The Divided Heart

1954

Action / Drama

2
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 80%
IMDb Rating 6.9/10 10 353 353

pre-code adoption world war ii childless couple

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Plot summary

During World War II, a German woman, Inga, goes missing and is presumed dead. Her infant son is placed in an orphanage where, years later, he's adopted by a childless couple. The adoptive parents' happiness is shattered when Inga reappears and insists on custody of her son.

Director

Charles Crichton Photo
Charles Crichton

Top cast

Geoffrey Keen Photo
Geoffrey Keen as Marks
Carl Duering Photo
Carl Duering as Postman
Guy Standeven Photo
Guy Standeven as Courtroom Spectator
Philo Hauser Photo
Philo Hauser as Schoolteacher
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU 720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
825.88 MB
986*720
English 2.0
Approved
Subtitles us  ro  
24 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds ...
1.5 GB
1480*1080
English 2.0
Approved
Subtitles us  ro  
24 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds 2
824.88 MB
968*720
English 2.0
Approved
Subtitles us  ro  
24 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds ...
1.5 GB
1440*1072
English 2.0
Approved
Subtitles us  ro  
24 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds ...

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by CinemaSerf 7 / 10

A knock at their door one evening throws

A knock at their door one evening throws the lives of "Inga" (Cornell Borchers) and husband "Franz" (Armin Dahlen) into turmoil. It's a woman from the post war child repatriation division there to try and establish where they got there son "Toni" (Michel Ray) from. They assure her they adopted him legally but after a few rudimentary questions they inform them that his mother "Sonja" (Yvonne Mitchell) wants him to live with her. A court must decide what happens next, and for the remainder of the film we watch as both the "bread" mother and the "blood" mother must metaphorically fight it out. It's delicately portrayed making it quite distressing to watch at times. The three judges - Alexander Knox, Liam Redmond and Eddie Byrne listen carefully and compassionately and as the case unfolds we, like them, realise that there can be no clear winners here - unless it's the ten year old boy who knows little of his wartime life in Slovakia but only of his current life with his new German parents. Perhaps he could decide? He's very young, though - is he competent to make such a choice? Charles Crichton directs with sympathy and he uses Geoffrey Keen quite effectively as a character trying to broker the best from a bad scenario - even if the process is really about securing the best for "Toni". There's a paucity of dialogue here, most of the scenario being presented as objectively as possible allowing us to make our own evaluation. It's touching and exposes a wartime topic not often addressed in cinema.
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Reviewed by graham-harvey 8 / 10

A very powerful film

Great story & acting especially knowing that situations like this would have happened at the end of WW2.

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