The Divided Heart

he remainder of the film we watch as both the "bread" mother and the "blood" mother must metaphorically fight it out. It's delicately portrayed making it quite distressing to watch at times. The three judges - Alexander Knox, Liam Redmond and Eddie Byrne listen carefully and compassionately and as the case unfolds we, like them, realise that there can be no clear winners here - unless it's the ten year old boy who knows little of his wartime life in Slovakia but only of his current life with his new German parents. Perhaps he could decide? He's very young, though - is he competent to make such a choice? Charles Crichton directs with sympathy and he uses Geoffrey Keen quite effectively as a character trying to broker the best from a bad scenario - even if the process is really about securing the best for "Toni". There's a paucity of dialogue here, most of the scenario being presented as objectively as possible allowing us to make our own evaluation. It's touching and exposes a wartime topic not often addressed in cinema.