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Dresses and spaces in Leontine Sagan's Mädchen in Uniform (1931)  “Fourteen and a half” says Manuela moodily in response to being told she’s a big girl for fourteen. The source of this assessment of Manuela’s inappropriate stature is Fräulein von Kesten, the pinched and anxious assistant to the tyrannical Headmistress at the gloomy boarding school where Manuela is being summarily dumped by her aunt.
The film was co-written by Christa Winsloe and based on her own successful stage play, Yesterday and Today. It was directed by Leontine Sagan, an experienced theatre director and actress who had twice directed the play on stage but had no experience of directing film. The producer, Carl Froelich, was also credited with technical supervision and is known to have exercised considerable control over major aspects of the film including its title and its ending, which radically reverses that of the play, and day-to-day supervision of the shoot. The plot concerns Manuela’s passionate attachment to her charismatic teacher, Fräulein von Bernburg, culminating in her declaration of love before the whole school following her acclaimed performance as the male lead in the school play, Don Carlos. The ensuing scandal and punishment of Manuela results in her near suicide, but (unlike in the play) she is saved by a rebellion of the other pupils. The school at which Manuela’s Aunt deposits her prides itself on providing a suitable education for the daughters of Prussian aristocrats and military officers, this defined as preparing them to be the “mothers of soldiers”. Apart from a small number of brief montage sequences showing buildings and heroic sculptures in Potsdam, the action takes place entirely within the school’s boundaries and has an all female cast. It is set roughly contemporaneously with or slightly earlier than its production.  Cast in stone - Sculptures stand in for the Prussian military machine Jaunty martial music over the opening titles then accompanies a brief montage of shots showing neo-classical buildings and monumental sculptures of militaristic male figures, including naked wrestlers. The montage cuts to a close-up of marching female feet, followed by a wider shot showing a column of around forty schoolgirls in vertically striped uniforms, noted by Lotte Eisner (1952) in The Haunted Screen as “convict dress” . The girls, headed by a teacher and with their heads bowed meekly towards the ground under broad-brimmed hats, are marching along a gravel path beside formal lawns with a background of tall regularly spaced trees, themselves reminiscent of parading soldiers. So, within a minute of the film’s start, we are seeing exactly what Carl Froelich’s changed title (written with the express intention to titillate) promised us — girls in uniform. As we will see, it is not only the girls who are subject to strict codes of dress. Aside of a handful of peripheral instances, every character wears some sort of uniform except during the scenes on the evening of the School play, when the wearing of theatrical and cross-gender costume dissolves discipline as well as identity. A fleeting glimpse of a man occurs in the following panning shot which shows individual girl’s faces for the first time. In the background we momentarily see a gardener standing watering the lawns with a powerful hose. As he comes into view he is looking directly to camera (and therefore at the passing girls), then he is momentarily masked by one of the girls, then seen again turned away, then the pan loses him. The water jet’s arc, shimmering in the sunlight, provides a suggestion that the gardens are provided with more care and nourishment than, as we soon learn, are the girls.  Eyes down - the uniformed girls marching into the school Still accompanied by the military tune, the procession marches on into the gloomy cloistered interior of the school buildings and leaving the sunlight behind. A cut to silence and a dim and severe institutional waiting room with bare walls and hard bentwood chairs introduces us to Manuela’s Aunt (Gertrud de Lalsky), seated in the foreground. Behind her Manuela (Hertha Theile), her back to us, has pulled aside a translucent window curtain and is peering out into the sunlight that we, and she, have just left behind. The Aunt complains about being kept waiting by the Headmistress, by whom she had expected to be greeted. Her suspicion that they are not being treated with the courtesy that the family warrants is confirmed by the arrival not of the Head, but of her sharp faced and myopic deputy and chief enforcer, Fräulein von Kesten (Hedwig Schlichter), bearing excuses. As Manuela turns from the window and comes forward to be received we see her face for the first time and that she is wearing a sailor-suit dress — her own clothes, but with connotations of both childhood and military uniform, and subtly prefiguring her cross-dressed performance in Don Carlos. Hertha Theile had played Manuela twice before on stage and, although in her early-twenties when the film was shot, both her face and her acting convince far more effectively than many “playing-younger” performances of before or since. At mention of her Mother, who has died, Manuela starts to weep and is reprimanded by her Aunt. Fräulein von Kesten, however, provides a modicum of consolation, opining “there’s no harm in a few tears” — an early indication that von Kesten is more of a jobsworth than a natural tyrant in the iron mould of the Headmistress.  Point of order - the forbidden staircase Outside in the hallway we see that a girl, in the uniform familiar to us from the procession, has been listening at the door, evidence of a typical institutional culture of eavesdropping and snooping. This is Marga (Ilse Winter), who has been assigned to show Manuela the ropes. Manuela emerges from the reception room alone and starts to climb a grand, carpeted, curved staircase with a heavy stone balustrade. Marga comes out from the shadows where she has been hiding and calls Manuela down, explaining that these stairs are forbidden to all except the Headmistress and important guests. Marga tells Manuela that she will help her but that in return Manuela must serve her by bringing her washing water in the mornings and other chores. In fact we subsequently see nothing of this and Marga’s prefectorial authority appears to be limited. The Aunt leaves Manuela with a cold formal farewell and departs the school. We now learn, along with Manuela, that the school had two staircases — the forbidden staircase we have just seen and the massive main staircase, several stories high, uncarpeted and utilitarian but with iron balustrades, the shadows of whose distinctive pattern provide a strong barred motif which the filmmakers use to full effect throughout.  Height of activity - the bustling main staircase This main staircase, a key arterial support for both the activities of the school and the drama of the film, provides the site for several significant scenes. It also very much figures as the everyday domain of the girls, who occupy it freely both as a busy conduit and a stage for gossip and pranks. B Ruby Rich (1984) points to the role of the staircase in “making palpable the functioning of patriarchal codes” both visually with its bars and deadly height and philosophically by the girls obligation to use it and not the formal forbidden staircase. The main staircase always seems to be relatively bright and bathed with clear light, even when lit more expressionistically as the drama heightens. The Headmistress’s gloomy forbidden staircase, by contrast, is usually lit and shot to curve away into crepuscular murk (although towards the end of the film, when the Headmistress’s authority has begun to crumble, one shot does reveal that there is a window further up). During Marga’s shepherding of Manuela, we briefly cut away to a shot of a class of girls singing a patriotic hymn. As Marga and Manuela set off up the staircase, we return to this scene and are introduced to a key supporting character, Ilse. The camera tracks in to isolate Ilse in close up, the audio simultaneous revealing that while appearing to lustily sing the praises of the Fatherland she is actually substituting words of her own complaining about the dire inadequacy of the school food.  Rebel song - Ilse sings words of her own The literal hunger of the girls is a recurring theme, echoing their emotional deprivation. We never see them eating a meal during the film, although we occasionally glimpse a girl eating a sweet or an apple, presumably sent from home. There is not a refectory scene such as might be expected in a boarding school film. Even at the party after the school play (while famously there is alcoholic drink, courtesy of the ingenious servants) the tables are laid for a meal but very little in the way of food is evident. A view of the silent main corridor, characterized by its hard checkered floor tiles and regimented pilasters, their vertical fluting echoing the vertical stripes of the school uniform, is punctured by a shrill electric bell and a moment later a classroom door opens and girls spill out and disperse, including a trio with their arms round each others shoulders, a first visual indication of the girls’ easy physical intimacy and solidarity. A vertiginous shot down the well of the main staircase from above establishes both its great height and the routine bustle of groups of girls moving up and down it and chattering. On one landing, Manuela and Marga, going up, meet a group of girls going down, some of whom introduce themselves by name (slightly confusingly, there are two girls called Ilse – here we will refer to the subversive girl we have already seen in the singing scene, Ilse von Westhagen, as Ilse). On learning that Manuela is in Fräulein von Bernburg’s dormitory, Ilse launches into a satirical impersonation of a girl in an ecstasy of infatuation with von Bernburg and desperate to know if it’s true that von Bernburg gives the girls kisses. Mildly amused, Manuela merely says she has had several strange teachers and follows Marga upstairs to the fourth floor and the wardrobe. In the wardrobe room, a dingy somewhat claustrophobic workroom space in contrast to the stairwell, we meet a representative of the third distinct group of women in the film, the school servants. Elise (Else Ehser) is a cheerful soul, a bustling middle-aged multitasker in a regulation dark work dress. As the mistress of the wardrobe she is the custodian of the all-important uniforms and perhaps enjoys more autonomy than the other servants who, as we see soon, wear their own version of the uniform. Elise’s workroom is dominated by the stock and tools of her trade, large cupboards, a sewing machine and a huge pincushion, but she has also made sure to surround herself with home comforts, a teacup, a dresser with ornaments and books, and a display of pinned up picture postcards, indeed her room is the only space seen in the film which has a touch of homely cosiness. Theile’s acting here is particularly good as she channels the misery of a shy adolescent obliged to undress in front of a stranger and surrender her familiar clothes. We see her looking vulnerable in just her chemise, an article of dress that will gain central significance later. Elise sits Manuela down and, rather painfully, dresses and pins her hair into the severe regulation style, meanwhile cheerfully humming a somewhat tuneless version of Carmen’s aria “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” — Love is a rebellious bird that cannot be tamed. Indeed it is, as we will see. Provided with a striped uniform Manuela balks at it being used goods, but is intrigued to find a talisman attached to it bearing a heart and the initials “E.v.B”. Elise readily explains, chuckling, that this stands for “Elizabeth von Bernburg” and the uniform was previously allocated to a girl who had a crush on the teacher.  