This tragic romance, about homeless WWII German refugees desperately trying to find a country to live in, shows its stage-oriented helmer, John Cromwell, working in an unexpectedly adventurous style. No doubt the modest indie budget and lack of big-studio interference allowed him to experiment with the trick visual effects that master art director William Cameron Menzies specialized in. The film is a heartfelt, but inconsistent work, with exceptional perfs that range from Fredric March at his most commanding to dewy-eyed Glenn Ford in his first major role. There’s also a rare good role for the jaw-droppingly lovely Frances Dee who dropped out of the biz to be Mrs. Joel McCrea. (What a lucky guy!) Poor Margaret Sullivan gets a role she had played as recently as THE MORTAL STORM/’40, but she just looks used up, almost too realistically ill, and frankly too old for the young Glenn Ford. Just 30, she would only make two more films before her early death in 1960. It’s a shame that the reasonably good Public Domain print on the VCI DVD has so been shabbily handled it turns William Daniel’s atmospheric lensing into a smeary dupe. But it’s still worth watching.
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