The Divided Heart *** (1954, Cornell Borchers, Yvonne Mitchell, Armin Dahlen, Alexander Knox, Geoffrey Keen, Liam Redmond) – Classic Movie Review 8001

‘Wars leave behind a stain of shame which the centuries will not wash away,’ says the First Justice.

Director Charles Crichton’s 1954 Ealing Studios and Michael Balcon Productions black and white drama The Divided Heart is a stirring true story four-hankie tug-of-love weepie about the legal battle over a Yugoslavian war ‘orphan’, Toni (Michel Ray), when the boy’s real mother is discovered alive. Yvonne Mitchell plays the Yugoslavian mother Sonja. 

During World War Two, the three-year-old Toni is found wandering alone in Germany and it is presumed that his family are war casualties. The child is placed in an orphanage and then adopted by a childless couple.

Nearly a decade after the boy was adopted, she arrives to collect her 10-year old lad from the German foster parents who adopted him as a three-year-old and have brought him up after World War Two in love and acceptance. Cornell Borchers and Armin Dahlen play the foster parents Inga and Franz. The foster parents fight back and a court convened by the Allied Control Commission must decide what to do.

Alexander Knox, Liam Redmond and Eddie Byrne play the trio of international judges who must decide, poring over the moral arguments. So which of the mothers wins the custody battle?

This heart-rending yarn gets the sensitive playing and careful direction it needs. Jack Whittingham and Richard Hughes’s screenplay is based on a true story. The Divided Heart won two BAFTA Film Awards: Yvonne Mitchell was voted Best British Actress and Cornell Borchers was voted Best Foreign Actress.

Future director John Schlesinger plays the ticket collector, Alec McCowen plays a reporter. Also in the cast are Geoffrey Keen as the mediating administrator Marks, Theodore Bikel, Ferdy Mayne, André Mikhelson, Pamela Stirling, Martin Stephens, Martin Keller, Mark Gübhard, Krystyna Rumistrzewicz, Gilgi Hauser, Maria Leontovitsch, Marianne Walla, Dorit Wells, Hans Kuhn, Guy Deghy, Carl Duering, Dora Lavrencic, John Welsh, Philo Hauser, Nicholas Stuart and Richard Molinas.

In the true story, the boy’s father was a member of Slovenian Partisans executed by Nazis and his mother was deported to Auschwitz, while the boy Ivan was, along with 300 Slovenian babies and young children whose parents were named Banditen by the Nazis, sent to Germany in a Nazi programme known as Lebensborn.

The Divided Heart is produced by Michael Truman and edited by Peter Bezencenet, with black and white cinematography by Otto Heller and music by Georges Auric.

The people of St Johann-in-Tirol and of Skofja Loka in Yugoslavia are thanked in the credits for their kind co-operation.

Though Jack Whittingham is solely credited for the screenplay, the film gives ‘grateful acknowledgment to Richard Hughes for his contribution to the [script of the] film’.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 8001

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