This is exactly how Blu-ray boutique labels like Radiance help collectors find great foreign films beyond the top acknowledged classics. This 3-disc collection gets our attention with a notable item we have heard of, Peter Lorre’s one stab at feature film direction, The Lost One. But the other two films are what carried us away: Not Guilty and Girl with Hyacinths. Both are excellent, and one is a genuine masterpiece.

World Noir Vol. 3
Not Guilty, The Lost One, Girl with Hyacinths
Region Free Blu-ray
Radiance Films
1947 – 1951 / B&W / 1:37 Academy
Street Date June 25, 2025 / Available from Radiance / ££37.49
Starring: Michel Simon, Jany Holt, Jean Wall; Peter Lorre, Karl John, Helmuth Rudolph, Johanna Hofer; Eva Henning, Ulf Palme, Birgit Tengroth, Anders Ek.
Directed by Henri Decoin; Peter Lorre, Hasse Ekman

Intrigued by vintage foreign films and looking for something different and inspiring?  This World Noir Vol. 3 collection should fit the bill. We’re not sure these shows are exactly noir, but Hollywood had no corner on dark and moody storylines inhabited by disillusioned people doing terrible things to one another. The three pictures in this set are all from a tight postwar time period, when some European territories were stabilized but few were fully recovered.

Going in, the draw for well-read film fans is likely the chance to see Peter Lorre in his one job of directing — but we think viewers will be even more impressed with the other two pictures. His is a West German production and the other two are from France and Sweden. The Swedish film is a masterpiece hiding in plain sight, hands down. Reviewing it will be difficult — we want to reveal almost nothing of its subject matter and surprises.

Not Guilty
Non coupable
1947 / 95 min.
Starring: Michel Simon, Jany Holt, Jean Wall, Georges Bréhat, Jean Debucourt, Henri Charrett, Robert Dalban, Pierre Juvenet, François Joux.
Cinematography: Jacques Lemaire
Production Designer: Emile Alex
Production Manager: Alexandre Mnouchkine
Film Editor: Annick Millet
Original Music: Marcel Stern
Screenplay by Marc-Gilbert Sauvajon
Produced by Francis Cosne, Georges Dancigers
Directed by Henri Decoin

The set launches with a gem that few of us have seen. We know actor Michel Simon from any number of acknowledged French classics by scores of great directors:  Jean Renoir,  Marcel Carné,  Julien Duvivier. But Not Guilty gives the actor a showcase to carry a murder thriller that keeps us guessing throughout.

Dr. Ancelin (Simon) is an embittered general practitioner in a small town outside Paris. Citing eccentricities and gossip, the other doctors have blocked him from the local register. Because of this he’s retaining fewer patients. Ancelin gets roaring drunk, which hurts his reputation even more. While inebriated he commits a hit and run crime, which sobers him up long enough to cover his tracks. The case is dismissed when the dead man is revealed to have stolen the motorcycle he was riding. But Ancelin soon finds himself ensnared in two more deaths that are obviously murders. Is his mistress Madeleine Bodin (Jany Holt) involved?  Is there a chance that Ancelin is guilty?

Not Guilty overcomes the stigma of ‘clever plot syndrome’ with Michel Simon’s amusingly diverting performance. Just when we think his Ancelin is a hopeless drunk, he bounces back as a brilliant thinker. The doctor takes good care of a sick child, keeps up diplomatic relations with a cynical newsman, and even makes peace with his professional enemy Dr. Dumont (Jean Wall). He keeps a level head with Madeleine, even after uncovering proof that she’s been stealing from him, and has a lover on the side. Ancelin gets a bad attack of over-confidence, thinking that he can manipulate several of these people, and ensure that Madeleine won’t leave him. That things go wrong is no surprise; the way they go wrong is.

This was the first production by the prolific Georges Danciger and his co-producer Francis Cosne. The handsomely staged production appears to have been filmed on large studio backlot streets. Director Decoin plays events at an even pitch, never giving away the game. We’ve always respected the great actor Michel Simon, but this performance is unusually accessible. We share the enthusiasm of a bright man who takes his hubris several steps too far.

