In Peter Lorre’s first and only film as a director, he adapted his own novel about a doctor whose feelings of guilt about his actions during the Third Reich only intensify as he tries to adapt to postwar Germany. Lorre’s direction was heavily influenced by the prewar expressionist cinema in which he had worked, most notably in Fritz Lang’s M. Characters are always captured in half-light or shadows, and emotional states are given strong physical presence. An impressive first film, The Lost Man was nevertheless a failure with a German public as yet largely unwilling to confront questions of individual and collective guilt. Subsequently, Lorre decided to return to the United States and to his Hollywood career.