Love object - Manuela finds a mystery hidden in her uniform This evocation of her name is followed instantly by the first shot of Fräulein von Bernburg herself, advancing along the corridor towards the foot of the main staircase. The severe horizontals and verticals of the corridor’s architecture are lit in a way that subtly fragments and distorts them, providing a backdrop to our first sight of von Bernburg (Dorothea Wieck) that suggests complexity behind the vertical institutional rigidity. Von Bernburg wears an austere high-necked dress and medallion of authority identical to those we have already seen on Fräulein von Kesten, her hair pulled up in the regulation style we have just seen inflicted on Manuela and topped with a small white cap. Clearly the teachers are subject to rigid uniform regulations of their own.  Eyeline - Fräulein von Bernburg sees Manuela for the first time Going briskly up the stairs, von Bernburg suddenly halts, looking at something that has caught her attention on the landing above and smiling with evident pleasure. She has, of course, seen Manuela on her way down. But Manuela, preoccupied with the unfamiliar discomfort of her coarse striped uniform, has not yet seen von Bernburg. So for the second time in the film (after Marga) Manuela is unknowingly observed. They meet face to face, von Bernburg a step or two below Manuela and so obliged to literally look up to her at the same time as firmly establishing her authority over her. Finding minor fault with Manuela’s hair, despite it having being arranged according to regulations minutes earlier, causes (or enables) von Bernburg to touch Manuela briefly for the first time, patting her hair and turning her by the shoulders. This short encounter establishes the twin strands of von Bernburg’s educational strategy — love, and the absolute discipline that the regime demands — and lays the seeds of her eventual inner conflict. The main staircase is an insistent presence, both bringing together and, by level, separating the pair at their first meeting. Expressionistic shadows of the balustrade, inexplicable from any digetic light source, frame the close shots and visually implant the narrative significance of the staircase.  Pin ups - Wieck and Thiele on 1930s Ross Verlag star postcards similar in type to the Hans Albers ones enjoyed by Ilse Unlike Thiele, Wieck had not previously played her role on stage. She was apparently cast as von Bernburg on the insistence of Carl Froelich in preference to Margarete Melzer who had played the role on stage in Berlin and seems to have presented and dressed for the part as the average playgoer’s notion of a cartoon lesbian. Richard Dyer (1990) argues that the principal planks of Froelich’s efforts to de-lesbianise the film, including the casting of the conventionally feminine Wieck, actually had precisely the opposite effect on the finished film. In any case, had von Bernburg been played as a masculinised figure this would not only have undermined the ambiguities that give the film its richness and mystery, it would have diluted the impact of the figure of the Headmistress and the significance of the girls’ cross-dressing in the school play. We next see the locker room, a severe functional space made dynamic by the girls’ presence, their spontaneous singing, banter, and games, and their strewn-about possessions including a toy gramophone which is playing a repetitive nursery rhyme type tune. Being able to see and hear a gramophone in a film in 1931 is still sufficient of a novelty to warrant a brief close-up of the machine.  "Sex Appeal, no?" - Locker room secrets  Sweet and sour - Mariechen and Marga Marga allocates Manuela her locker and then confiscates forbidden items from her luggage — a novel, chocolate, and some money — sources respectively of imaginative escape, nutritional comfort, and the possible means of flight. Ilse draws Manuela away from Marga’s uncertain authority and shows her, hidden inside her own locker, an extensive collage of photo postcards of the film star Hans Albers, shown twice to us in close-up. She says that another girl has a rival display of pictures of Henny Porten (star of several Carl Froelich films), but the issue for banter apparently concerns which star has more “sex appeal” rather any question of gender. Two other girls are seen looking at a magazine photo of a muscular man in swimwear. Edelgard (Annemarie von Rochhausen) arrives in the room and introduces herself to Manuela.  Edelgard steps in Later in the film we will discover, from the Don Carlos playbill, that Edelgard is "Edelgard Comptesse von Mengsberg". But here she introduces herself simply by her first name and immediately asks Manuela if she can help her. Edelgard’s high aristocratic status is characterised throughout by an evident detachment and maturity, but without aloofness or disdain. As here, arriving in the room on her own after everyone else, there is a certain otherness about her that intrigues. With her tall tomboy figure and blonde page-boy hair, anyone seeking an androgynous presence in Mädchen in Uniform need surely look no further than Edelgard. The girls examine Manuela’s confiscated book, spotting an apparently sensational illustration, and they pass it rowdily from hand to hand. Von Kesten arrives to remove the confiscated items and (somewhat gratifyingly) reprimands the officious prefect Marga for not having promptly and tidily completed her duties. Glaring closely at Manuela, von Kesten details the school’s system of discipline and punishment. As she departs, Ilse thumbs her nose after von Kesten. Cut to… The Headmistress. Our first sighting of the Headmistress (Emilia Unda) in her study is one of the most arresting images in the film. For an instant, we could be seeing a familiar film image of a male fin-de-siècle tycoon or ambassador at his desk reading a newspaper, a momentary misapprehension partly created by her appearance and partly by her surroundings.  Seat of power - the Headmistress in her study In semi-profile behind an enormous dark desk furnished with an ornate telephone and inkstands, the Headmistress sits stiffly upright on a throne-like chair. She is absorbed in reading an open newspaper, signifying that she concerns herself with the state of the country as well as that of the school, as is soon confirmed. In the background to the left of her is a sunlit gauze-curtained window, emphasizing, as in the reception scene, the deep gloom prevailing within the room. Here though, unlike in the reception room, the rectangular symmetry of the window is broken by the dark arc of a heavy fringed curtain which could be utilized either to shut the sunlight out altogether or to shut out the cold of winter. It is often said that the Headmistress is styled to resemble Frederick the Great. Her high hairline certainly resembles that of an 18th century wig, and with her slightly bulging eyes, and two ornate badges of insignia, one at her throat and one on a ribbon round her neck, the superficial resemblance can hardly be coincidental. At the extreme left of the image a sculptural ornament depicts an aristocratic 18th century male figure, possibly Frederick himself, with hunting dogs. Von Kesten comes into frame, a file of papers in hand, obsequiously trying to attract the Headmistress’ attention. The Headmistress ignores von Kesten just long enough to humiliate her, continuing to read the newspaper and then putting it aside. The files concern the expenditure of the school and the Headmistress complains that not enough savings are being made. Again revealing her repressed humanitarian side, von Kesten pleads that the girls complain of hunger. “Hungry!” retorts the Headmistress furiously “Prussians have always been hungry.” And later: “Through discipline and hunger we shall be great again, or we shall be nothing.” Von Kesten submissively concurs. A group of girls, including the round faced, kind-hearted. Mariechen (Dora Thalmer), sit outside in the bright daylight of the gardens discussing various delicious foods they have known at home, and one of them remarks that some girl’s parents are now no longer so wealthy, an explicit indication that the school draws its pupils from a slowly declining class.  Below stairs - the servants discuss the girls' meagre diet In the kitchen four of the servants are also discussing the school food and the measures they are forced to take to economise with it. They express sympathy with the girls’ hunger and their fear of complaining, and criticise the harsh disciplinarian culture. Like the pupils and the teachers, the servants wear the appropriate uniform of their class and occupation. This consists of a dress with short sleeves and a tunic neck, made in heavy cotton with a fine vertical stripe that echoes the broader “convict” stripe of the girls’ uniform, a crisp white maid's apron, and a small white cap on the back of the head over regulation pinned-up hair. A brass bell in the main corridor is rung and the girls are brought to attention in straight lines for an assembly. The Headmistress slowly walks along the lines like an officer inspecting troops. She moves slowly, very upright with a stout walking cane in her hand. This will later prove to be a symbol of authority rather than an essential aid to remaining upright. We also discover that the Headmistress creaks as she walks, an example of the filmmaker’s creative grasp of the metaphorical and atmospheric possibilities of the new sound medium. As she passes them, the girls are required to follow her progress with the heads and eyes. At the very end of the film we will see this same gesture transformed from a sign of respect and subservience to one of contempt and defiance. She comes to Manuela (framed by the profiles of her friends Ilse and Edelgard in the rear line) and curtly acknowledges this new addition to the school. The girls are manoeuvred with military precision into a semicircular formation around the base of the forbidden staircase, on which a lectern has been placed for the Headmistress. This position is thus established as a nexus point of authoritarian power in the school, returning later in the film