A study of an electro‐optic response in a free‐standing ferroelectric liquid crystal film has been carried out. The response time becomes shorter with increasing electric field and, especially at a certain threshold of electric field, it changes in stepwise by three orders of magnitude. The response time of the faster kind of response that appears in the higher field region is several hundred milliseconds and is about one thousand times faster than the slower kind of response at lower fields. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.