Frieda | |
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Directed by | Basil Dearden |
Screenplay by |
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Based on | Frieda by Ronald Millar |
Produced by | |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Gordon Dines |
Edited by | Leslie Norman |
Music by | John Greenwood |
Production company | |
Distributed by | General Film Distributors |
Release date |
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Running time | 98 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | £168,435 [1] |
Box office | £227,017 [1] |
Frieda is a 1947 British drama film directed by Basil Dearden and starring David Farrar, Glynis Johns and Mai Zetterling. [2] Made by Michael Balcon at Ealing Studios, it is based on the 1946 play of the same title by Ronald Millar who co-wrote the screenplay with Angus MacPhail. The film's sets were designed by the art directors Jim Morahan and Michael Relph.
During World War II, a German woman rescues an English prisoner-of-war. He decides to marry her, though he does not actually love her. Following the war, the couple settle in Oxfordshire. Frieda has to deal with both anti-German sentiment in post-war Britain, and with her unrepentant Nazi brother.
Frieda is a German woman who helps English airman Robert to escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp as the Second World War nears its end. She loves him; he is only grateful to her. In a church between the Russian-German lines, however, Robert marries her, so that she can obtain a British passport. Together they eventually arrive in his Oxfordshire home. Frieda meets his family: his mother, his small stepbrother Tony, Judy, the attractive widow of Robert's brother, and Aunt Eleanor, a figure in local politics and vehemently anti-German.
At first, the townspeople are bitterly hostile to Frieda, and Robert is forced to give up his job as a schoolteacher. Gradually, however, the ill will subsides, and she is accepted, except by Eleanor. Frieda is befriended by Judy, who, unknown to Robert, is now also in love with him. As Robert settles into a new life, working with Frieda on a farm, he begins to lose his prisoner-of-war heaviness. He sees Frieda in a new light. But then they see a film dealing with the horror of Bergen-Belsen and Frieda fears their marriage will not survive its revelation of her countrymen's cruelty. But Robert clings on to what they have established between them.
Suddenly, an ex-German soldier appears—Frieda's brother Richard. Thinking he had been killed, Frieda is initially overjoyed. He had been captured and allowed to volunteer for the Polish Army. However, she soon realises that he has remained a Nazi at heart, his wedding present to Frieda being a swastika on a chain. In a pub, he is denounced as one of the guards at a concentration camp. To Robert, in private, he admits the truth of this accusation, and claims that Frieda had known and approved of his actions. They fight, and Robert now revolts against everything German as vile and polluted.
Frieda, fearing that she has lost Robert, attempts suicide, but, just in time, Robert reaches her and the shock brings him to a realisation of what he risked losing. He perceives that his faith in her was justified. Even Aunt Eleanor comes to believe that her sweeping anti-German prejudice was wrong: "You cannot treat human beings as though they were less than human—without becoming less than human yourself." [3]
The film was the ninth most popular film at the British box office in 1947. [4] [5] According to Kinematograph Weekly the 'biggest winner' at the box office in 1947 Britain was The Courtneys of Curzon Street , with "runners up" being The Jolson Story , Great Expectations , Odd Man Out , Frieda, Holiday Camp and Duel in the Sun . [6] The film earned distributor's gross receipts of £227,017 in the UK of which £184,055 went to the producer. [1]
The film was released in 1948 in the United States to excellent box office results. [7]
Mai Elisabeth Zetterling was a Swedish film director, novelist and actress.
Glynis Margaret Payne Johns was a British actress. In a career spanning eight decades on stage and screen, Johns appeared in more than 60 films and 30 plays. She received various accolades throughout her career, including a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award, as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Laurence Olivier Award. She was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood and classical years of British cinema.
The Jewel in the Crown is a 1984 British television serial about the final days of the British Raj in India during and after World War II, based on British author Paul Scott's Raj Quartet novels. Granada Television produced the series for the ITV network.
Miranda is a 1948 black and white British comedy film, directed by Ken Annakin and written by Peter Blackmore, who also wrote the play of the same name from which the film was adapted. The film stars Glynis Johns, Googie Withers, Griffith Jones, Margaret Rutherford, John McCallum and David Tomlinson. Denis Waldock provided additional dialogue. Music for the film was played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Muir Mathieson. The sound director was B. C. Sewell.