for the visit of the patron Princess. Positioned behind her lectern, the Headmistress guards her gloomy domain and defends its values. The teachers join the assembly and a hymn is sung. Following a brief prayer asking the girls to reflect on their sins, the Headmistress gets down to the real business of the assembly, a disciplinary tirade based on intelligence she has received that letters are being smuggled out complaining about conditions at the school. She threatens anyone caught doing this with a catalogue of severe punishments including being prohibited from wearing the uniform. We might think this sanction to be more of a reward than a disincentive, but the implication is that a girl wearing her own clothes in a procession such as that seen at the start of the film would not only be identified as a miscreant but might also suffer ostracization or public rebuke. Given the solidarity we see later, the Headmistress may be wrong about this, but it is telling that she assumes that loyalty to, and identification with, the uniform is unqualified Moving to evening and darkness, the chimes of a church clock are heard through the large open window of a dormitory and we see a line of institutional iron bedsteads. Two of the younger girls, arm in arm and in melancholy conversation about the miseries of the school, sit together in the dark looking out of the window and identifying the sounds coming from the nearby military barracks. Outside the tall windows behind them, leaves are fluttering in the night breeze. A sudden change of lighting causes the two younger girls to turn inward as if caught in a breach of the rules — a teacher, Fräulein von Gärschner (Lene Berdolt) has appeared and switched on the bright overhead dormitory lights, ending their reverie. Later we will see von Bernberg theatrically reverse this change for atmospheric purposes of her own. Von Gärschner closes the window, banishing the outside world, and packs the two girls off to the washroom.  Washroom pleasures We initially see the washroom in a wide shot from a high angle – a harsh institutional space is transformed by the vivacity and playful activity of the girls, as with the locker room earlier. Rows of drab rectangular cubicles are strewn higgledy-piggledy with discarded uniforms, shoes, and towels, and a flurry of activity is in progress. Then we see close-ups of several girls with bare shoulders and arms, their hair loose, evidently taking sensory pleasure in the freedom of wearing only their underwear while they perform various preparations for bed. One of them has a mirror and is experimenting with some sort of makeshift lipstick. Ilse calls everyone round Mariechen and cajoles her to reluctantly perform a trick, busting a button on her uniform by swelling out her ample chest — a transgression from the ethos of the school both in terms of maidenly modesty and respect for the uniform. The ensuing uproar brings Fräulein von Gärschner in to restore order. Sensory pleasure and ribald spontaneity now suppressed, the girls are ordered into their individual cubicles and the cubicle curtains closed, rapidly transforming the space to drab institutional and hygienic order, and restoring puritanical modesty. A slightly odd continuity cut replaces von Gärschner with von Bernburg (seen from behind) as she approaches Manuela and Edelgard who are sitting side-by-side on a bed with their backs to us, in the brightly lit dormitory. They have their arms around one another, Manuela already in her white nightdress, evoking bridal wear, Edelgard in just her chemise, arms and shoulders bare, and her constraining uniform discarded in a heap beside her as she embraces Manuela. Although it soon transpires that Edelgard is comforting the grieving Manuela, the establishing image of their backs could just as readily denote a romantic tryst. And indeed we might conclude from Von Bernburg’s reaction that this possibility also occurs to her. She calls Edelgard’s name sharply, bringing both girls to their feet and springing them apart as though caught in a misdemeanour, Edelgard snatching up her discarded uniform. Von Bernburg separates them, literally coming between them, and demands to know what they were doing. Edelgard explains that they were talking about Manuela’s mother, who is dead. While she listens to this, Von Bergberg pointedly averts her eyes from Edelgard, then glances back to her and curtly orders her to go to the washroom, thereby supplanting her as Manuela’s confidante and comforter.  "What are you doing?" - Von Bernberg startles Edelgard and Manuela Hints of eroticism in the washroom scene and the framing and costuming of Edelgard and Manuela together on the bed prepare the ground for this second intimate encounter with von Bernburg, again shot and lit using the conventions of cinematic romance. “The camera observes on Manuela’s face the shift from the silent bearing of grief to the upsurge of desire.” (Dyer, 1990). As Manuela gazes adoringly into the older woman’s face, von Bernburg comforts her, telling her that she will soon get used to the school and must pray to God to help her. Marching music recalls the opening of the film and we again see marching legs and feet, this time in ankle length nightdresses and slippers as the girls are drilled from the washroom to their dormitory and get into bed, overseen again by Fräulein von Gärschner. In a somewhat startling stylistic flourish, perhaps Soviet influenced, an extreme close-up of von Gärschner’s mouth is seen gabbling (unheard) orders. She then departs, having acted as a sort of stage manager — marshalling the scene for von Bernburg’s entrance and the performance of the famous “kiss” scene that now follows. We see incidentally here that the military austerity of the dormitory is marginally relieved by small plaques hung above each bed, presumably religious or moral texts with decorative borders, the nearest thing to personalisation of the girls’ bedspaces permitted. Once von Gärschner has departed, Ilse stands on her bed and performs her imitation of the headmistress, causing an outbreak of disorderly mirth. The prefect Marga barks an instruction and all lie down and are silent. The scene is set for the kiss routine. Fräulein von Bernburg makes her entrance, stepping briskly and theatrically through the door, her arrival heralded, vamp like, by her shadow on the glass doors. She stands briefly at attention, her neat upright figure framed by translucent panels, and asks if everyone is ready, to which comes a chorus of assent. In a closer shot, she then operates her own lighting cue, reaching smartly to flick a wall-switch on her right. This extinguishes the bright overhead dormitory lights and is the precise reverse of the lighting change we earlier saw the disciplinarian von Gärschner operate in order to disrupt the intimate conversation between the two young girls by the open window. Von Bernberg is now momentarily seen in classically lit romantic twilight with a segment of bright ethereal halo behind her head. Simultaneously, a peal of bells erupts in the distance.  Shadowland The girls rise in unison in their beds and kneel expectantly at the lower end while an unseen light source now casts theatrical shadows of them, like a shadow play of a fairytale, humanising the clinical harshness of the dormitory walls. We have seen the girls moving in unison to form preordained patterns before, but in the formations of soldiers on parade. This is more like the action of a romantic ballet, and indeed the sound of bells is replaced by an orchestral melody inflected with soft echoes of the earlier bugle calls, these giving way to swelling strings as the following action comes to a climax. Von Bernburg moves slowly along the beds, taking each head in turn between her hands and kissing each forehead, then gently pushing the recipient away to lie down. We see Manuela following this progress with her eyes, radiant and smiling. Turning her head as von Bernburg comes to her side of the dormitory, Manuela’s gaze catches the gaze of the camera for an instant, implicating us in her anticipation. The irrepressible Ilse gives Manuela a whispered commentary as von Bernburg at last approaches their adjacent beds. Ilse, kneeling upright and rigid like a plaster saint contemplating heaven, receives her kiss on the forehead and lies down. Manuela has not, like the other girls, already adopted a kneeling position when von Bernburg arrives in front of her, but is still sitting. This facilitates an extra, and significant, fragment of action. Shot from behind so that it is von Bernburg’s face we see, Manuela, bride-like in her nightdress, rises to match the teacher’s level. This movement injects a romantic dramatic charge into what would otherwise be too similar to what we have already seen with the other girls. Manuela throws her arms around von Bernburg’s neck and buries her head in her right shoulder, von Bernburg turning her head to the left so we see her face. Her hands come forward as if to return the embrace, hesitate, grip Manuela’s sides and then there is a cut to a close-up two shot. Von Bernburg slowly pulls Manuela’s clinging arms down from the embrace then lowers her head, kisses her on the mouth, turns away and leaves. Ilse, briefly glimpsed, already has her eyes closed so we assume that she (and the others) have not witnessed the kiss. This was a secret moment shared only with the camera. Manuela lies down contentedly and peacefully to sleep. In spite of its reputation and contentious meaning, the kiss on the mouth itself is actually very brief. But the visual and auditory build up to it, in a different emotional and stylistic key to anything that precedes it, and its position at the end of act one, mark it as climactic.  Seductive entrance - Von Bernberg arrives to give kisses; postcard of the Russian Hollywood star Alla Nazimova Interviewed in 1980 Hertha Theile (Schlupmann and Gramman, 1981) recounts that the Romanian distributors of Mädchen in Uniform contacted Carl Froelich asking for a cut of the film with more kissing in it. Whatever it was intended to mean in relation to the characters’ relationship and motivation, then, the kiss scene has always been a focus both of the film’s popular success and its critical appraisal. There now follows a variation on the montage of martial sculptures that started the film, again with military bugle calls over it. As well as serving as a reassertion of the prevailing authoritarian and patriarchal order in the wake of the erotic undercurrents of the washroom and explicitness of the kiss itself (McCormick, 2008), the montage also ends the first act and indicates the elapse of a considerable period of time. The film until now has followed Manuela’s first day, but soon we will hear evaluations of her academic progress which suggest the passage of several weeks. The bugles ringing in our ears, we cut to the school corridor and a military-style exercise is indeed in progress, a single column of girls marching in a repetitive loop while Fräulein von Gärschner acting as drill sergeant calls “Left! Left! Left!”