This may be one of the earliest of the Soaps that I have seen, along with a few other movies, all of Zarah Leander e.g. Zu Neuen Ufern. This plot-model is now ubiquitous in the small box- strong and pure woman, ninny man as her opposite lead. The woman could be pure white, but the man is always quite a bit of grey, may not be in character/ hair color, but the green of unfounded jealousy makes him so. Of now, it is deja-vu, but might not have been so then. And then Zarah Leander is there so that itself gets a couple of extra stars.
One of the reviewers probably didn't get the plot properly, so let me correct that too.
First of all the Heroine wasn't a retired doctor, but studying to be a doctor, happily married to a lawyer (the green-man) with a beautiful kid. She does get a letter from her ex-beau.
I don't know how the Black-mailer concept came in, he isn't. He is a philanderer, but is infatuated with the heroine, though she isn't, at least any more. And infatuated, he may be, but he isn't going to commit for a permanent relationship.
Once he, unintentionally, causes the break-up of her marriage, she goes through several self-sacrificing roles - first as an intern, after getting the medical degree, which gets revoked due to her insubordination, then night-club singer, and then, thanks to chance-meeting with the ex-beau again, back to her profession, at least almost (as nurse) and with a luck, she got a chance to impersonate a doctor.
There were only two skills, singing and medical, and both, in the beginning itself had been shown in her possession, so it was not so preposterous that one would wonder - how could she...? As I am forced to do, in most of the soaps.
The man kept in touch, despite cold shoulder from the heroine, till the justice caught up with all of the members family and the friend. He did keep his philandering ways, but to the heroine, he had been of beneficial effect, despite the semi-rebuffs.
The reviewer mentioned concentration camp - no it was a quarantine and that has nothing to do with the SS. At those times, to prevent infectious diseases, this was an universal feature, now of course there is no chance, due to air travel, else probably the spread of infections would have been less. Anyway, what has been shown was a normal quarantine scene, and has nothing to do with Germany or SS or Hitler. Similar quarantine areas - as closely guarded as jails used to be at every international sea-port.
Nothing new, in today's time, but for Zarah, who can in most of the cases keep one on the seat till the end.
Since most of the story is through vignettes of flash-backs, the usual errors that almost all the directors make is there. The characters whose flash-back is on, isn't supposed to know of the things that happened, especially dialogues, when they were not there. But to avoid these and keep the story from missing vital information needs a genius, and those are rare and hence I will not harp on that angle. But way of story telling has been good.