Frieda Lawrence was a German author and wife of the British novelist D. H. Lawrence.
Karl Franz Gebhardt was a Nazi physician and a war criminal. Gebhardt was the main coordinator of a series of medical atrocities performed on inmates of the concentration camps at Ravensbrück and Auschwitz. These experiments were an attempt to defend his approach to the surgical management of grossly contaminated traumatic wounds, against the then-new innovations of antibiotic treatment of injuries acquired on the battlefield.
Bad Nenndorf is a small town in the district of Schaumburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Its population is 10,210 (2005). It is situated approximately 12 km east of Stadthagen, and 25 km west of Hanover, at the southern edge of the North German Plain and the northern edge of the Deister ridge. The area of the town includes the outlying villages of Riepen, Horsten and Waltringhausen.
The Captive Heart is a 1946 British war drama, directed by Basil Dearden and starring Michael Redgrave. It is about a Czechoslovak Army officer who is captured in the Fall of France and spends five years as a prisoner of war, during which time he forms a long-distance relationship with the widow of a British Army officer. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.
David Farrar was an English stage and film actor.
Judy was a ship's dog aboard HMS Gnat and Grasshopper stationed on the Yangtze before and during World War II. She proved able to hear incoming aircraft, providing the crew with an early warning. After part of the crew transferred from Gnat to Grasshopper in June 1939 the ship was sent to Singapore after the British declaration of war on Germany. There she was aboard the ship during the Battle of Singapore, in which Grasshopper evacuated for the Dutch East Indies. It was sunk en route and Judy was nearly killed, having been trapped by a falling row of lockers. She was rescued when a crewman returned to the stricken vessel looking for supplies.
A Date with Judy is a 1948 American musical romantic comedy Technicolor film directed by Richard Thorpe and starring Wallace Beery, Jane Powell and Elizabeth Taylor. The film is based on the radio series of the same name.
It Always Rains on Sunday is a 1947 British film adaptation of Arthur La Bern's novel of the same name, directed by Robert Hamer. The film has been compared with the poetic realism movement in the French cinema of a few years earlier by the British writers Robert Murphy and Graham Fuller.
Saraband for Dead Lovers is a 1948 British adventure historical drama film directed by Basil Dearden and starring Stewart Granger and Joan Greenwood. It is based on the 1935 novel by Helen Simpson. Set in 17th-century Hanover, it depicts the doomed romance between Philip Christoph von Königsmarck and Sophia Dorothea of Celle, the wife of the electoral prince of Hanover. The saraband mentioned in the title is a type of Spanish dance.
Another Shore is a 1948 Ealing Studios comedy film directed by Charles Crichton. It stars Robert Beatty as Gulliver Shields, an Irish customs official who dreams of living on a South Sea island; particularly Rarotonga. It is based on the 1947 novel by Kenneth Sheils Reddin, an Irish judge.
The Loves of Joanna Godden is a 1947 British historical drama film directed by Charles Frend and produced by Michael Balcon. The screenplay was written by H. E. Bates and Angus MacPhail from the novel Joanna Godden (1921) by Sheila Kaye-Smith.
The Bad Lord Byron is a 1949 British historical drama film about the life of Lord Byron. It was directed by David MacDonald and starred Dennis Price as Byron with Mai Zetterling, Linden Travers and Joan Greenwood.
Portrait from Life is a 1948 British drama film directed by Terence Fisher and starring Mai Zetterling, Robert Beatty and Guy Rolfe.
Against the Wind is a 1948 British war film directed by Charles Crichton and produced by Michael Balcon starring Robert Beatty, Jack Warner and Simone Signoret.
My Brother's Keeper is a 1948 British crime film in the form of a convicts-on-the-run chase thriller, directed by Alfred Roome for Gainsborough Pictures. It was the first of only two films directed by Roome during a long career as a film editor. The film stars Jack Warner and George Cole and was produced by Sydney Box.
Iris and the Lieutenant is a 1946 Swedish drama film directed by Alf Sjöberg and starring Mai Zetterling, Alf Kjellin and Åke Claesson. The film boosted Zetterling's international profile. Shortly afterwards she moved to Britain to make Frieda (1947).