A tale of two movies… Mädchen in Uniform (1931), BFI Dual Format, Out Now!

“What you call sin, I call the great spirit of love in all its forms…”

 

First time viewer here and I have to say that this film is more complex than I expected and absolutely all the more intriguing for that. As wily producer Carl Froelich had intended, the relationship between the two leading actors is your main expectation and yet the narrative runs far deeper than even that, ground-breaking though it is. This is a film about girls in uniform and by that I mean the discipline of the Prussian military hierarchy, children marching, being trained in denial and traditional Junker strengths; books are forbidden, graven images of film stars, letters home, compassion… all love is seemingly denied, not to mention that between a girl and a woman. The school is there to make the “mothers of soldiers”, to feed the Prussian/German military machine.

 

Bibi Berki, who provides a superb essay in the booklet accompanying this set and also excerpts from her brilliant podcast, The Kiss, about the making of this film, suggests that there were essentially two films being made during production of Mädchen in Uniform. There’s the populist drama Froelich aimed to connect with developing sensitivities about female sexuality post Marlene, and homosexuality after earlier films such as Anders als die Andern (1919) and Sex in Chains (1928) subtitled Die Sexualnot der Strafgefangenen – the sexual distress of prisoners - giving it a passing link to the institutionalised characters in Mädchen. Then there was the film that the director Leontine Sagan and the writer Christa Winsloe wanted; one with equal daring but deeper intellectual roots. What’s more, Christa not only wrote this story, she lived it… falling in love with one of her female teachers who ended up having to leave the school.

Dorothea Wieck and Hertha Thiele

Berki covers all of these incredible personalities with so much depth and eloquence, providing the finest of audio essays covering their backstories and the making of the film with the help of primary and secondary sources from crew and cast. Hertha Thiele provides a lot of the detail for the filming and she had firm opinions even during the making of her first film. Thiele had a long and interesting career and I chiefly know her for the left wing questioning of Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? (1932) after which she refused to work for the Nazis and ended up in East Germany after the war, resuming her career there.

 

Thiele – 22 at the time of filming - had played the part of 14-year-old “half-orphan”, Manuela in one of Leontine Sagan’s stage productions of Winsloe’s play – a lot of the same cast were used and this helps explain how the first-time director was able to complete the shoot in just three weeks. Interviewed when she was 71-72 in 1980 (by Karola Gramman and Heide Schlüpmann), the actress was quite sure which film she’d been making: “I really don't want to make a great deal of [...] or account for a film about lesbianism here. That's far from my mind, because the whole thing of course is also a revolt against the cruel Prussian education system."

Dorothea's exacted emoting

Surprisingly, given their chemistry on screen, she considered her co-star Dorothea Wieck too “restrained” but, as Berki suggests, this is the difference between a stage actor and an experienced screen one. Wieck is the best performer on screen with nuanced expression that remains poignant – she is the heart of “both” films; her unknowable affection for her pupil part of the continuum of love referred to in the above quote. She loves all of her girls and does not see her compassion undermining either authority or leadership; she’s an inspiration to the students in more than romantic ways. In her later interviews, Thiele also felt Leontine Sagan was too intellectual so I’m not sure we have the definitive voice on intent but there is so much rich context to work with.

 

Leontine certainly had a defined agenda and insisted that the location “must be saturated in Prussianism…” and they found the perfect place in Potsdam which is where Christa Winsloe had gone to school. It was a military orphanage which had the right atmosphere and the perfect six storey staircase around which many of the film's key moments occur.

 

You’re struck by Leontine’s “intellectual” ambition for the film from the opening montage of Prussian statues and militaristic music and the shifting from the sound of soldier’s feet to the schoolgirls marching. Her direction is remarkable, but she had plenty of skilled support from Froelich, his cinematographers, Reimar Kuntze and Franz Weihmayr as well as editor Oswald Hafenrichter, who later worked on The Third Man. That said, it’s hard to take too many plaudits away from Leontine for this vibrant and visually coherent first "go".

Emilia Unda inspects

The other pupils are used dynamically throughout the film, flowing around the action and providing bubbling adolescent energy - the raw material that needs taming. Against this is the upright and tense headmistress, Mother Fräulein von Nordeck zur Nidden (the imposing character actress Emilia Unda), as rigid as any Oberst, who believes that little girls should be seen and only heard when instructed to make a noise. She represents an entire class structure based on emotional discipline as evidenced by her Excellency von Ehrenhardt, Manuela's aunt (Gertrud de Lalsky) who describes her late sister’s daughter in disparaging terms and her soldier father as having “no idea” how to educate her.