. The French teacher Mlle Oeuillet (Lisi Scheerbach) and the English teacher Miss Evans (Margory Bodker), invariably seen together and the nearest thing the film has to a comic duo, sit chatting (probably gossiping) on a bench, ignoring the drill. Two girls, Mia and Marga (not the prefect Marga), who are not involved in the drill, talk excitedly about how Mia has received a romantic note from a younger girl, Josi. They have not noticed the proximity of von Bernburg, who confiscates the note, tears it up without reading it, then hands it back with instructions to throw it away. Her reprimand dismisses the content of the note, which she has clearly overheard, as trivial, and identifies the misdemeanour as a breach of the school’s prohibition on passing notes, a displacement consistent with Rich’s (1984) view of von Bernberg’s modus operandi as positioning herself as the exclusive object of erotic desire and so neutralising the girls’ desires for their fellow pupils. Relieved, the two girls retreat smiling. Edelgard, who has witnessed the scene along with Manuela, enthusiastically acclaims von Bernburg’s generously lenient treatment of the incident.  Fearful symmetry - von Bernberg's educational methods called to account An indeterminate time later, a staff meeting is in progress in a meeting room in the same stylistic territory as the Head’s study, gloomy and claustrophobic with dark patterned paper or fabric lining the walls. The establishing shot, from a low angle at the end of a heavy boardroom table, shows a regimented symmetrical grouping. All six teachers in their identical uniforms with identical pens held upright in their right hands sit three-a-side at the table. At the far end the Headmistress sits glaring sternly, elevated half a head above her subordinates and framed by a murky oil painting on the wall behind her. Von Bernburg is defending her educational methods against the Head and other teachers, who complain that affection and friendship towards the girls is inappropriate and will arouse emotion, and that discipline and competitiveness must be fostered. The lugubrious von Gärschner opines that the German classics must be nurtured, at which Mlle Oeuillet lets out a quickly suppressed giggle. The Headmistress complains that von Bernburg gives few “black marks”. She responds that her pupils behave and learn well without punishment. Relishing being thrown this cue, von Kesten raises Manuela’s name and von Bernburg has to admit that she is not progressing well. The other teachers seize the moment to compete in proclaiming that Manuela is in fact an excellent pupil in their classes. On the defensive, von Bernburg replies that her teaching generally produces very good results, which the Headmistress acknowledges, but advises her, with a wry smile and a strange ambiguous twitch of her eyebrow, not to aim any higher. The Head’s expression in this close-up is intriguing – could it be taken to imply that she is only too well aware of the emotional desires she dreads being unleashed because she shares them?  Class act - Edelgard recites while Manuela only has eyes for von Bernberg Cut to a classroom where we will see for ourselves what has just been discussed at the staff meeting. The girls are waiting at their school desks and von Bernburg enters and takes her place on an elevated dais at the front. The functional monotony of the room is solely relieved, curiously, by a picture on the wall behind her of what appears to be an anatomical cross-section of a cow’s head, the only educational aid on view besides a blackboard. The lesson requires the girls to individually recite memorised Christian passages. Mariechen, endearing stalwart of light relief, is the first to be called. Despite having very timidly raised her hand to volunteer, she does well with a passage from Genesis involving Jacob’s beautiful wives, his ewes, and his pottage of lentils. This inevitably raises an inappropriate snort of amusement from Ilse (a witty doubling with Mlle Oeuillet’s inappropriate giggle at the mention of German classics in the previous scene). Next Edelgard is called. Seated directly behind Manuela, she stands smartly and begins. While the other girls turn to watch Edelgard recite, we see that Manuela’s adoring gaze remains transfixed on the front of the room. Edelgard begins to fervently declaim the text of the Lutheran hymn “O daß ich tausend Zungen hätte“ – “Oh, that I had a thousand voices and a thousand tongues to praise my God” (not, as sometimes referenced, the Song of Solomon with which it shares some similar phrases but which might be unlikely homework in this school). While nominally a religious text, the passionate words as recited by Edelgard supply an erotically charged aural backdrop to what follows visually. As Edelgard recites we see a close-up of von Bernburg. This dissolves to an extreme close-up of Manuela gazing adoringly at her, their faces merging briefly. In a reverse shot of von Bernburg, she appears unsettled and embarrassed and averts her eyes from Manuela’s gaze. In response we see an even closer shot of Manuela’s gaze, her face cut off just above the eyebrows but showing the fullness of her mouth, site of von Bernburg’s dormitory kiss.  Here's looking at you - Extreme close up of Manuela's gaze from von Bergberg's POV Manuela’s face is extraordinarily expressive in the close-ups in this scene of her gazing adoringly at von Bernburg. Theile remembers, however, that when her close-ups for the scenes opposite von Bernburg were shot, Froelich would ask her if she wanted Weick in position behind camera to play to and she always declined, preferring to play to cameraman Franzel Weihmayr and his camera (Schlupmann and Gramman, 1981). She says she found Weick beautiful but without warmth, while Weihmayr was by contrast emotionally engaging. This rather confirms Froelich’s canniness in casting Weick as a character whose human warmth is rationed in the service of the frigid institution for most of the film. Siegfried Kracauer (1947), while regarding the film’s politics as timid and muting its lesbianism, praised Weick’s performance fulsomely, saying “each gesture of hers tells of lost battles, buried hopes and sublimated desires.” As Edelgard pauses her recitation at the end of the verse, von Bernburg recovers her composure and authority and instructs Manuela to continue. She manages the first line but then, completely tongue-tied and crestfallen, is unable to go on. A brief shot shows Von Bernburg looking at her lovingly, willing her to be able to continue. The inner struggle has begun. Then, standing and coming close to her, she curtly reprimands her. Immediately after the class, we see Manuela timidly hiding in the corridor at the base of the Main Staircase. Von Bernburg approaches, accompanied by two girls carrying her books. Manuela comes forward as they pass, then, ignored, she follows them up the stairs at a distance.  Johanna In von Bernburg’s office, a light spacious room with a large sunlit window, the kindly servant Johanna is sorting laundry. Von Bernburg glances at her very briefly but does not acknowledge or greet her and sits at her desk to work. Out on the staircase, Edelgard has followed Manuela to comfort her. The book-carrying girls appear on a landing higher up the staircase, echoing the placing of von Bernburg and Manuela before their first meeting. They tell Manuela that the teacher wishes to see her. Johanna shows Manuela’s worn chemise to von Bernburg and adds compassionately that she feels sorry for her because her pillow is always wet from crying with homesickness at night. Von Bernburg is disdainful and bluntly dismissive of the servant’s concerns, but takes the chemise over her arm. Johanna shakes her head despairingly and mutters at her behind her back as she leaves. We have learned that von Bernburg’s courtesy and principled humanitarianism does not extend to the woman who handles her dirty laundry. Outside in the passage Edelgard drags Manuela by the wrists towards the teacher’s door and not only knocks for her but turns the handle and pushes the door open. Once inside, Manuela, doubtless expecting her poor lesson preparation to be the subject of discussion, finds that instead she is asked to account for worn out state of her chemise. It is interesting to note that von Bernburg did not know about the worn chemise when she sent the book-carrying girls to summon Manuela — the conversation with Johanna takes place after they have left the room. So the chemise as a significant object is unforeseeably introduced by the servant and immediately seized on by von Bernburg for the purpose of repairing the bond broken by Manuela’s poor performance in class, discussion of which is abandoned. Agreeing that the old chemise (thought serviceable by Manuela’s Aunt) is wholly unfit for purpose, the pair break into shared laughter and the ice is well and truly broken in preparation for what follows. There is no close-up of the chemise to emphasise its poor condition or its narrative significance, and the three people we have seen touch it all do so fairly cursorily, handling as just a piece of defective laundry. However, we have seen other girls in their chemises enjoying innocent sensual activity in the washroom scene and most particularly we have seen Edelgard in hers on Manuela’s bed, so the film has already attached a subtle erotic charge to the generic garment. Equally, when von Bernburg now makes the crucial gift to Manuela of one of her own chemises we see it briefly as an immaculately pressed and folded article, and even when she shakes it out (to estimate the fit) it mainly drops out of frame. Now for the second time in the film Manuela flings her arms around von Bernburg and clings to her. In a reverse of the same action in the kiss scene, this time we see Manuela’s joyful face on the teacher’s shoulder and von Bernburg does not move to prise her arms away until Manuela starts sobbing. However, mid-gesture her hands cease to push Manuela away and instead support her in a cradling embrace that lasts several silent seconds. Then, leaving Manuela sitting on a chair to control her tears, von Bernburg ignores her and settles at her desk to work. Sitting before the bright window with its row of well nurtured pot plants in bloom, her new chemise grasped in her lap, Manuela blurts out that she doesn’t know why she is crying because she is not unhappy. Perhaps already sensing what is coming next von Bernburg, grasping at the information she earlier scornfully dismissed from Johanna’s lips, prompts Manuela to say if she is homesick, so inevitably opening the door to full confession of the real reason for her night tears. Their chairs now turned to face one another and their eyelines level, Manuela fully declares her love for the teacher, her despair that she cannot go to her in her room at night, and that one day it will be other girls who are kissed at bedtime. Alarmed by this frankness (which she has just been at pains to invite) von Bernburg leaps to her feet and re-assumes her cold authoritarian persona, dismissing the confession, telling Manuela to confine herself to being a good friend, and reminding her that if exceptions were made the other girls would be jealous. Having thus extinguished hope, von Bernburg immediately reignites it with — “I think of you a lot, Manuela”, a line with some currency in debates about the film’s sexual ambiguities. Promising not to cry any more, relaxed again and excitedly fingering the fabric of her new chemise, Manuela asks von Bernburg if she is happy. She replies that her happiness comes from living for all the children, and affably resists Manuela’s attempt to prolong the conversation. After leaving the room we see Manuela again ruffling the fabric of the chemise with her fingers as she goes on her way, smiling happily. A peal of church bells and another glimpse of the external world, a brief tilting shot of the church tower. The upward camera movement on the church reiterates the upsurge of (bridal?) joy we have seen Manuela experience in the previous shot, while its image sets the scene for the Sunday morning sequence that follows.  