Portrait from Life [The Girl in the Painting] *** (1949, Mai Zetterling, Robert Beatty, Guy Rolfe, Herbert Lom, Patrick Holt) – Classic Movie Review 11,086

‘A psychological thriller, a captivating mystery, a tender love story – all brilliantly COMBINED INTO ONE EXCITING MOTION PICTURE’

Director Terence Fisher’s 1949 British black and white mystery romantic drama Portrait from Life [The Girl in the Painting] is an acceptable Gainsborough Pictures studios emotional melodrama starring Mai Zetterling as Hildegarde, an amnesiac victim who was protected from the war by a top Nazi and is now in a displaced people’s camp in Germany and has to face a reunion with her father and a renunciation of her past.

A British army officer, Major Lawrence (Guy Rolfe), on leave from duty in Germany just after World War Two, becomes obsessed with a picture of the beautiful Jewish girl Hildegarde he sees at a London art gallery, where he is approached by an old man Professor Franz Menzel (Arnold Marlé), who escaped from Nazi Germany in the 1930s and claims to be the girl’s father.

Lawrence agrees to try to find the girl when he returns to Germany and tracks her down after a long search, only to find she is an amnesiac living with a German couple, Fritz Kottler Hendlemann (Herbert Lom) and Eitel Hendlemann (Sybille Binder), who claim to be her parents, and then tries to find out the girl’s past and help her to get back her memory.

Agreeable, stalwart performances from an exceptional cast help the film to rattle along, and Fisher’s direction is intense and atmospheric. But the script fails to come properly to full terms with any real sense of tragedy or feelings of haunting regrets, though it works quite well as a romantic mystery.

The screenplay is by Frank Harvey Jnr, Muriel Box and Sydney Box from an original story by David Evans.

Also in the cast are Patrick Holt, Thora Hird, Nelly Arno, Sybille Binder, John Blythe, Cyril Chamberlain, Philo Hauser, Gerard Heinz, Michael Hordern, Sam Kydd, Betty Lynne, Arnold Marlé, Richard Molinas, Peter Murray, Yvonne Owen, Eric Pohlmann, Hugo Schuster, Donald Sinden, Anthony Steel, Ernest Thesiger and George Thorpe.

Portrait from Life is also known as Lost Daughter and in the US as The Girl in the Painting.

Pete Murray [Peter Murray James OBE] (born 19 September 1925), is a British radio and TV presenter and a stage and screen actor in films including My Brother Jonathan (1948), Portrait from Life (1948), Escort for Hire (1960), A Taste of Money (1960), Design for Loving (1962), The Cool Mikado (1962), Simon, Simon (1970) and Cool It, Carol! (1970).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,086

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