Frieda

With World War II hostilities just over, RAF officer Farrar brings home a German bride (Zetterling), having married her in gratitude for her part in helping him to escape from a PoW camp (unaware that Johns, whom he loved but who married his brother, is now a widow). 'It's a pleasant, peaceful spot...like any town in England', he tells her as he looks out of the train taking them home. Cue for one of those comfortable slices of social criticism in which rabid prejudice is gradually broken down by sweet reasonableness. But with Farrar and Zetterling doing their respective glowering and cowering acts, he treating her with increasing callousness as she becomes increasingly unnerved by her hostile reception, the whole thing begins to shape up as a melodramatic thriller. Highly watchable, perhaps for the wrong reasons.