Sunday morning pursuits In the dormitory a panning shot first reveals Mia and a friend lying relaxed together on one bed, Mia eating an apple (the Fall) and her friend lying across her, eyes closed. Then we see Ilse on her own bed stretching and rolling over languidly. They are all in full school uniform (“convict dress”) and it is only necessary to imagine this same scene with the girls in their nightdresses to realise the powerful function of the uniform in the suppression of sensuality. Bright sunlight illuminates the scene, creating barred shadows of windows and bed frames that supplement the atmosphere of confinement. Elsewhere, but confined by similar shadows, Edelgard and a friend are seen sitting side by side and talking about the misery of the school life. Edelgard quotes her mother (echoing the views of the Headmistress) that the coming times will require strength and iron resolve. The most vertiginous shot yet of the bright main staircase introduces a scene that confirms its colossal height and establishes its potential as a place of physical danger. Ilse and two friends on a high landing first spit and then drop toy cap-bombs down the stairwell, the latter startling the ever-snooping von Kesten on a lower landing. Outside the cloisters in front of sunlit trees groups of girls stroll or talk in groups. Bell chimes indicate more Sunday hours have passed. In some sort of day room, eight girls are seated at a circular sewing table making repairs to their worn out undergarments, including stockings and chemises. Mariechen, wearing her strong glasses, holds her work close to her eyes. Ilse is not sewing. She is reading out a letter she has written home and intends to smuggle out alerting her parents to the lack of sufficient food — exactly the serious misdemeanour that the Headmistress warned about in the assembly scene. Von Kesten comes in to check the sewing, and she very nearly discovers the letter. Her attitude in this scene (removed from the immediate scrutiny of her boss) is relatively benign and encouraging, admonishing a noisy interruption with no more than a stern look and then complementing the offender after finding no fault with her sewing.  "Obedient assistants"? - The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari; Diary of a Lost Girl; Mädchen in Uniform B. Ruby Rich (1984) likens von Kesten to Doctor Caligari’s “obedient assistant, a dark hunchbacked figure who carries out” (the Headmistress’s) “orders”, a figure physically warped by her complicity in “carrying out patriarchal dirty work”. This is a neat enough comparison for the purpose of underlining a feminist reading of the power structures within the school, but von Kesten is no robotic Cesare, or even consistently grotesque in the mould of the terrifying orphanage supervisor created by the great Valeska Gert in Pabst’s Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), a mere three years before Mädchen. In Winsloe’s dialogue, Sagan’s direction, and Hedwig Schlichter’s performance, there is clearly the intention of showing von Kesten as a cowed, partly conflicted figure who is still capable of fairness and small gestures of mitigation and sympathy. Into the main corridor, the servant Johanna emerges in her light coloured Sunday best dress, gloves and wide-brimmed hat, striding out cheerily for her afternoon off, swinging her reticule. Ilse stops her and asks her to smuggle her letter out to the post. Johanna happily and unhesitatingly agrees (suggesting that Johanna is the regular courier for such letters), patting Ilse encouragingly on the back as she leaves, a gesture of sisterly solidarity rather than adult patronage. The ubiquitous Von Kesten inevitably appears, but seconds too late to witness the crime. Two girls are hand printing a poster and we understand that a period of time has passed. A close-up shows us a playbill for a performance of Schiller’s Don Carlos in honour of the Headmistress’ birthday, listing the cast.  Ruff guess -"Will she like me?" Mariechen is to play King Philip II of Spain (an inspired piece of casting if ever there was one). Manuela is Don Carlos, Edelgard is the Marquis of Posa, and Ilse is the Friar Domingo. While we read the poster the preparation period is elided and we hear Manuela reciting some of her lines and another girl telling her how handsome she looks in her costume. In a makeshift dressing room behind the stage we see Manuela in full Don Carlos costume, with plumed hat and tights and seated in an elevated position while the girl we have just heard sits at her feet and strokes her leg. Manuela asks if “she” (von Bernburg) will like her in her costume, adding that she must like her. The bustling room is full of girls in stage costume preparing for the performance, while Elise, the cheerful and maternal wardrobe servant, attentively scurries around checking details. Ilse, in her friar’s hooded habit and long grey beard, rehearses with a girl in full armour a scene in which they plot to ruin Don Carlos through intercepted letters — church and the military conspiring against love.  Unholy father - Ilse gets into the habit It might be argued that the costuming for the play is of an unconvincingly high standard for a small school that is too stingy to feed its pupils properly. However, it is vital to the film that what we see of the play and its aftermath is credible for the girls, and for us, as a rich alternative reality where romantic love is possible and the dull constraints on the imagination of the school become powerless for a time. In staging a “German classic” as her birthday celebration, the esteemed Headmistress will unwittingly unleash a carnival of erotically charged fantasy. Cut from the excited buzz of the dressing room to the grim stillness of the Headmistress at her desk in her Study. A reverse angle of the film’s memorable first sighting of the Headmistress now shows heavy shelves behind her carrying a dark bust of a male statesman or military leader and huge masonry-like books or ledgers add to the sense of burdensome historic gloom. Von Kesten has brought in Ilse’s smuggled letter, which has been returned by the postal authorities because of an error in the address. (It seems slightly odd that Ilse would misaddress a letter to her own home, but it’s important for the film to establish that the letter has come into von Kesten’s hands in this way and not because of any betrayal by Johanna.) Back in the dressing room Ilse’s rehearsal of the plotting scene is soon interrupted by von Kesten brandishing her letter. As it is read out, Ilse pulls back her hood and stage beard, deflated and anticipating the punishment which indeed follows swiftly — she must remove her costume and cannot appear in the play. Forbidden the creative exercise of her talents through playing the duplicitous Friar with the verve with which we have previously seen her impersonate the Headmistress, she tears off her costume, angrily throwing aside the long patriarchal beard and the heavy Christian cross that completed it, revealing her imprisoning and infantilising striped uniform underneath. She hurries to the deserted locker room and pulls down her suitcase, evidently preparing to flee the school. Back in the dressing room, Fräulein von Attems is hearing individual cast members rehearse their lines. As Mariechen mumbles her lines before the teacher, we see for the first time in the background Edelgard in her elegant black costume as Marquis Posa, pacing anxiously and practicing her lines from the book. A dashingly romantic figure, as she takes her place to be examined by von Attems we see that she wears a black cape, a close fitting pearl-buttoned doublet, white ruff, and a magnificent (real) sword on her hip. Unlike the Friar and the King, she has not been furnished with a stage beard or moustache, so retaining an undiluted boy/girl ambiguity that will provide an additional frisson in the party scene. Edelgard has obviously enthusiastically identified with the emotional power of the drama. Deciding to deliver a line standing instead of kneeling as directed, she is dismissed by von Attems with the reprimand: “Don’t think. Obey!” — perhaps a wry in-joke about actors and directors additionally serving as a presentiment of the coming rebellion by the girls, but also in hindsight a chilling axiom in the context of 1930s Europe. Dissatisfied with delivery of the girl playing the Princess, von Attems (like any drama teacher) seizes the opportunity to display her own thespian prowess by way of example, going so far as to slide forward seductively onto the desk opposite her uneasy pupil.  