Without a Trace (1983 film)

Without a Trace is a 1983 American drama film directed by Stanley R. Jaffe and starring Kate Nelligan, Judd Hirsch, David Dukes and Stockard Channing. It is based on the novel Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon. The story is partly based on the disappearance of Etan Patz.

Plot
Susan Selky, a prominent English professor at Columbia University, lives in a Brooklyn brownstone with her 6-year-old son Alex (Danny Corkill). One March morning, Susan sees Alex off to his school, two blocks away.

Returning home after work, Susan becomes increasingly alarmed when Alex is late. She calls her friend and neighbor Jocelyn Norris, whose daughter is Alex's classmate, and learns Alex was not in school that day. She calls the New York City Police Department, and officers descend on the townhouse, led by Lieutenant Al Menetti. The police initially suspect her estranged husband, Graham, a professor at New York University, but he produces an alibi.

Susan's case generates local media attention, and citizens help by distributing posters. Susan is initially criticized for allowing her son to walk to school alone. A polygraph test clears Susan as a suspect. Numerous leads are checked, including several reports that Alex may have been seen in the back seat of a blue 1965 Chevy. A psychic is also called in, but each lead fizzles.

The investigation drags on, and Graham is at odds with Menetti after budget cuts force him to dismantle the command center in Susan's apartment and run the case from the precinct. Menetti's attention is soon diverted to other cases, but the Selky case remains a priority. At one point, Graham takes matters into his own hands after receiving a ransom call. Given a beating, he requires a hospital stay.

A break in the case finally happens when Susan's housecleaner, Philippe, is arrested as a suspect. A pair of Alex's bloody underpants was found in his apartment, where the gay Philippe was picked up with a 14-year-old male prostitute. Susan visits Philippe in jail. He swears he did not harm Alex and says the bloody underpants were Alex's old pair that he used as a polishing cloth. He used it to stop bleeding after cutting himself washing dishes at Susan's house. Convinced Philippe is innocent, Susan tries to persuade Menetti to drop the charges, but he refuses, citing undisclosed physical evidence.

The renewed media coverage generated by Philippe's arrest dies down, and Susan faces increased pressure to drop the matter and accept that Alex could be dead. Susan's feelings come to a boiling point when a magazine cancels an article she wrote about Alex, and Jocelyn urges her to accept Alex is gone. Susan tries to resume a normal routine, although she never loses faith. One day, she receives a phone call from a woman in Bridgeport, Connecticut, named Malvina Robbins, who says Alex is living with neighbors. Menetti tells Susan he has also heard from Robbins, but Bridgeport police reported that the woman is a crank. The investigation is closed and Philippe will go on trial within weeks.

On a day off, Menetti takes a drive with his son. When he sees a highway exit sign for Bridgeport, Connecticut, he decides to check out the lead personally. Once he is sure that the lead is false, Menetti hopes to browbeat Robbins from disturbing Selky. When Menetti arrives at Robbins' address, he is shocked to see a blue Chevy (in which witnesses had reported seeing Alex) parked in the driveway of the neighboring house. Realizing that Robbins was truthful, he calls the Bridgeport police. They find Alex alive and unharmed. His kidnapper used the boy to care for his disabled sister who lives in the house.

Menetti drives Alex back to New York with a huge police escort (which grows with each jurisdiction it passes through), and the New York media is tipped off that he has been found, converging on Susan's Brooklyn house. Susan returns from grocery shopping in time to see Alex stepping out of Menetti's car. In front of delighted bystanders and reporters, mother and child are reunited.

Cast

 * Kate Nelligan as Susan Selky
 * Judd Hirsch as Det. Al Menetti
 * David Dukes as Graham Selky
 * Stockard Channing as Jocelyn Norris
 * Danny Corkill as Alex Selky
 * Louise Stubbs as Malvina Robbins
 * Keith McDermott as Philippe
 * David Simon as Menetti's son

Production
The film's screenplay was written by novelist and screenwriter Beth Gutcheon, who kept the film relatively faithful to her novel Still Missing, a work of fiction. The one glaring difference between the book and the film is that the book was set in Boston, while the film was set and filmed in New York. The film was originally supposed to be titled Still Missing, but was changed by the studio to avoid confusion with the 1982 film Missing.

Release
The film was released in North America on February 4, 1983, and grossed $9.6 million.

Reception
Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it "a reasonably well-made film" on its own terms but said it "deserves more thoughtful and imaginative treatment".