Texto íntegro y original de la crítica que escribió Bosley Crowther del New York Times el 26 de marzo de 1948:
(English Text)
Out of the stuff of one of the saddest and most arresting human dramas of our times—that is the fate of the children of Europe whose homes were wrecked and whose lives were damaged by the war—Lazar Wechsler, a Swiss film producer, has made a picture which may prudently be said to be as fine, as moving, and as challenging as any the contemporary screen provides. The Search is its American title, and it opened at the Victoria last night. Our earnest wish is that it might be seen by every adult in the United States.
For 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. Within the framework of a basic human story—the tireless search of a displaced Czech mother for her little boy and the parallel efforts of others to help the nameless youngster and give him security after the war—it clearly lays out for us a problem facing western civilization today: what's to be done with this vast backwash of shattered children who will be grown-ups tomorrow?
Happily, the resolution of one unit of this problem is here found in the most desirable of all possible arrangements—the reunion of the mother and her little boy. And, indeed, it is not at all unlikely that, if this valid gratification were not used, the extension of the pathos that fills this picture would be well nigh unbearable. For Mr. Wechsler and his associates made their story triumph and spiritual justice is achieved.
In the visualization of this story, Mr. Wechsler's team, which included Richard Schweizer as scriptwriter, Fred Zinnemann as director, and writer Paul Jarrico, have worked for a naturalistic countenance which is brilliantly successful, in the main. Their film has the hard-focus contours of solid realities. Their cameras have looked at actual ruins, at the dry-eyed faces of children full of grief. And their neat presentation of the drama through a cast which speaks English when it should and other languages when they are in order (as in Mr. Wechsler's previous film, The Last Chance) makes not only for easy comprehension but for an illusion of absolute naturalness.
Unquestionably the remarkable performance of a little Czech lad named Ivan Jandl as the principal figure in the drama is vital to the spirit of the whole. For this youngster, who was found by Mr. Zinnemann in a school group in Prague, has such tragic expression in his slight frame, such poetry in his eyes and face, and such melting appeal in his thin voice that he is the ultimate embodiment of the sorrow-inflicted child.
As the American officer who "adopts" him, the young American actor, Montgomery Clift, gets precisely the right combination of intensity and casualness into the role, and Aline MacMahon is crisply professional yet compassionate as an UNRRA worker. Wendell Corey, another American, is nice as a Military Government man who cautions against sentimentality and Jarmila Novotna, the opera singer, fills the role of the Czech mother with a weary sort of hopefulness that must be characteristic of Europeans today. Among the many lesser children in the picture, some of them actual war orphans, little Leopold Borkowski is outstanding as a Jewish lad who seeks sanctuary in the Catholic choir.
In fact, it is in such searching incidents as the one of the boy in the choir and the gauzy impulse of the little hero to seek his mother on the other side of a fence that the brilliant illumination of the tortured minds of Europe's children comes through. Here is exposed in shattering detail the terrible irony of religious and political bounds. And here, for the hearts of parents throughout the world, is a lesson of great truth.
The Search, in our estimation, is a major revelation in our times.
Ver web.
(English Text)
Out of the stuff of one of the saddest and most arresting human dramas of our times—that is the fate of the children of Europe whose homes were wrecked and whose lives were damaged by the war—Lazar Wechsler, a Swiss film producer, has made a picture which may prudently be said to be as fine, as moving, and as challenging as any the contemporary screen provides. The Search is its American title, and it opened at the Victoria last night. Our earnest wish is that it might be seen by every adult in the United States.
For 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. Within the framework of a basic human story—the tireless search of a displaced Czech mother for her little boy and the parallel efforts of others to help the nameless youngster and give him security after the war—it clearly lays out for us a problem facing western civilization today: what's to be done with this vast backwash of shattered children who will be grown-ups tomorrow?
Happily, the resolution of one unit of this problem is here found in the most desirable of all possible arrangements—the reunion of the mother and her little boy. And, indeed, it is not at all unlikely that, if this valid gratification were not used, the extension of the pathos that fills this picture would be well nigh unbearable. For Mr. Wechsler and his associates made their story triumph and spiritual justice is achieved.
In the visualization of this story, Mr. Wechsler's team, which included Richard Schweizer as scriptwriter, Fred Zinnemann as director, and writer Paul Jarrico, have worked for a naturalistic countenance which is brilliantly successful, in the main. Their film has the hard-focus contours of solid realities. Their cameras have looked at actual ruins, at the dry-eyed faces of children full of grief. And their neat presentation of the drama through a cast which speaks English when it should and other languages when they are in order (as in Mr. Wechsler's previous film, The Last Chance) makes not only for easy comprehension but for an illusion of absolute naturalness.
Unquestionably the remarkable performance of a little Czech lad named Ivan Jandl as the principal figure in the drama is vital to the spirit of the whole. For this youngster, who was found by Mr. Zinnemann in a school group in Prague, has such tragic expression in his slight frame, such poetry in his eyes and face, and such melting appeal in his thin voice that he is the ultimate embodiment of the sorrow-inflicted child.
As the American officer who "adopts" him, the young American actor, Montgomery Clift, gets precisely the right combination of intensity and casualness into the role, and Aline MacMahon is crisply professional yet compassionate as an UNRRA worker. Wendell Corey, another American, is nice as a Military Government man who cautions against sentimentality and Jarmila Novotna, the opera singer, fills the role of the Czech mother with a weary sort of hopefulness that must be characteristic of Europeans today. Among the many lesser children in the picture, some of them actual war orphans, little Leopold Borkowski is outstanding as a Jewish lad who seeks sanctuary in the Catholic choir.
In fact, it is in such searching incidents as the one of the boy in the choir and the gauzy impulse of the little hero to seek his mother on the other side of a fence that the brilliant illumination of the tortured minds of Europe's children comes through. Here is exposed in shattering detail the terrible irony of religious and political bounds. And here, for the hearts of parents throughout the world, is a lesson of great truth.
The Search, in our estimation, is a major revelation in our times.
Ver web.
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