Drama Queen - Fräulein von Attems forgets herself Erika Mann, a radical whose own theatrical CV straddles Weimar theatre from Reinhardt productions in the 20s to her own 1930s anti-fascist Pfeffermühle cabaret, evidently relishes playing von Attems in this backstage scene. She left the film’s shoot early and was replaced by an actress of broadly similar appearance for some less significant scenes. Four years after the release of Mädchen in Uniform the Nazis removed Mann’s German citizenship, whereupon W.H. Auden obligingly agreed to a lavender marriage — so supplying her with a British passport and safety. Von Attems is interrupted by Elise, bearer of a message that the play must begin. The tiny proscenium stage is in a formal hall area opening off the main corridor and the audience of uniformed girls is already in place. The Headmistress and five ladies, her distinguished guests, are processing to take their places for the play, passing an upright piano in the corridor. They take their seats on an elevated platform at the back of the hall thereby signalling their superior status, an iron railing in the familiar pattern of the balustrade of the main staircase isolating them further from the girls. The teachers, including von Bernburg, sit in the front row and will enjoy the closest view of the actors. The stage is flanked by decorative evergreen shrubs in pots and the heavy curtains are closed. This is the largest space we have seen within the school, and also the grandest, featuring not only the theatre proscenium (promise of escape to different worlds) but opulent chandelier lighting and heavy marble busts mounted along the walls, possibly representing doyens of the German culture which so amuses Mlle Oeuillet. The setting has therefore shifted to a more imposing scale, anticipating the heightening drama of both the play within the film and the film itself. The following sequence cross cuts between the locker room, where Ilse’s personal drama of escape is playing out, and the stage in the hall where the drama both of Don Carlos and of Manuela’s determination to inspire the love of von Bernburg is about to begin. In the locker room, a tearful Ilse is salvaging her secret Hans Albers photo collection from the back of her locker door. Von Attems appears in front of the stage curtains to announce that that the role of the Friar Domingo will now be read by a girl who has been selected to replace Ilse. A flutter of disappointed murmuring goes through the audience of girls, reminding us of Ilse’s popularity as the pupils’ subversive humorist. In the locker room, Ilse hurriedly finishes packing her suitcase, places her outdoor coat ready beside it, and leaves the room. On stage, the play has now begun. Ilse’s replacement as the friar, despite being drafted in at the last minute and having to deliver her lines from behind both an enormous beard and a handheld script, is declaiming confidently opposite Manuela as Don Carlos. Returning to the locker room to pick up her suitcase Ilse finds von Bernburg sitting on it. Skilfully taking her in hand, both literally and metaphorically, von Bernburg neutralises both Ilse’s tears and her frustrated anger (“I can’t be in the play either”), instructs her to wash her face and join the audience, and then dismisses her with a gratefully received slap on the bum. In the play, Manuela’s Don Carlos is on his knees declaring his mortally prohibited love to the Queen (Elizabeth, also von Bernburg’s name). Von Bernburg returns to her seat in the front row of the audience, earning an enquiring smirk from Mlle Oeuillet, just as the play Queen Elizabeth is starting to warn Don Carlos of his mortal peril. In another witty theatrical in-joke, von Attems leans out unnecessarily into view from the wings to prompt the Queen as she invokes mercy for Don Carlos to save his life. “Death is not a high price to pay for an hour in paradise” responds Don Carlos/Manuela. Cut to a close shot of the teachers in the front row, von Bernburg between Mlle Oeuillet and von Gärschner. All three are evidently approvingly engaged by the drama but von Bernburg’s fixed gaze recalls Manuela’s gaze towards her in the classroom scene. The play ends with the Queen alone and weeping. Vigorous applause erupts, the usually severe von Gärschner, most martial of the teachers, smiling and clapping with the others.  Standing ovation In the kitchen the servants are preparing a large steaming vat of punch for the girls’ party, one of them pouring a bottle of wine into it. Johanna squeezes lemons into the mixture then sucks the lemon skins with evident relish, but upon sampling the punch itself pronounces it undrinkable and spits it out. It will later become evident that at some point more than enough strong alcohol is added to the bowl, maybe to compensate for the kitchen’s usual shortage of palatable ingredients, but once again the servants are seen to be doing their best to ameliorate the girls’ harsh life. Back in the Hall the curtain call is finishing. The curtains close but the girls are still clapping and calling Manuela’s name, a sound which will be repeated in desperate circumstances before long. In a fleeting comedy moment, Von Attems opens the stage curtains and, seeing Manuela coming forward to take another bow, she hastily demotes the inattentive Mariechen from King Philip to tab operator, restrains Manuela, and steps forward to graciously receive her own share of the ovation. As the Headmistress and her guests vacate their platform and leave the Hall, the audience of girls lift their chairs over their heads as one body and carry them out, instantly restoring the space temporarily to its institutional austerity. Face to face in a very tight close up, their noses almost touching, Ilse is telling Manuela about the reactions of the Headmistress and von Bernburg to her performance (some of this information must be second hand, as they were seated at opposite ends of the Hall). Ilse reports the Headmistress as commenting repeatedly on the beauty of Manuela’s legs, (whether because of a disinterest in Schiller or of repressed desire, we can only speculate). Von Bernburg apparently didn’t take her eyes off Manuela throughout the performance or say anything. Is Ilse, no stranger to hyperbole, at least partly telling Manuela what she knows she wants to hear? Von Bernburg dutifully left the performance for a while to forestall Ilse’s escape, and straight after the curtain falls we see her chatting amiably with the other teachers. The Hall has been transformed with long cloth-covered dining tables which the girls are laying in preparation for their party. The cast, still in full costume, come surging through the stage curtains and down into the Hall like the players arriving in Elsinor, so breaking the fourth wall between fantasy and reality that had prevailed during the play itself. They are greeted with cheers and more cries of “Manuela!” The filmmaker’s decision that the Don Carlos cast remain in stage costume for the party (unlikely by any realist measure) is essential to the liberating erotic charge underpinning the party scenes. Discussing cross dressing, gender, and class in Elizabethan theatre, Marjorie Garber (1992) points out "Actors were in effect allowed to violate the sumptuary laws that governed dress and social station — on the supposedly "safe" space of the stage." In the shot described above, the costumed Don Carlos cast triumphantly leave the ungoverned, imaginative, space of the stage and riotously infiltrate and infect the "real", uniformed and dress-coded, space of the school (which has already been given a degree of licence because of the occasion — the birthday of its head disciplinarian). As well as Manuela, Edelgard, and others in their male costumes, a notable, almost startling, liberating presence at the party is the girl who has acted the play princess, her bare shoulders and neck, low cut dress, and her slightly louche appearance a reminder of the three decades of emancipation that have scarcely touched the school or its cult of uniformity. Standing beside the piano we saw earlier, von Bernberg and von Attems look on with smiling approval. Von Attems moves into the Hall among the girls and compliments the whole cast, then singling out Manuela for special commendation but adding, as ever, that she must remember in future to prioritise declamation over emotionalism (advice which before long is spectacularly ignored). A two-shot of Manuela and von Bernburg isolates them in front of the balustrade that fenced the Headmistress’ platform during the play — a visual premonition of the staircase that will later provide the site of the film’s climax. Von Bernberg praises Manuela’s acting fulsomely, going so far as to suggest she could be a fine actress. In the context of the school’s ethos of military conservatism (“the mothers of soldiers”) this seems to be flagrantly off-message career advice. Johanna enters to cheers, holding aloft her jug of punch. As with the chemise and the smuggled letter, she is again the humble and well intentioned agent of a major plot development. The teachers have now apparently withdrawn. In a small Guest Parlour, furnished and lit with the same opulence as the Hall, the Headmistress and her visitors, along with von Kesten and other teachers, are seated at small round tables being served tea or coffee. On opposite walls at either end of the space, just out of parallax with the camera, tall mirrors produce multiple images suggesting that this gruesome gathering of conservatives stretches on, like the heirs of Banquo, to infinity . Back at the girls’ party the punch has been poured and Ilse, her extrovert verve completely recovered, stands and proposes a toast praising the actors and Manuela in particular while mocking the rhetorical style of the Headmistress. All rise and drink the toast, but are clearly initially dismayed by either the taste or the unaccustomed strong alcohol. Back in the kitchen, the servants have evidently been sampling their own share of the punch for a while, and the homely Elise smilingly pronounces its taste wonderful. In the Hall, the girls are also now persuaded of the drink’s merits and we see Manuela drain a whole glass. General merriment is evident and a girl has gone to the piano and strikes up a fast waltz, causing a general rush to seize a partner and start dancing. She is very soon lobbied to play something more modern and launches into a popular song, to which singing and dancing erupts. A close shot reiterates the film’s recurring motif of uniformed feet and legs, this time cheerfully dancing to the jazz rhythm and including not only the familiar striped uniform fabric but also a pair of long legs, Edelgard’s legs, in black tights and velvet shoes. Wider shots show all the girls dancing, laughing, smiling, and swapping partners. Briefly, Manuela dances with Edelgard — still of course in their respective male costumes — momentarily conflating the chivalrous love between Don Carlos and Marquis Posa and the loyal friendship between the two school-friends.  Prost! In the kitchen, the servants are merrily dancing to the same tune as the girls — a metaphor that it would be superfluous to labour. In the Guest Parlour von Kesten asks the Headmistress if she should instruct the girls to keep the noise down, the Headmistress responding with feigned generosity that they should be allowed to enjoy themselves (well, it is her birthday), but nevertheless suggesting that Von Kesten keeps an eye on them, which she scurries obediently away to do. The beginning of the following scene, returning to the girls’ party in the Hall, surely offers confirmation that Winsloe and Sagan had here succeeded in foregrounding explicit homoerotic currents, whether smuggled past Froelich or with his acquiescence. In her 1980 interview, Thiele (Schlupmann and Gramman, 1981) is asked about the reception of the film by the women who frequented Berlin’s lesbian nightclubs. She believes that they would have thought Mädchen in Uniform rather childish, much preferring the overt swagger of Dietrich in her top hat and tails. But the thirty seconds or so of film that now precedes Manuela’s famously debatable “coming out” declaration would surely have resonated clearly with exactly that audience. As McCormick (2009) points out, Irmgard Kuhn, author of The Artificial Silk Girl, (1931) and her crushed but empathetic (heterosexual) protagonist, adrift in Berlin, were clear that Mädchen is a film about desire between women.  