The only film ever directed by Peter Lorre was released briefly in Germany in 1951 but was never released in the U.S. Ironically, it is titled The Lost One. The film has been rediscovered by film scholar Stirling W. Smith, whose business it is to find such stray films and shepherd them back into the public eye. Der Verlorene has recently shown at the 1983 San Francisco Film Festival and Filmex.
The Lost One grew out of Lorre's frustration with Hollywood in the late Forties. His close association with Bertholt Brecht ended when Brecht returned to Germany--after both he and Lorre refused to cooperate with the McCarthy committee--and Lorre's prospects for artistic work seemed increasingly dim. He returned to his native Germany, now American-occupied, where the true story on which Der Verlorene is based came to his attention through a journalist friend. Lorre developed the idea, co-wrote the script, and co-produced the film which he directed and in which he provided himself one of his best roles.
Der Verlorene deals with the psychological aspects of German reconstruction, cloaked in an offbeat murder mystery. Set in bombed-out Hamburg, it combines the expressionism and reportage realism of Lang's M, and develops in a precise movement through ten flashbacks that punctuate the present-tense narrative. The story involves a Nazi scientist operating under the assumed name of Neumeister (New Man) in postwar Germany. When he meets a former Gestapo agent, he becomes haunted by a murderous past, in which he killed his lover, allowed the the crime to be covered up “for the good of the state,” and was crazy with unassuaged guilt.
Lorre considered Der Verlorene to be his crowning achievement. But its obvious message theme of guilt and redemption caused the film to be less than popular in Germany, and Lorre's hopes for an English-language version to be dashed.