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| Dorothea Wieck and Hertha Thiele in Mädchen in Uniform |
An aura of naughtiness still clings to the title of Mädchen in Uniform, which is unfortunate, as if this drama set in a German girls' school were some sort of exploitation flick. What we have instead is a sensible, sensitive account of the emotional confusion of adolescence, done with a finesse in acting and camerawork that mostly seemed to escape Hollywood filmmakers in 1931. The premise is this: Manuela (Hertha Theile) is the new girl at a school run by a grim-faced martinet (Emilia Unda) who believes that education should be a matter of Prussian discipline. Naturally, the students rebel as much as they can, as do some of the teachers, especially Fräulein von Bernburg (Dorothea Wieck), who believes in kindness and love as a way to inspire the girls. Naturally, all of the girls love Fräulein von Bernburg, who is quite good-looking, but Manuela, whose mother died when she was a baby, is especially drawn to her -- so much so that she freezes with embarrassment whenever the teacher calls on her in class. Eventually, this leads to a declaration of love before the whole school, and a consequent scandal that pits the head of the school against not only Manuela but also Fräulein von Bernburg. Director Leontine Sagan effectively stages both the boisterous scenes with the girls and the quiet ones between the principal characters. The film serves as an indictment of the harshness of the school system, which may have been as much a reason for its being banned when the Nazis came to power as its understanding and approving of the schoolgirl infatuation, which led to its being banned and heavily cut in the United States. It's often called a "lesbian classic," which it may well be, but it tells a universal story irrespective of sexual orientation.
