To me, this movie is perfection.

Simply Perfect

One of my all time favorites.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's technologically pretty clever for 1931. Near the opening, just when the new girl is being shown around the boarding school, there is a scene of the girls' chorus enthusiastically singing a patriotic song, and the camera dollies in through the mob to one particular face. As it does so, the sound of her voice becomes louder and distinguishable from the others, so we can hear that she's shouting a corruption of the lyrics -- something about needing to eat.The careful meshing of images and sound wasn't standard for the time, except of course that Hitchcock had played around with it in early films like "Blackmail". But it's apparent that some effort was put into the direction. There's a nicely staged high angle shot of a five-story square staircase filled with chattering children moving upward as if on a frisky escalator.The new girl is fourteen-year-old Manuela von Meinhardis, whose mother had died when she was young and father serves in the military. After the other students welcome her, they warn her about falling in love with one of the teachers, the compassionate but mercurial Fräulein von Bernburg. Manuela then is promptly groomed and fitted with an ugly uniform with precise and ergonomic Gründlichkeit.This is some girls' school too. The rules are strict, somewhere between a convent and Marine Corps boot camp. You can't have money, candy or books of your own. You can't put a picture of a movie star on the inside of your locker door. Everything is presided over by a stern, homely Headmistress who reminds me of Miss Pavor DeGrone, my fifth grade arithmetic teacher. Try to imagine a scowling Erik von Stroheim in drag. "Through discipline and hunger we shall be great again." Now, this is 1931, so Hitler hadn't risen to the dazzling heights he would yet achieve, but it's also Prussia, home of the Junkers, land of the Spartans.At bed time, von Bernburg comes around to the dormitory and kisses each girl delicately on the head. The girls, hungry for affection as well as chocolate, await their turns ecstatically. But when it's Manuela's turn she throws herself into the teacher's arms and they kiss on the lips, which introduces a note into the relationship that's only been hinted at before, although the note is minor. In a later scene, von Bernburg gives Manuela a new petticoat and the impression is conveyed that the teacher is especially fond of Manuela but that Manuela's affection goes rather deeper than that. Well, after all, Manuela is at an age where, as the headmistress puts it, "their emotions are aroused." Any doubt about Manuela's physical development is put to rest in a scene in which she wears tights as part of a costume for Schiller's play, "Don Carlos." She's pretty nicely filled out, even if she's illegal. Schiller wrote the play around 1785. I had to read his work in a German class and he's pretty good, even amusing at times. It's Schiller's words that are sung by the chorus in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, some of the noblest music extant.During a post-play celebration, an alcoholic punch is passed around and Manuela, happy beyond imagining because she was successful as the principal player and because she believes von Bernburg loves her, gets drunk and shouts out some opinions that find their way to the ears of Miss DeGrone, I mean the headmistress. Manuela and von Bernburg are forbidden to speak to one another again and Manuela's classmates are ordered to shun her. This leaves Manuela pretty down in the dumps. I'll leave it at that.I suppose it was surprising in 1931 to find a film dealing with what everyone since appears to have called "lesbianism," but it's really a story about the need to leaven discipline with understanding and mercy. Anyway, it's not really surprising that the teen-aged girls should develop crushes on an authority figure or on each other, even if it leads to some sexual experimentation.This is the kind of school that sociologists call a total institution in which everything is controlled and people of the same sex are forced to spend time together. If this is as bad as it gets in a Prussian girls boarding school, any state prison in American has it beat by a mile.

My initial reaction to this film was that it served no purpose. It seemed, to me at least, to be about a German boarding school for girls who mostly had lesbian infatuations with their teacher and other students. Although this is what it is mainly about, its true nature is to illustrate the bonds and relationships created between friends, and also to show the importance of a maternal figure in a girl's life. When Manuela first arrives at the school, she has a gap in her life that would usually be filled by a mother figure. Because her mother died, her father did not know how to take care of her, and her aunt did not give her the love she needed, she searches for someone who can give her what she has been lacking for so long. Fraulein von Bernburg is the teacher who can do this. She is strict with the students, yet does not punish them. She treats Manuela in a way she does no other. If this love began as something similar to the type a family would share, it slowly transitions to something more than that. It creates a bond between them that is not permitted in the school, but in the end it allows both Manuela and Fraulein von Bernburg to be set free from the oppression of the school. A criticism I have, though, is the ending. Once the finale occurs, it just ends. No closure is brought to these characters. Although it was a touching story line, for the most part, this movie was not very entertaining.

I found this film to be both touching and disturbing. Innovative and bold, Madchen in Uniform exposes social taboos in its depiction of lesbianism and teacher-student relationships. Beyond the subject matter, I was impressed with the acting and camera work, which seemed to tell a story all on its own. The quality of the film was certainly poor and the subtitles leave much to question, but the overall effect of the film is poignant. It succeeds in lifting the veil which conceals adolescent female life and without exploiting the budding sexuality of young girls, a phenomenon too often seen in cinema today. It seems strange that this careful balance of exposition and preservation was better kept seventy years ago than it is today. Should this movie be re-made now, one would doubtless see nudity,stereotypical lesbian behavior and exploitation of the relationship between the student and teacher. This film reminds us that a film doesn't have to shock us to be sexually provacative.

This was more than a gay classic, this film was a social commentary on the time period it was set in. We all now well know the views held on homosexuality by Hitler's socialist party which was coming into power during the time this movie was made. The entire film foreshadowed many of the things that would happen to people who were not seen as desirable in the eyes of the German government. One part especially, where the students and teachers were forbidden to have contact with Manuela, spoke of the public shunning of Jews and other so-called undesirables who were forbidden contact with other people. Of the three movies that Leontine Sagan directed this was the only one made in Germany. Given the fact that Sagan was of Jewish ancestry and the main theme of this movie was of love between women, it's not hard to see why her career in Germany was short lived.