Not Guilty is a glowing 4K restoration and a first-time HD presentation with English subtitles. It’s given a half-hour visual essay by Imogen Sara Smith, a rewarding post-viewing experience. Michel Simon is heard in a radio interview, given subtitles.

An unexpected surprise is an alternate ending that must have been filmed in case censor boards objected to all the amoral attitudes on view. It basically tosses the movie away. Instead of being offered as a separate menu item, it’s a second viewing choice for the feature, probably encoded through seamless branching.

The Lost One
Der Verlorene
1951 / 98 min.
Starring: Peter Lorre, Karl John, Helmuth Rudolph, Johanna Hofer, Renate Mannhardt
Renate Mannhardt, Eva Ingeborg Scholz, Lotte Rausch, Gisela Trowe, Hansi Wendler, Kurt Meister, Alexander Hunzinge..
Cinematography: Václav Vích
Production Designer: Karl Weber
Art Director: Franz Schroedter
Film Editor: Carl Otto Bartning
Original Music: Willi Schmidt-Gentner
Screenplay by Peter Lorre, Benno Vigny, Axel Eggebrecht (and Helmut Käutner)
Produced by Arnold Pressburger
Directed by Peter Lorre

Peter Lorre enjoyed a lofty reputation but his Hollywood work didn’t afford the best of opportunities. He ended up using his talent on eccentric, popular supporting characters. We first heard back in the 1970s that Peter Lorre had written and directed a movie, but it took the DVD revolution for it to be unearthed from German film vaults.

Our first time with The Lost One was a bootleg disc around 2000. The experience was not good: we sat through about 80 minutes of a splicey dupe with plenty of missing material. Even the subtitles were difficult to read, and some dialogue scenes had no subtitles at all. We couldn’t follow the story. Our thought after seeing the disc was basically, ‘well, someday maybe we’ll get to see The Lost One.’

Radiance’s presentation gives us Lorre’s movie intact. Lorre is the main character, research scientist Dr. Karl Neumeister. It’s 1950 and he’s working at a refugee rehabilitation camp with a constant flow of people needing care. A supervisor gives him an assistant, Dr. Nowak (Karl John), even though Neumeister says he prefers to work alone. The two doctors immediately recognize each other: they share an unpleasant history working for the Reich back in 1943. They had different names then. Neumeister is really Karl Rothe, and Nowak is really Hösch — and was working with the Gestapo.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the movie isn’t about criminal doctors that did terrible things for Hitler’s SS — no German movie of 1950 would take up such a subject. A series of flashbacks show Karl Rothe conducting vaccine research in Hamburg, then being pounded by Allied bombing attacks. There is no mention of biological weapons. The worst Rothe seems to be doing is sacrificing a lot of test rabbits. Some of the blood gets on his face at one point, but it represents a different kind of guilt.

After being pigeonholed in American movies as madmen and killers, we’re disappointed that Peter Lorre used the freedom of making his own movie to cast himself in a similar picture. Back in 1943, Dr. Rothe and Dr. Hösch are both in love with Inge Hermann (Renate Mannhardt). Rothe has the inside track because he boards with Inge and her mother. In his role of Rothe’s Gestapo ‘minder,’ Hösch and an Army intelligence Colonel then inform Rothe that Inge has been passing on full accounts of Rothe’s research to her father in Sweden, who has given it to England. The ‘association’ with Inge will have to stop.

For us, this is where the movie loses its way. Inge isn’t arrested, although the Colonel says she will probably be detained later. The story instead becomes a murky tale of killings that don’t feel fully motivated. Lorre’s Dr. Rothe does a lot of moping about, smoking cigarettes and feeling sorry for himself, all the while harboring murderous thoughts toward women in general. They include a lady who tries to get friendly on a train during a bombing raid (Lotte Rausch), and eventually a new boarder in the rooming house (Eva Ingeborg Scholz). We get scenes of a Gestapo cover-up of a murder, an idea presented better in director Robert Siodmak’s own return-to-Germany masterpiece,  Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam.

