A well-made, intelligent film with big faults. First the virtues: Peter Lorre acts very well as the disillusioned drunken doctor in a refugee camp and the other actors all do their jobs well; the camera-work is very good- the picture of a desolate camp in the middle of nowhere and the surrounding country, the solid bourgeois apartment where Lorre's character lives and a city under attack are all superbly portrayed. The film's themes- the relationship between mass murder and individual murder, the distance between what people seem and what they are, solitude and society- are interesting in themselves, even if they crowd one another out in the film. However the film has some pretty big flaws. The first is Lorre himself; in the standard Lorre role he is good, as i said, but as the dedicated research doctor capable of inspiring desire in women he is completely unconvincing. It's interesting that Lorre and Karl John were born about a year apart; John is completely convincing as the young opportunist and as the slightly older desperate opportunist, but Lorre always seems twenty years older in body and a thousand years older in soul. We can't believe that Lorre ever felt strongly enough to kill the women, whereas we are persuaded by his contempt and hatred for John in those parts of the film set after the war. Equally, we cannot believe that any of the women were ever attracted to Lorre in the first place. These are big faults, but it's a sign of the film's qualities that they don't overwhelm it and nor does the intrusive music. The other faults of the film are faults of over-ambition and a desire to do things film can't do; faults so rare that we needn't worry too much about their frequency. The greatest regret is that Lorre couldn't make more films and learn from his mistakes and build up his successes: it would certainly have been a better fate than doing Peter Lorre impersonations to earn a living as he had to.
Review of The Lost Man
