Word: robson
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Holiday Camp (British). Grand Hotel-ish comedy drama, featuring Flora Robson. Nothing exceptional, but nice easy entertainment...
Deborah Kerr makes an entirely credible sister, devoid of the sentimentality that usually befouls religious characters in the movies. David Farrar and Flora Robson play with skill and vitality, while Jean Simmons, the Estella of "Great Expectations," is magnificent as a sensuous Indian girl. Technicolor is made the most of, with some splendid photographic effects, and the only serious fault to be found is that the pace is sometimes too slow. It is a great pity that a picture so excellent in execution and so religious in theme should be chopped up by the censors...
...Flora Robson carries the message of the picture as she gradually comes to realize that Naziism is not "in the blood" of Frieda, the fraulein whom her nephew married to repay for helping him escape from a German prison camp. Miss Zetterling portrays a hard-faced, stoical Frieda at first, but gradually develops her role of the misunderstood German girl, hated by the small English town into which she has been thrust, until her husband finally comes to know and love her as the warm, understanding person...
...aura of hostility greets Frieda when she arrives in Denfield before the war has even ended. Miss Robson as Aunt Nora, a "cold, logical woman," realizes that her chances to gain a seat in the House of Commons are ruined if she condones her nephew's marriage to a German. Publically she proclaims that all Germans are alike and thus voices the belief of most others as well. But privately she tells Frieda that in six months nine-tenths of the community would come to accept her but there would always be the other tenth...
...audience recognizes from the start that the German bride (Mai Zetterling) of the demobilized Englishman (David Farrar) can't be wholly "guilty" and is perhaps hardly "guilty" at all. A large part of the picture merely shows Mr. Farrar's mother (Barbara Everest), political-minded aunt (Flora Robson) and fellow townsmen slowly getting used to the obvious. Miss Zetterling's brother (Albert Lieven), on the other hand, is as fanatical a Nazi as Hitler himself; so there is no very interesting question about brother's guilt...