A secondary storyline brings in conspiratorial skullduggery — Dr. Rothe uses an overheard password to crash the Colonel’s secret meeting of military intelligence officers. It’s all very vague. Does Rothe inadvertently scuttle a plot against the Reich, or are the officers just planning an escape route away from Germany?  The film avoids parading Nazi-era imagery. Uniforms are kept to a minimum, we see no swastika banners and nobody shouts ‘Heil Hitler.’  The Gestapo agents we see aren’t particularly sinister — they don’t intimidate people with the metal IDs on their keychains.

We almost wonder if we missed something — it seems trite that Lorre’s Rothe would become a serial killer just because one woman fooled him … if she really did. The handling of his homicidal obsession isn’t that interesting. The superb actor never loses his composure while indulging his Death Wish.

Although The Lost One is billed as a full HD restoration, we can tell that the source materials were not the best. After the titles, the picture is reasonably sharp and stable, but the contrast remains slightly harsh. We were told that a (lab?) fire played havoc with the film’s post-production. The end result shows no signs of budget compromise, but it is marred by an overstated music score that doesn’t seem like something that Lorre or Pressburger would have wanted on the film.

Tony Rayns’ audio commentary would fill 4 or 5 chapters in a good book. He gets right into how Der Verlorene came to be made, and the reasons why Peter Lorre left Hollywood in the late 1940s. He apparently was no longer well-known in Germany, as few of his Hollywood movies had been shown there. Lorre’s ‘haunted’ character may be influenced by a de Maupassant story he was considering filming, ‘The Horla,’ combined with a recent tragedy involving the suicide of a doctor. If Lorre were looking to attract bad luck, he couldn’t have picked a better location — parts of the movie were filmed at an abandoned concentration camp.

Pamela Hutchinson and Margaret Deriaz each contribute visual essays. Deriaz paints a verbal portrait of the postwar situation in politics and business, starting from the basics of classic German expressionism.

The ‘trailer’ included is a newly-edited item.

Girl with Hyacinths
Flicka och hyacinter
1950 / 89 minutes
Starring: Eva Henning, Ulf Palme, Birgit Tengroth, Anders Ek, Gösta Cederlund, Karl-Arne Holmsten, Keve Hjelm, Marianne Löfgren, Björn Berglund, Anne-Marie Brunius
Cinematography: Goran Strindberg
Production Designer: Bibi Lindström
Film Editor: Lennart Wallen
Original Music: Erland von Koch
Produced, Written and Directed by Hasse Ekman

Girl with Hyacinths has many admirers, and we found it one of our most pleasing ‘discoveries’ so far this year. Radiance’s ad copy cites a celeb endorsement for this title — Ingmar Bergman praised Hasse Ekman’s production as one of the greatest Swedish films ever. It presents a mild problem for review. We often suggest that readers take in full online discussions only after seeing a movie. In this case, even naming some of its themes would constitute a terrible spoiler.  ^*

So we’ll just offer a bare introduction. Girl with Hyacinths is another flashback movie, a biographical investigation into the past: call it “Citizen Dagmar.”  A woman named Dagmar (Eva Henning) is found dead, apparently by suicide. A detective finds a note in which Dagmar leaves all of her belongings and savings to her next-door neighbors. They’re a moderately well-off working couple, Anders and Britt Wikner (Ulf Palme & Birgit Tengroth). She has a government job and he’s some kind of a writer; they have a charmingly healthy life together. Fascinated by this mystery neighbor, Anders uses clues left in the apartment to track down people that can tell her story.

This is 1950. Unlike France and Germany, neutral Sweden’s Stockholm came through the war intact. Writer-researcher Anders’ patient investigation reveals several insights about Dagmar, but no clues as to why she would kill herself. Anders can’t get a handle on this ‘haunted’ woman, after an opening that feels like the last scene of Val Lewton’s  The Seventh Victim. But the people contacted by Anders piece together an unusually affecting mystery.

