This week we look at the queer classic Mädchen in Uniform and the recent British Film Institute Film Classics entry on that work.
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Movies, like people and books and songs, have a life story. Typically, the life of a film is broken down into its origins, followed by the production of the film, and its casting and other facets, then there is an account of its release and its after life in the culture, if it has one, and finally, there can be critical commentary which in certain cases tracks how reactions to the film have changed over numerous decades.
One such film with a fascinating life story is Germany’s Mädchen in Uniform, from 1931, created mostly by Leontine Sagan. Those interested in the film’s history can find a pretty good outline of its ups and downs in the new BFI film Classics volume by Barbara Mennel. The author traces the various stages of its reception and the controversies thereupon, and also deals briefly with his handful of remakes, and the attitude of underground sexual communities in pre-Nazi Germany and later the uses of the film by feminist writers from the 1970s onward.
Barbara Mennel teaches in the English Department of the University of Florida’s Film Studies Program as well as in the German Studies section of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and has published earlier books including Su Friedrich and Women at Work in Twenty-first Century European Cinema.
The story is simple enough: Adapted from Christa Winsloe's lesbian play, the plot follows Manuela, an orphan in a boarding school for impoverished Prussian nobility. When she declares her love for a female teacher, the oppressive principal punishes her, leading to a suicide attempt. But beneath this simple-seeming surface narrative, there are grand passions and lust and loves that dare not speak their name.
Professor Mennel packs a great deal of information in a small space. For example, the story comes in numerous versions that she lays out:
Ritter Nérestan: The play written by Christa Winsloe in 1930.
Gestern und Heute: The title under which Leontine Sagan directed Winsloe’s play in 1931 at the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin.
Mädchen in Uniform: The 1931 film directed by Leontine Sagan.
Maedchen in Uniform: The title under which the 1931 subtitled film was distributed in the US.
Girls in Uniform: The title of the 1931 dubbed film in the US.
Girls in Uniform: A Play in Three Acts: The title of the English play adapted by Barbara Burnham in 1932 from Winsloe’s original play.
Children in Uniform: A Play in Three Acts: The title of the Burnham adaptation directed by Sagan at the Duchess Theatre in London, which she toured in South Africa and under which it appeared in Samuel French Limited’s Acting Edition with additional stage instructions.
Das Mädchen Manuela: The title of Winsloe’s novel that was
published in 1933 in Amsterdam.
Muchachas de uniforme: The Mexican film [!] directed by
Alfredo B. Crevenna in 1951.
Mädchen in Uniform: The film directed by Géza von Radványi in West Germany in 1958.
Since the West German film, there have been remixes, video installations, and other works meditating on the meaning and effect of the film.
After acknowledgments and a note on titling, Professor Mendel describes the birth of the play and film, the film’s success, the following censorship disputes, and the work in the context of the Nazi film industry and exile, finally covering “Remakes, Rediscoveries and Remixes.”
As the author states in the introduction, her book argues for the "continuing relevance [of Mädchen] … for understanding politics and desire. It recognizes the film as an exceptional feminist and lesbian achievement but challenges the notion of a stable text by tracing variations and remakes in the network of proliferating and conflicting versions … An instant classic of German modern art cinema, it garnered high praise on the international film circuit, only to become the object of rumors, lawsuits, and in, in the U.S., a drawn out censorship battle. Its history, therefore, exemplifies the challenges to texts by and about women as they circulate in the public sphere,” adding, “the original film already generates such ambivalence, [that] the video essays, vids and mashups also proliferate the original queer space in new digital platforms.”
She is astute about the intricacies of casting:
The author seems more interested in social and sexual politics than in the film’s look, though she does note the importance of the staircase in the movie, which the kids are not permitted to use as an exit or entrance, but which ends up anyway being the location of significant emotional outbursts. However, “
“ Thus,
Instead, she is as fascinated by the different versions of the film as in the progenitor. She notes how some interpreters “transform rebellion into its opposite: female subservience, submission and complacency.” For example, “Reducing the original’s anti-authoritarian stance and lesbian subtext, the 1958 version expresses West Germany’s conservative postwar culture of the reconstruction period. German film historians follow New German Cinema’s casting of 1950s film culture as reactionary, proclaiming itself the rightful heir of Weimar and exile cinema. Yet, the Jewish exile biographies of the film’s makers establish an overlooked continuity from the Weimar Republic to the postwar period. Despite its conventional aesthetics of naturalism, the film pays homage to 1920s visual culture.”
The author concludes that “while queer fandom has the power to reassert lesbian desire after it has been censored or disavowed, it also operates with its own blindspots. Mädchen in Uniform’s afterlife speaks to cinema’s ability to arouse female desire and same-sex attraction despite the efforts of fascists, careerists, and censors to usurp authorship and excise words and images of female, lesbian, and adolescent desire.”