by Ted Davis

English Title: The Lost One (aka The Lost Man)

Directed by: Peter Lorre

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: The chain-smoking Dr. Karl Rothe (Peter Lorre) hides in plain sight after WWII as the melancholy and efficient Dr. Karl Neumeister, providing care and inoculations in a German refugee camp, but his imposture is threatened when his former assistant, the opportunistic and duplicitous Hösch (Karl John), who is also hiding under an alias, arrives in his ward. Debts must be paid, and the guilt-ridden Rothe is driven to expiate the dark crimes of his past, which include the murders of two women, and to reckon with the immediate risk of exposure supplied by Hösch.

Kitty Cameo: In a flashback sequence, as she leaves the apartment, Frau Hermann (Johana Hofer), the needy mother of Inge (Renate Mannhardt), Rothe’s mistress cum fiancée, admits her tabby cat that was waiting outside the door, calling for her daughter to feed her pet.

During a later flashback, after Rothe commits his second murder, he arrives back to his apartment and finds Frau Hermann asleep in a chair with the cat in her lap.

Upon waking, she sets down a bowl of milk for her cat while carrying on a conversation with increasingly frazzled Dr. Rothe.

It can be inferred that the cat was later killed along with Frau Hermann when the apartment building where they lived is bombed by the Allies.

Final Mewsings: War is not good for cats and other living things.

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