This notice is more of an endorsement than a review. If you’ve seen actor Ulf Palme, it’s likely in Mai Zetterling’s  The Girls, George Seaton’s  The Counterfeit Traitor or Alf Sjöberg’s  Miss Julie. His Anders is not a reporter looking for a scoop, like William Alland in  you know what, but  perhaps some inspiration for his writing. Orson Welles said in his first movie that no person’s life can be reduced to a few glib words. Another Welles film made twenty years later shrugged off the whole effort:  “… what does it matter what you say about people?”

The film flows beautifully from one scene to the next, with each relationship sketching a different possiblity for happiness for Dagmar. Actress Eva Henning keeps Dagmar just a few inches out of reach. Her associates describe her as closed and unknowable, never opening up about herself. Henning was born in New York, and was married to director Hasse Ekman for seven years. We know  Elvira Madigan as a movie made in 1967, starring Pia Degermark; Ms. Henning starred in an earlier  1943 version by Åke Ohrberg. It was her breakthrough film, playing a woman ‘doomed’ by love.

We don’t want to oversell the show … it’s a conventional drama, but unexpectedly compassionate and insightful about people.

This 2K restoration is said to be the first time Girl with Hyacinths has been presented on Blu-ray outside of Sweden. Writer-director Hasse Ekman’s film has a smooth flow, bolstered by its handsome images. Scenes are set in the usual bedrooms and offices, plus a restaurant on a holiday night, and the garret of an alcoholic artist. We first meet Dagmar Brink when she plays the piano for what looks like three couples conducting a sex party … or, a Stockholm 1950 version of such a party.

A Swedish TV documentary is an extended talk by director Hasse Ekman, who is introduced walking through a cemetery. His father was also an actor and director, and played the lead role in Murnau’s classic German film  Faust.

Julia Armfield’s visual essay reveals Girl’s secret right away. Her thoughts deepen our understanding of the show … which has plenty to say about how we relate to friends and associates.

Radiance Films’ Region Free Blu-ray of World Noir Vol. 3 leads with attractive box art making good use of an advertising image from The Lost One. The disc quality is covered above; the first and third films are in prime condition and Peter Lorre’s show looks and plays very well considering that it’s likely some kind of rescue job.

As we received the set as check discs, we were were unable to read Radiance’s 80-page illustrated insert book, described below.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

World Noir Vol. 3
Region Free Blu-ray rates:
Movies: Guilty & Hyacinths: Excellent; Lost: Good
Video: Guilty & Hyacinths: Excellent; Lost: Very Good
Sound: Guilty & Hyacinths: Excellent; Lost: Very Good
Supplements:
Not Guilty:
Visual essay The Perfect Crime: Henri Decoin and Not Guilty by Imogen Sara Smith (25 mins)
Radio interview with Michel Simon (1947, 13 mins)
Behind-the-scenes radio documentary (1947, 8 mins)
Alternate ending
The Lost One:
Audio commentary by Tony Rayns
A talk by Pamela Hutchinson on Lorre and the film (24 mins)
A talk by Margaret Deriaz on German noir, and the legacy of The Lost One (19 mins)
Trailer
Girl with Hyacinths:
Audio commentary by Peter Jilmstad
TV documentary Meeting with Hasse with director Hasse Ekman (1993, 63 mins)
Visual Essay Golden Streaks in My Blood: Seeing and Not Seeing in Girl with Hyacinths by Julia Armfield (11 mins).
Limited edition 80-page perfect bound book featuring archival pieces and new writing by critics and experts including Farran Nehme, Martyn Waites, Elena Lazic, Jourdain Searles, and more. (unviewed)
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: June 1, 2025
(7333noir)

^*   We sometimes think about that problem — who can be so lucky nowadays to be able to encounter any movie with surprise twists and not have them spoiled. My friend Allan Peach remember the experience of seeing  Psycholiterally brand now, in a theater will 500 other people who didn’t know what to expect. He described an impressive communal audience response — waves of shock and even screams. Memories of similar moviegoing experiences are what keep me watching … although such occasions have become more rare.

Visit CineSavant’s Main Column Page
Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail: cinesavant@gmail.com

Text © Copyright 2025 Glenn Erickson