Last dance - Mia and Manuela, Edelgard and friend behind The pianist is playing a smoochy slow dance tune accompanied by a chorus of languid humming and dubbed onto the soundtrack with additional reverberation, instantly evoking a late romantic hour and a smoke filled nightclub. Minus smoke and candlelight, the groupings and action we briefly see next could indeed have been transported from a Wiemar era Berlin cellar. Most of the girls are sitting or leaning around the periphery of the room in pairs or small groups, swaying to the music, while a few couples dance languorously in each others arms. In the foreground, Manuela and Mia (the girl who had her love note confiscated by von Bernburg earlier in the film) are dancing closely as a couple, physically and emblematically commandeering the platform from which the Headmistress had watched the play. In soft focus in the background Edelgard can be glimpsed, her head nestled on the shoulder of another girl who embraces her while they sway dreamily to the music. Discovering a painfully scratched “tattoo” of E.v.B on Mia’s arm, Manuela determines to make her speech and calls everyone around the platform, her second theatrical stage of the evening. The nightclub atmosphere is instantly transformed to that of a rally, a sea of eager faces turned towards the orator. Drunk and ecstatic, Manuela proudly and loudly declares the gift of the chemise adding that she was sure it was intended as a love token. With immaculate timing, von Kesten pokes her nose around the door and hears this, beating a hasty retreat to alert her boss. Warming to her theme, Manuela declares that she is now sure of von Bernburg’s affection and fears nothing and no-one, this last spat into the face of the Headmistress who has entered the room at speed, parting and dispersing the girls by her very presence, but inevitably finding herself looked down on physically as well as temperamentally by dint of Manuela’s occupation of the platform. After a couple more defiant cries of adoration of von Bernburg, Manuela faints and the Headmistress pronounces a scandal as striped uniforms flee in terror behind her.  Entente Cordiale - Mlle Oeuillet and Miss Evans take a more nuanced view of the Manuela scandal The next morning the school’s corridors are bristling with activity. Mlle Oeuillet and Miss Evans sit gossiping about the scandal and appear to have a relatively sympathetic and liberal attitude towards Manuela, Mlle Oeuillet opining that it’s understandable in life to occasionally resort to drink. A small point is perhaps being made here about more relaxed attitudes to hedonism in France than in conservative Prussian society, but it is not insignificant that these two outsiders, while they may be enjoying the gossip, are broadly sympathetic to Manuela. Fräulein von Gärschner predictably takes a harsh view, advocating a remand home. A group of girls, including Edelgard and Mariechen, chatter excitedly, dismayed that they are not allowed to see Manuela. Mlle Oeuillet waylays von Bernburg and advises her not to jeopardise her position at the school for Manuela’s sake, but is curtly rebuffed. The exchange here comes close to hinting that the tolerant young French woman assumes that Manuela and von Bernburg’s relationship is amorous on both sides. The Headmistress stalks the corridors, made yet more infuriated because as she passes these various encounters no-one seems to notice her presence until reminded of it (an early sign that the affair will soon dynamite her authority entirely).  "The worst girl the school has ever had!" - The Headmistress passes judgement In the school Infirmary, Manuela is seen from a high angle as she sits up in bed questioning the motherly and sympathetic Nurse, Hanni, as to how she comes to be there. The Nurse also sits comfortably on the bed, offering a consoling solidarity. As commentators on the film have observed, the furniture here is characterised by bars and the lighting is dominated by particularly heavy shadows cast by bar-like shutters. Manuela has apparently entirely forgotten the events that have led to her isolated imprisonment in the sick room. The Headmistress’s voice is heard loudly approaching the door and the Nurse leaps to her feet and stands aside. The Headmistress enters and approaches the bed, her shadow ominously engulfing Manuela. During her ensuing wrathful tirade their shadows extend up the wall in a sinister inversion of the romantic shadow play seen in the dormitory kiss scene. Outside in the corridor, Mlle Oeuillet has perched herself on a conveniently placed seat and is eavesdropping on the diatribe while pretending to read a book. Von Kesten approaches and asks her where the Headmistress is, somewhat superfluously since she can clearly be heard yelling her head off at Manuela inside the Infirmary. A concerned Edelgard hovers in the background. As a parting shot, the Headmistress tells Manuela that von Bernburg will never forgive her. Von Kesten finds the Headmistress and tells her that the Princess (Patron of the School) has telephoned and will pay a formal visit to the School that very afternoon. In response to this fresh catastrophe, the fraught Headmistress directs von Kesten that Manuala must attend the presentation but that the other girls may not speak to her.  You looking at me? - Defiant young faces glare at a bewildered Fraulein von Kesten in the dormitory In the dormitory, the girls are silently changing out of their striped uniforms and into their formal full-length white (brides-for-soldiers) best dresses. Edelgard rushes in and announces, presumably as a result of overhearing the previous scene, that the Headmistress has forbidden them to have contact with Manuela. There is a noisy chorus of concern and indignation. The prefect Marga characteristically dissents and blames Manuela but is pushed out of the group, the first authority figure to be sidelined. Von Kesten enters briskly and calls order. In an outstanding Eisensteinian sequence, the girls become silent but stand should-to-shoulder staring defiantly at von Kesten. Discomforted to the point of feeling threatened, a close-up of von Kesten, frowning and squinting through her strong spectacles, suggests a bewildered ebbing of her authority. She pulls herself together and imparts in detail the stern command that contact with Manuela is now forbidden under pain of severe punishment. While we listen to this, the camera tracks along the defiant line of girls’ heads and shoulders, some in uniform and some already in bridal white. Edelgard, still in her striped uniform but with the top buttons undone and the collar pushed back exposing her throat (strictly speaking a continuity error, but rendering her immediately more adult), her face half in shadow, glares furiously at von Kesten from the back of the group. We see a much wider shot than we have previously of the Headmistress’ Study, looking towards the large window from which stronger sunlight now streams through the ubiquitous gauze curtains. Her high throne is vacant, a dark void in the centre of the frame. She herself stands with her back to us by the window, standing sentinel for her superior the Princess, another museum piece like her furniture and ornaments. She turns and wearily lays her cane of authority on her desk. In the Main Corridor Von Kesten passes on the Headmistress’s dictat to von Bernburg, instructing her that she must not speak to Manuala and receiving a terse acknowledgement. The girls, now all in their long formal white dresses are standing talking or sitting in groups waiting to be drilled into place for the presentation ceremony. A group of them, led by Edelgard, argue about what action to take in support of Manuela and one of them volunteers to speak to the Princess about her plight. Teachers appear and drill the girls into silent columns lining the two sides of the corridor. Von Kesten summons Manuela and she takes her vacant place in the line, her neighbour touching her arm and guiding her into place in a small gesture of support, and maybe of defiance. In her Study, the Headmistress is seated, not in her throne of authority but on a low visitor’s chair. Hearing a sound, she leaps up and runs to the window. Then, like a naughty schoolgirl frightened of being late for class, she runs helter-skelter down the Forbidden Staircase, her skirt held above her ankles and, absurdly, carrying her cane.  Dark spectre - our first sight of the Princess patron The Headmistress and von Kesten having met the Princess and her companion, they process to the foot of the forbidden staircase where the teachers wait in line. We initially see the Princess only from behind and slightly above — a looming funereal figure in a voluminous black plumed hat, significantly dwarfing the Headmistress and drifting slowly towards the assembled girls like a spectre. The teachers are presented in turn, the Princess addressing Mlle Oeuillet and Miss Evans in their respective languages. The pale lines of girls drop to the floor in deep curtseys as the Princess passes between them. In the kitchen, Johanna, pulling on and tying her work apron to get down to kitchen drudgery, tells a colleague how much she would like to see the royal spectacle that is taking place above. Although not averse to breaking the rules so as to ameliorate the hardship of the girls, it seems Johanna is a Royalist, if only on account of the hats and dresses. The Princess patron and her companion are part of a significant group of minor characters in Mädchen (comprising also the Headmistress's lady guests at the play and Manuela's Aunt) whose bearing, speech, and costume are reminders of the deeply ossified class which forms the background to the girl's lives. Little more than gloomy silhouettes of the airless aristocratic styles of two or three decades earlier, these women glide briefly into the action for long enough to scatter a little patronising irritation, or to find Schiller at times a little on the explicit side, or by just their presence in the building to remind Johanna and her colleagues that their place is to remain in the basement. Back upstairs, the two lines of girls are now standing and the Princess and the Headmistress are making their way back along the line in review. When they reach the girl who has volunteered to speak on Manuela’s behalf, her courage fails her and she steps back into line. Using the foot of the Forbidden Staircase to elevate herself yet further above the Headmistress, the Princess asks to have two particular pupils presented to her, the second of whom is Manuela (although, rather pointedly, she has forgotten Manuela’s family name and has to be reminded of it by her lady companion, who appears to be her own version of von Kesten). After making the two gracious remarks most likely to precipitate an unfortunate incident — that she had known Manuela’s late mother, and that Manuela looks rather unwell — the Princess is reassured by the Headmistress that all is well and the royal party retire up the forbidden staircase. Ilse, Edelgard, and prefect Marga (who seems to have joined the dissenters) berate the girl who failed to speak to the Princess and she is left isolated.  