Fraulein

In the last days of the war in Frankfurt, Foster, an American officer on the run, hides in the house of a German girl, Erika. She does not turn him in. Years later he returns to Germany with the occupying forces and looks for her. This time she is trying to stay upright in a ruined country and is, to the Americans, only a category: fräulein. The film is not interested in romance. It is interested in being a woman under occupation: it takes as its subject the label attached to German women who dealt with American soldiers, and shows Erika forced to prove her innocence. The form is studio post-war drama: sets of a ruined city, headquarters, nightclubs. The image is widescreen and colour, rather too bright for the subject. Henry Koster directed, from James McGovern's novel. A 20th Century Fox production. Dana Wynter plays Erika and Mel Ferrer plays Foster. Who it is for: viewers who like fifties post-war melodrama. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the harshness of the subject. The film uses the state of Germany as décor and leaves the real question beneath the romance.