Lazar Wechsler Movies

A Swiss-French coproduction, It Happened in Broad Daylight is an austere but shocking story of the hunt for a human monster. A forest community is terrorized by a child murderer, who per the title strikes in broad daylight. Whereas such a criminal might be more easily tracked down in the confines of a big city, the village police are obliged to comb miles and miles of mountains and wooded wilderness. A detective (Heinz Ruhmann) goes undercover to trap the murderer, posing as a workman with a wife (actually a local widow) and child. Veteran French character actor Michel Simon briefly appears as a falsely accused suspect, who commits suicide rather than face the shame of being branded a child killer. Slightly marred by some clumsy plot contrivances and by the rather crude dubbing in the English-language prints, It Happened in Broad Daylight is nonetheless one of the more accomplished European suspensers of the 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Swiss-English The Village strives for accuracy by having each cast member speak in his or her own native tongue, a la The Longest Day. Set during WW II, the film concerns itself with 200 Jewish war orphans, living out the war in a Swiss "children's village." Having been traumatized by their experiences, the kids have trouble responding to kindness and generosity. It is up to the village supervisors (John Justin and Eva Dahlbeck) to restore the orphans' faith in humanity. And along the way, the two adults happen to fall in love. Considering recent revelations about Switzerland's true role in WW II (which was not always neutral, and sometimes not very altruistic), The Village can be viewed today as a relic of a more innocent filmmaking era. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It's a lucky thing that Four in a Jeep was bankrolled by a Swiss production company; if ever a movie needed a neutral approach, this is the one. The scene is postwar Vienna, a city sliced up into four United Nations sectors. Viveca Lindfors, a recent escapee from a Soviet prison camp, tries to win freedom for her husband. American MP Ralph Meeker attempts to help Lindfors, and to avoid falling in love with her himself. Filmed on location, Four in a Jeep was released in the US by United Artists. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although Montgomery Clift shot this film following Red River (1948), it was released six months earlier and the combined success of both immediately made him a star. The film, which was the first to be made in Europe after WWII with an American director and cast, was partially based on Europe's Children, a book of photographs by Therese Bonney documenting the orphans of the war. Shot in the American occupied zone of Germany, much of the film, the product of years of research, was based on actual incidents. It opens at the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration camp at which war orphans, who have been found wandering through bombed-out ruins, are given temporary housing. The severely traumatized children, many of whom are survivors of concentration camps whose parents are dead, find normal communication almost impossible. Karel Malik (Ivan Jandl), a young Czech boy, is one of these. His mother, Hanna (Jarmilia Novotna), lost contact with him when they were in Auschwitz and she now travels from one refugee camp to another in search of her son. While being transported in an ambulance, some of the children, including Karel, break out and scatter. American G.I. Ralph Stevenson Clift finds him wandering aimlessly, takes him back to his base to feed him, and begins to teach him English. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide