Portrait from Life

At an exhibition in London, a retired colonel is stopped by a portrait: the young woman in it resembles the daughter he lost in the war. He finds the painter, travels to Germany and meets a woman in a displaced persons camp who has lost her memory. She does not know who she is, and the man with her says she is his wife. The film is not interested in family drama. It is interested in identity being unprovable in post-war Europe: nobody in the camp has papers, everybody has a story, and there is no mechanism for separating the true from the false. The form is realist: camp huts, a British headquarters, interview rooms and black-and-white photography. Much of its power comes from the place itself. Terence Fisher directed. He would later be known for Hammer horror; this comes from long before that period and stands apart for looking directly at post-war subjects. Mai Zetterling plays the woman without a memory and Robert Beatty the journalist. Who it is for: viewers who like British films about post-war Europe. Who it is not for: anyone expecting suspense. The narration is slow, the resolution is guessed early and the final section slides into melodrama.