Fables once proffered morals painlessly. Today they are seldom dispensed with as much ease except in a rare novel or motion picture. Such a picture is "Frieda" that may be considered all the more exceptional for having come out of war-scarred England. For "Frieda" convincingly expounds the moral that Germans are human beings and a blanket indictment of them or any people fails to recognize human differences. Hardly a palatable axiom in itself for many Englishmen today, but it becomes so at the hands of Swedish actress Mei Zetterling and a cast all of whom deserve equal plaudits.

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 she is.

An 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.

Nora's prediction of social acceptance comes true but Frieda's true feelings still are not evident and only become so when her brother, an-unrecalcitrant Nazi, appears on the scene. His fanatical sentiments for a united German people and a repetition of the last war "again, and again, and again" are rejected by her along with the swastika medallion he presses into her palm. That is why she tries to commit suicide when her husband believes she must be a Nazi at heart upon learning her brother's beliefs. It is then that Aunt Nora realizes she cannot let Frieda drown even as the waters swirl over her head for she is not so much a German as a human being.