The Search (1948)

Aline MacMahon: Mrs. Murray

Photos 

Quotes 

• Mrs. Murray : [Narration 2 of 4 from 5:45-7:54 in the film, as the refugee children eat dinner and get ready for bed]  Bread; bread, and it's there to be eaten. But this boy knows why he hides it away. They have often been given a slice of bread; then came a day, and a night, and another day, and not a bite of food. And you, little boy with the sad face and the big eyes, you had to eat your food with your fingers for so long you've forgotten how to use a spoon. Another habit has stuck: after every meal they had to show by this movement that they were not hiding any bread...

  [the wall in the hallway/stairwell reads SS REG. 668 - KOMP. VIII] 

  Mrs. Murray : This was once a barracks, a German barracks - it has better uses now. It's a long time since these children slept in a clean bed under a warm blanket.

  [focusing on small items that the children have on their person] 

  Mrs. Murray : These are their keepsakes, the last memories of their homes and parents, jealously guarded as a precious possession through all their wanderings. And still not a sound of children's voices and children's laughter.

• Mrs. Murray : [Narration 4 of 4 from 26:46-27:39 in the film, as Hanna Malík walks alongside an expansive and relatively barren roadway]  Through many lands of what was once the German Reich, there run these broad, parallel, endless roads. Along these roads, people walk, going somewhere, anywhere. Hanna Malík walks too; she was one of the few who escaped. When she got home to Czechoslovakia, she found that her husband and daughter had both been murdered; of little Karel, there was no trace.

  [the sign on the side of the road reads International Children's Center 7km UNRRA Team 518] 

  Mrs. Murray : One day, she set out to look for him. She has wandered through all the zones of Occupied Germany; she has come a long, long way.