Many British people study the Second World War either as scholars or as ravenous readers of the tireless drip-drip of non-fiction books that come out at a rate of one every few weeks. What more is there to tell? Perhaps a great deal, at least in film, if “From Hilde, With Love” (Pandora Film Production), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, is any sort of guide.
When I stepped into the cinema one recent afternoon, I left outside a hot, bright, cloudless summer’s day. But, immediately after the BBFC rating certificate faded from the screen, I was plunged into the darkness, the ominous, the terrifying. Rarely has the opening of a film created such an intense sense of impending doom, certain tragedy, cancelled youth. The film’s masterful design merits a brief study. First, we notice that there is no music. This amplifies the deathly sounds hovering just outside the shot: boots stamping, doors slamming, and, worst of all, abandoned babies screaming. Take the very first scene: the camera is completely still, on Hilde’s face-we know that it is an interrogation from what we hear from characters who are outside the shot. But if the music-less production drains any warmth from the story, the lighting design sucks out every final trace of hope. Again and again, an oblong window has been placed oh-so-carefully high up in the shot, raising our eyes towards the uppermost border of the huge cinema screen, where only the bottom half of the window can be seen-and it is covered in bars. The scenes have been lit from outside this window-only one aspect of the face in the light, only certain parts of the body seen, only the outer wall of the building in the camera’s gaze. The genius of this shot (is it possible for a window to be ominous?) hammers home the finality for those inside, as if a nail in a coffin. At other times, a moving camera follows behind Hilde (walking up stairs, or during conversations) as if we are her shadow.
The film, in German with English subtitles, tells the story of a Berlin-based resistance group who were passing secrets to the Russians. Hilde’s role was to decode and type up messages from a Moscow radio station. She falls in love with one of the leaders of the group, Hans; following a whirlwind romance, Hilde gives birth to their baby, also Hans, while she is imprisoned (in a truly gruesome scene introducing an butcher obstetrician who encourages the midwife to kill Hilde’s baby on its way through the birth canal and with a prison officer watching with utter contempt). The film moves backwards to the excitement of the conspirators and forwards to the brutal realities after their capture. Back then, the group kept their equipment in a boarded house and met at a lake where they cannot be overheard. In the present day-in fact only a few months later-Hilde is desperately trying to be a mother (“There you are. It’s alright. It’s alright.”), even though she cannot produce enough milk because she is being starved. Putting her own suffering aside, she starts to minister, Florence Nightingale-style, to other women on the post-natal ward, some of whom really don’t get it-“So you think we will go to prison?” one asks. Hilde replies, “We are in prison.”
The darkness of the cells, the maternity unit, the endless stairways in the jails, lit over and over through those windows, is sharply contrasted with wide shots of slightly yellowed, abundant light during the balmy days of the plotting and planning. In retrospect, the informers seem utterly naïve-how could this possibly work? They will be detected; and the Nazi regime is notoriously ruthless in dealing with subversives.
A legitimate question is to ask whether Hilde was the prisoner of Hans; or, to put it a different way, was he just manipulating her? With his male friends by the lake, he mocks her, saying of her reputation, “The girls call her the governess.” And, of his relationship, “It’s nothing.” In some of the scenes between them, the camera is brought really close so that their faces take up almost the whole screen. This, plus the highly explicit sex, is suggestive of rapture-she is willing to do whatever he asks. And later, at her trial, her only words of explanation are, “Because I love my husband.” He is a principled, earnest, desirable man who has picked her to be his partner-in-crime. But she is an intellectual too, with her little round glasses, relegated to lesser roles because she is a woman. She is the carer, the isolated mother, the assistant to the dentist; he is the commander, the communicator, the communist.
We, the audience, know the outcome of the battle of Stalingrad, which the conspirators are hoping to influence: the Russians eventually won. Did the efforts of groups like this make that victory possible, or more likely? I’m sure a historian would weigh in, but the film hedges this point too: leaving us with the question, “What was the point of it all?”
Liv Lisa Fries, as Hilde, is cast perfectly to emphasise these ambiguities. She notices a great deal without saying much. Her performance, especially in all the scenes in the near-darkness with the baby, is utterly devastating. Johannes Hegemann, as Hans, plays the role of lover and strategist seriously, his slight body displaying a certain fragility-the vulnerability of youth. Lisa Wagner, playing Miss Kühn, the prison guard, “It’s against the rules,” shows us the full horror show with her face.
Leaving the cinema two hours later, back in the sunshine, my eyes blinking like those of a rabbit, it took me a while to recover from the terrors displayed in “From Hilde, With Love.” But later on, I found myself deeply grateful that 1990s Britain was not 1940s Germany. My generation never had to choose whether to betray our country, with the inevitable penalties following certain capture. The futility of resistance, the destroyed dreams of youthful love, the friendships lacking the wisdom of experience, the brutal realities of Fascism; all are illuminated by this sublime work of art.
Adam Poole
10th July 2025
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