So Little Time

The German officer of So Little Time remarks of Liszt's music that "you cannot only play the notes; you must go through the notes and come out the other side." In a way, that is what they have tried to do with So Little Time, a movie set against the Belgian Ressistance movement of World War II.

The story inevitably follows from one situation: that of a German officer billeted with an old Belgian lady and her daughter. Despite their differences in age and background, the officer and the daughter fall in love. But as the Resistance spreads they become caught up in the war, against themselves. When the movie is half over the ending has become clear.

One thing So Little Time seems to imply at the end is that it is impossible for a spectator to tell whether the separate acts of the two were "heroic" or "cowardly," and that the courageous ones may come from a confusion of motives that can't be stated. The trouble with the movie is that it tries to make the statement, explicitly.

The characters are exploited by the director, Compton Burnett, to dramatize their own predicament. The officer, Commandant Hohensee (Marius Goring) is made to say things like, "What we share--our music, our talks--has nothing to do with the war." This may be so, but he would not say it, and the girl would not reply, "But you are a German." Even though Maria Schell, as the daughter, is a lovely woman, it is hard to listen to the words she has been given. The "minor key" in which the movie is set seems more like a series of uneasy moments where the characters are made to make their own situations explicit.

One of the dangers in the tales that have come from the Resistance is the opportunity this movement offers to show--and to dramatize--the double pulls of national loyalty and love as they set individuals against themselves. The one thing required is delicacy, which is what So Little Time lacks.