 

Manuela is vulnerable having not long lost her mother and, as she enters the darkened school, her spirits are gradually lifted as she meets the girls who will come to make her life bearable. There’s the welcoming Marga (Ilse Winter), Lilli (Erika Biebrach), Ilse von Treischke (Charlotte Witthauer) but most of all there’s the rebellious Ilse von Westhagen (Ellen Schwanneke) who from her first appearance in the school choir strikes you as a source of passionate honesty.

 

Almost all the girls here have a crush on Miss von Bernburg... 'Tell me, is it true that she kisses you at night?'

 

Ellen Schwanneke in rapture

Ilse it is who has posters of Hans Albers on the inside of her locker – strictly forbidden – as she asks the other girls what it is that films stars have, Mia von Wollin (Barabara Pirk) replies “sex appeal, nicht?” This is the first overt reference to sex but it follows on from a startling exchange featuring Ilse discussing the crush many of the girls have on Governess Fräulein von Bernburg (Wieck), who breaks the code of von Nordeck zur Nidden, by providing something of the kindness her students are missing.

 

This battle between the gifted and highly effective "liberal" and the Head, plus her acolytes, runs throughout the film with the former wanting to be “a friend to the children” she leads and the others ignoring emotional intelligence and focusing only on authority and repression.

 

The most famous sequence in the whole film features von Bernburg walking around the dorm at bedtime, slowly kissing each girl on the head, each one eagerly awaiting her touch in a very ambiguous way. Finally she arrives at the new girl and as Manuella throws herself at her in an embrace, she very deliberately kisses her full on the lips. It’s startling all these years later and apparently the distributors at the time wanted a lot more kissing (!?) but what is really passing between pupil and teacher?

 

First meeting on the stairs

Von Bernburg has already talked to Manuella about the death of her mother and she recognises her grief and need for affection. This provocative kiss is certainly more than maternal and for Leontine is surely transgressive in the context of a militaristic school whilst for writer Christa, there’s wish fulfilment and recognition of her romantic experience. We know what Hertha Thiele felt but I really wish we had Dorothea Wieck’s take.

It’s a tribute to the film and these makers that there is still much to discuss in terms of the significance of their work. There’s enough here for many times the normal length of my blog posts, suffice to say that this is a major film that is thoroughly deserving of the restoration it has received and this superb package from BFI.

 

The critique of Prussian education and society would still be there without the homosexuality but the love between the women is vital to the film’s power both as a motivator of the major characters but also as a recognition of not just Christa’s lived and loved experience but that of millions of women in Germany and beyond. A sexual relationship between a teenage student and her teacher would of course be wrong; Manuella is a child after all, but love – in all its forms - is love at any age.

The (school) play's the thing...

In addition to the excellent work from Bibi Berki, Episodes 7 to 10 of Tempest Productions’ 14-part podcast The Kiss and an essay on Christa Winsloe, there are essays from So Mayer on the film’s place in the queer canon, Chrystel Oloukoï on its remarkable director and Henry K Miller on the British cinema that helped promote the film. Chrystel also provides a video essay on Women and Sexuality in Weimar Cinema. Feature commentary for the main feature is from film historian Jenni Olson.

 

As is traditional, the BFI also fill out the disc with some wonders from their archive under the heading: How to be a Woman and with an explanatory essay form film historian Sarah Wood. These include the magnificent Tilly and the Fire Engines (1911) featuring everyone’s favourite nasty women, Tilly as played by Alma Taylor and Sally played by Chrissie White, who  made comedic trouble in so many films. It’s a hoot especially with a smashing accompaniment from Bioscope allumni Lillian Henley – a modern day member of Tilly’s gang!!

Alma Taylor and Chrissie White

There’s also Hints and Hobbies No.11 – ‘Hints to the Ladies on Jiu-Jitsu’ (1926), A Day at St Christopher’s College and School (1920s) and 4 and 20 Fit Girls (1940), sponsored by the National Fitness Council for England and Wales.

 

Thank you, Bibi, BFI and the original film makers. ***** all round.

 

1.      You can order the set for a very reasonable rate at the BFI’s online shop, link right here.

 

2.     Bibi Berki’s podcast is highly recommended and you can find all the episodes of her 14-part podcast, The Kiss, here on Spotify.

 

3.      Hertha Thiele’s interviews with Schlüpmann and Gramman of Johan Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, can be read here. As always with Thiele and others on the left, it’s sobering to hear of what happened in the years following this film and others.