Polish concentration camp inmate Victoria Kowelska (Valentina Cortese) takes on the identity of a dead friend whose child had been sent to live with a relative in the United States. Victoria does this in hopes of reaching the U.S. herself.
She arrives in the U.S., meets and marries a guy related to her by marriage (Richard Basehart) and moves in with him in a huge old house on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. There's a playhouse where the child was nearly killed in a large explosion supposedly cause by his chemistry set. There's a nanny for the child who tries to come between him and Victoria. There are couple of plot twists.
In one scene, someone has cut the brake line on her car. As she speeds out of control, she goes past a place that looked like one of the intersections in Bullitt. The Steve McQueen movie was filmed just 18 years later, so it could have been the same place.
The movie took place five years after the concentration camp had been liberated. I would have thought the experience would have had some lingering effects but she seemed to adapt pretty well to her new life.
Available on The Criterion Channel.
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