should take the boy with him and help him. The boy tries to escape, but Clift earns his trust. With the help of a friend, Clift gets the boy to open up and he speaks (first in his native language, then he learns English). The bond between the two grows and Clift tries to learn more about him so he may reunite him with his family.Meanwhile, the boy's mother searches from camp to camp in hopes of finding her son (her husband and daughter were killed in the camps, as we learn early on in the movie). She is told her son is dead, but has a feeling he is not, and continues her 'search.' However, at a camp for children, she is accepted as a teacher for the children and she is compelled to remain here and help the children. As it turns out, fate intervenes and a most wonderful ending to the story takes place.Filmed on location, the scenes are filmed among the rubble and destruction that the Nazis brought on Germany for having started the way. This movie tells the audience how war devastates everyone, in this case the focus is on the children. They are lonely, separated from family and friends, and starving beyond belief. Hollywood could not make such an original film today. It would be flooded with special effects. This fact alone is part of the film that makes it so special. It makes you realize how we must learn to live together so that we ourselves are not separated from those who mean most to us.This film earned 2 Oscars, one going to the boy, played by Ivan Jandl, who received special permission from the Soviet Union to travel to America and receive the Oscar. I highly recommend this film. If you like classics, you'll love this one. I hadn't seen it in years, and am glad to now have it in my collection.

This film breaks my hear every time I see it and seeing these children were victims of war.Look at this and you will understand what Ukraine is going through. There is no violence just the story of a mother looking for her son, and she finally finds him. Everyone is wonderful but I became and Aline MacMahon trouper - she was a peach!

Clift was nominated for Best Actor for his portrayal in this film and rightly so!!! The young man received a Juvenile Oscar for this film and rightly so. These are two reasons to watch this film. The subject matter will cause tears; it did for me at least as the boy searches for his mother with Clift's help. Think of all the children, during that time frame, doing the exact same thing as seen on the screen or already had done so, but coming up empty... One hopes for the child TO find his mother, naturally, and yet that connection between Clift and the child, as father and son, one hopes to happen. My wish is that this film be seen.

Loved it. Some of the beginning scenes were too long but once Clift comes on screen it's like the film flies by. The kid is incredibly cute and talented and the duo are just unbelievable to watch together. If felt as if Clift had a real love and nuturing for this kid totally believable, the two have great chemistry together. How he dotes on him at the dinner scene and the heartbreaking talk at the river. Such a beautiful and hearfelt scene gets me every time. I gave it 4 stars only because the ending was rushed and unfilling in my opinion. I know the story is ultimately about the boy and his mother but to not have a conclusion with Steve ruined it for me. Clift changed a lot of the dialog in this film and probably saved it so says Fred Zinnemann the director, but for whatever the reasons Clift said by the end of the film the producers and writers were throwing daggers at him and he basically had to run out of there. Underappreciating talent but Zinnemann always had Clifts back and went on to gladly direct him in From Here to Eternity.

Fred Zimmermann brought his actors and cameras smack into a Germany in rubble. The physical devastation was immense, but this 1947 film concentrates on the devastation done to families and to children, especially. It is a tear-jerker and it earns those tears. While technically this was Montgomery Clift's second film (his first was Howard Hawk's Red River), it was released first and critics and audiences were stunned. Where did Zimmermann find this soldier who could act? Well Clift was not a soldier but a trained actor who has been working on Broadway all through his teens. His radical naturalism suits the film and helps create its powerful impact. It holds up extremely well, and one might find it interesting to note that Clift and Zimmermann collaborated again a few years later in the powerful and iconic From Here to Eternity.

I must have been around five years old when I first watched this film on TV, and I cried and cried and cried. Even now, aged 46, tears start to well up inside at the soppy but truthful happy ending.It's postwar Nuremberg, where Montgomery Clift (with an impossible waistline) plays a US army engineer who befriends a young lad amidst the rubble of the blitzed city. He later wants to adopt him and take him back to the States when his tour of duty ends.Meanwhile, a Czech mother is walking the length and breadth of Germany searching for her son, from whom she was separated in the concentration camps. A mother looking for her lost son is a common theme in movies, of course; the most recent example that I can think of is the superb `The Italian', set in a Russian orphanage.The film, made in 1948, has a strong documentary feel in places, which adds to the backdrop of the story, and one wonders whether the children in the film really were from the camps. Ivan Jandl, who played the little boy, was awarded a special Oscar for his role, but with the dropping of the Iron Curtain, his acting career petered out in communist Czechoslovakia.Alas, there are no extras on my DVD.

A moving story of a young refugee boy's struggle to find his Mother in post-war Germany. An amazing film for it's time and well worth it's place in any discerning movie buff's collection.Although Clift does not appear until well into the film, the little boy will grab your heart from the start.The film was made on location amongst the desolation and ravages of a country torn asunder by war and the images create a disturbing backdrop in which the story is played out

The Search is a achingly beautiful 1948 black and white film directed by Fred Zimmerman and starring Montgomery Clift.The story involves a young boy who is a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp who is searching for his mother. The young boy is played authentically by Ivan Jandl who received a juvenile Academy Award for his heatshattering performance. Montgomery Clift is the soldier who helps him. It is an engrossing film that no one will ever forget.🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟❤️❤️❤️

This arrived on time with no outward damage but the disc itself freezes multiple times. You have to wait til the image unfreezes and resumes playing. I counted 10 times at least when this happened. It also skipped and a very important part of the movie you just don’t get to see! I popped other dvds in to check it wasn’t the fault of my DVD player. All other discs worked fine. Put this back in, and it still froze and skipped. Would not recommend.

I hadn't seen this film since 1948. The package was delivered on time, the disc is in perfect shape, and the film was excellent. The setting of Berlin just after World War II is devastating to see, the film was shot there. The acting is superb, especially the child actor. I recommend this film highly and the seller also. It was extraordinary to see this film as it looked in 1946 and then to see films of modern Berlin today.