FRIEDA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 471, 2 July 1948, Page 24

FRIEDA

(Rank-Ealing Studios) ; | FOUND this British picture interesting for what it attempted but disappointing in its lack of accomplishment. It starts off boldly enough to tackle the problem of war-guilt as it touches the individual German, in this particular instance a young girl-a D.P. who has helped a British flying officer to escape from prison-camp as the Russians ‘storm through Poland in 1945. In an access of gratitude for her he!p, the airman marries her (she needs the protection of a British passport) and brings her home to England with him. Now, if the story had been allowed to develop from this point along relatively simple lines something worth-

while might have been accomplished. After all, the time is 1945. The Vbomb attacks are in full swing and there is a hysterical undef-current to the hostility which the people of Denfield feel towards the young stranger, so unhappily conspicuous in her leather jacket and knee-hose. There is material enough here for conflict, enough even for tragedy, if deftly handled. But apparently someone could ‘not leave well alone. Flora Robson is introduced as the airman’s politicallyminded aunt, bent on winning a pipsqueaking khaki by-election, the airman becomes emotionally entangled with his widowed sister-in-law and on top of that finds his old job as a schoolmaster made unendurable by the whispers of the townsfolk and the casual cruelties of small boys. This confused situation is on the point of being clarified-it takes some months-when Frieda’s brother (an unregenerate Nazi who has wangled his way out of an Allied prison) turns up in Polish uniform to remind his sister that the Germans are’ still ein volk, even if they no longer have ein Reich, or ein Fuhrer. It is obvious from his first appearance that this character has simply been brought in as a sort of dramatic catalyst to precipitate a climax now too difficult to achieve in a more orthodox way, and when he is'unmasked as a former con-centration-camp "guard no one seems greatly surprised. Inevitably there is a Big Fight, with heaps of fore-shortened camera angles, plenty of kicking and gouging-good’ clean sadism with no holds barred, or almost none. Frieda ows herself in the river but is rescued n the nick of time-the river, of course, washes her sins away. _.In spite of this disappointing ending, and the unduly complicated story which preceded it, Frieda cannot be written off altogether. Some credit must be given for serious intentions, and Mai Zetterling, a Swedish importation who plays the part of Frieda, is a young woman of unspoiled charm and considerable talent (in a quiet, restrained sort of way). The photography-steeply pitched angle-shots, cute "wipes" and a sort of Ophelia-in-the-brook | sequence when Frieda is on the point of drowning-is artful rather than artistic,