The Search

Although Montgomery Clift had already made his first movie, Red River, protracted delays had kept that film off the screen until after The Search had premiered, giving movie-goers their first sight of the actor who was the forerunner of the Method style of acting that we nowadays take for granted. This semi-documentary won an Oscar for best motion picture story, but Clift largely improvised his own dialogue for his portrayal of a soldier in postwar Germany who finds and befriends a nine-year-old homeless boy. Clift gives a casual, unaffected performance, and Ivan Jandl, as the boy, was awarded a special juvenile Oscar, but in his touching scenes with Clift it's the latter you'll remember.