ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT
By
A dirge for two voices projects the lives of Fred and Kate who, because of poverty, cannot live together. With the two children, Clement and Carla, Kate has a room with the well to do Frankes; her husband, Fred, a switchboard operator, has drifted into drink and the lure of pinball machine gambling; when it is possible they spend a night together -- indoors if they have enough money, outdoors, if not. There are their memories of their dead twins, the crushing influence of the war, the arrangements for a meeting which turns into a decisive one for Kate is again pregnant and Fred realizes they must be together as a family again. A grave and cheerless picture of a restless married life, the bitter, shabby living in a postwar German city that had been bombed and the cramping effects of a poverty for which there is no cure, is told in spare -- and unsparing -- terms.