Winner of four Academy Awards and working across several genres, director Fred Zinnemann’s films include A Man for All Seasons (1966), High Noon (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), and Oklahoma! (1955). Zinnemann was interested in fusing documentary and fiction; in the case of The Search he returned to Europe for the first time since emigrating to film the story of a son and mother searching for each other in a postwar ravaged Europe.  

The Search plays with Zinnemann’s Academy Award-nominated short film Forbidden Passage, about a father who illegally enters the United States. 

Forbidden Passage 
Director: Fred Zinnemann.  
Cast: Addison Richards, Wolfgang Zilzer, Hugh Beaumont, George Lessey. 
1941. 21 min. USA. B&W. English. 35mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
 
The Search 
Director: Fred Zinnemann.  
Cast: Montgomery Clift, Aline MacMahon, Wendell Corey, Ivan Jandl.  
1948. 105 min. USA. B&W. English. 35mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

All film screenings of Vienna in Hollywood: Émigrés and Exiles in the Studio System are available here.