Displaced Persons and Documentary Illusions: Fred Zinnemann’s the Search

Abstract

Fred Zinnemann’s The Search (1948) comprises intersecting plots and displaced persons presented within the illusion of documentary film. Its narrative develops on three levels: the documentary with a voice-over, the historic providing both contemporary context and flashbacks, and the individual showing us a boy and mother’s search for each other while he finds temporary refuge with an American soldier. The film dramatizes post-war European recovery; Zinnemann’s approach combines documentary and melodramatic techniques. The Search becomes a portrait of post-war Europe and an emotionally wrenching tale of family loss and reunification. The film’s presentation of displaced persons rediscovering their identities is not mere melodrama, nor are its characters but figures in a pseudo-documentary. Zinnemann is subjective but self-consciously so. The film is both historical documentation of cultural displacement in post-war Europe and a document of displacement of conventional Hollywood filming methods by documentary-style cinema technique.