Brocade parade - the lofty Princess and her diminutive assistant Later, in the Headmistress’s Study, she and von Bernburg are discussing Manuela. The Headmistress is sitting, though again in the lower visitor’s chair and not her throne, a visual hint that her authority is already slipping away. Von Bernburg stands in her presence, an inferior position in terms of etiquette but a dominant one visually. Riled by von Bernburg’s assertion that she knows the girls better than the Headmistress and moreover loves them, the latter, her eyes glinting, raises the question of the gifted chemise. Alone in the corridor, still in her white presentation dress (bridal gown and shroud), in profile and isolated in a pool of light, Manuela, her head bowed, sits on a bench flanked by two columns as if imprisoned between guards. From behind camera (and so on our behalf) Edelgard approaches the disconsolate figure and leans to her and takes her hands. Jolting our identification with the trajectory of this kindness, von Kesten immediately appears also from behind camera and calls Edelgard away. She takes her into an adjacent room to reprimand her and Manuela forlornly tries to follow her friend but has the door closed on her.  Power shift - "Manuela is not bad!" What follows reveals again a relatively lenient, or at least pragmatic, side of von Kesten and perhaps the degree of power that Edelgard’s aristocratic status implicitly affords her. Edelgard has after all just flagrantly broken the very strictest direct injunction from the Headmistress, issued with dire warnings about the consequences of its breach. Von Kesten invokes the wrath of the Headmistress and the potential disappointment of Edelgard’s parents, but these are clearly rhetorical ploys rather than intentions to further complicate her own workload. On her part, Edelgard’s responses brush aside the status of the teacher and cut straight to the humanitarian urgency of the situation. Von Kesten can only respond by tetchily adopting the role of critical friend and darkly suggesting to Edelgard that associating with Manuela will only do her harm. Edelgard responds angrily, in close-up practically spitting into von Kesten’s face that Manuela is not bad. On which gratifying sight we cut to the Study, where von Bernburg is about to tell the Headmistress exactly the same thing in different words. She has now moved closer to the Headmistress’s chair. Looming over her and gripping its back while addressing the side of her head, Dorothea Wieck delivers the famous line that enjoys much traction in discussions of sexuality in Mädchen in Uniform. “What you call sin I call the great spirit of love in all its thousand forms.” Coming around in front of the Headmistress to face her, von Bernburg then offers to talk to Manuela and persuade her to restrain herself. Now rising to her level, the Headmistress angrily forbids von Bernburg to have any further contact whatsoever with Manuela, whom we now see still out the in the corridor. Manuela stands, in a curiously disturbing profile pose that suggests a hanged body, in front of glass panelled doors identical to those of the dormitory through which von Bernburg memorably emerged in the kiss scene. Returning from her confrontation with the Headmistress, von Bernburg is now intercepted by Manuela, who will not be pacified and falls to her knees desperately kissing the teacher’s hand. At a loss, von Bernburg tells her to go to her room and wait. Hertha Thiele’s physical acting here is very moving — persuasively conveying the despair and trauma suffered by a sensitive adolescent whose forbidden love is rejected. Several years after making Mädchen in Uniform Thiele was blacklisted by the Nazis (she believed at the instigation of none other than Carl Froelich) and went to live in Switzerland, not acting again in films until she returned to Germany (DDR) nearly thirty years later, there appearing in a number of films and TV dramas. We can only wonder what performances those years might have given us if everything had been different. A concerned Mariechen and a friend discuss how unwell and close to fainting Manuela looked at the presentation. Von Bernburg’s room is in darkness. Manuela is kneeling sobbing in front of the desk chair, her face buried in the seat. The teacher enters briskly, switches on a light, and pulls Manuela to her feet, where the distraught girl flings her arms around her. After calming her by seating her and stroking her head, von Bernburg tells her that they must never again mention what she has done and that her punishment will be isolation in a separate room, adding that the Headmistress has been lenient in not expelling her. Manuela pleads that she will be still allowed to visit von Bernburg, but when it is made clear that she will never be allowed to see her again she says that she can no longer live. This alarms von Bernburg, who has turned away as if herself nearly overcome, and she rushes back to the girl and tells her sternly she must use all her strength to be healed. “Healed? From what?” “You must not love me so much” replies von Bernburg. “Why?” Manuela replies in bewilderment — going simply and directly to the core of the film’s subject matter. Persuaded at last to leave the room, Manuela passes the Headmistress in the corridor creaking purposefully towards the door. Now begins the famous staircase sequence. Groups of girls are running around the lower corridors and deserted classrooms, calling Manuela’s name in a frenzied whisper that will eventually rise to an uninhibited crescendo of shouts. Manuela walks slowly up the staircase, clinging to the balustrade for support and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. This is a note that may perhaps jar with some viewers today as overly melodramatic. But in this early sound film her voice provides a quiet and rhythmic counterpoint to the searching girls’ wild shouts of “Manuela” and helps to establish her resolve to end her life. The film contains few direct references to religion — the Headmistress’s assembly prayer is about nationalism and discipline, von Bernburg briefly advises Manuela to pray as a source of comfort for the loss of her mother, and Edelgard’s classroom recitation, although the words of a hymn, is used primarily to underline Manuela and von Bernberg’s desire. We see the staircase from below suddenly peopled on several floors with the frantically calling girls and Manuela’s distant white figure at the very top clinging to the balustrade, then a straight cut to the perilous reverse view from behind Manuela’s shoulder. In von Bernburg’s room her final angry showdown with the Headmistress continues. All adherence to the rules abandoned, a girl goes to the large brass firebell in the main corridor and rings it furiously, accompanied by an ever louder chorus of Manuela’s name. The school is now under riotous occupation by the girls. We never see von Kesten, who might be expected to be in full bluster here, again. Back in von Bernburg’s room, the Headmistress rants on, telling her to leave the School immediately. Von Bernburg has turned away from her now irrelevant and powerless boss, her hands over her ears, not, we realise, to shut out the Headmistress’s thundering, but to better receive a warning, intuitive or telepathic, of Manuela’s peril.  Sign of the cross - as Manuela looks into the abyss the lighting casts a symbolic shadow on the opposite wall A dissolve, in extreme close up and straight to camera, from Manuela’s face to von Bernburg’s is followed by her own cry of “Manuela!” and her flight from the room, now fully identifying with the girls’ search, just as… Manuela is on the point of letting go of the balustrade and falling to her death. She is at last seen by the searching girls who rush up the staircase and rescue her, tenderly laying her in safety on the landing. Rather poignantly, Leontine Sagan cast Manuela’s immediate rescuers not from her familiar close friends, but a group of the younger less prominent members of the ensemble. Thiele (Schlupmann and Gramman, 1981) relates that an alternative ending where, as in the play, Manuela jumps and dies was also shot on a specially built set in a studio. It’s known that Froelich was insistent that the ending of the film showed Manuela’s rescue and survival, so it isn’t clear why he went to this expense, unless just to cover eventualities. In the silent era it had been commonplace to shoot alternative endings for different markets (the "Russian ending" practice). There does not seem to be any contemporaneous record of the film being shown to the public with the suicide ending. The Headmistress arrives on one of the landings, a wall of striped uniforms and accusing faces awaiting her from every angle. Von Bernburg comes to stand accusingly beside her, telling her sternly that the girls have averted a disaster that would have haunted them both forever. The Headmistress slowly descends the staircase. The girls stand back to let her pass and follow her with their eyes, but now in indictment and brazen defiance and without the deferential curtsy we are used to seeing. A close-up shows Manuela being gently kissed on the face by her rescuers. The Headmistress continues her humiliated descent. On the landing above, Edelgard steps to von Bernburg’s side, others following. The Headmistress, now fully in need of her cane for support, reaches the bottom of the staircase and, expelled from the domain of the girls, retreats slowly along the corridor towards her own, as we hear the bugles again and the film ends.  Safe As Orson Welles is said to have remarked, whether or not you have a happy ending depends on where you decide to stop your story. No one knows (although we cannot stop wondering) what next happens to von Bernberg, Manuela, Edelgard, Ilse, or Joanna, or to the school. But we do know what happened to Germany and we know that many of the women involved in making the film left the country either from necessity or choice, and we know that Carl Froelich became an influential figure in Dr. Goebbels film industry. Siegfried Kracauer (1947), while greatly admiring the artistic achievements of the film and in fulsome praise of both Thiele and Wieck’s performances, regards the closing bugle notes as signifying that the Headmistress’s authoritarian and militaristic values remain intact. Commentators from the 1970s onwards, more interested than Kracauer in the sexual politics of the film, have arrived at more nuanced or radical conclusions about the ending. McCormick (1993) argues that Kracauer sidelines or ignores the transformation of von Bernberg in the final scenes, to which we might add the transformation of the girls, including and perhaps especially Edelgard, through their experience of rebellion. For Dyer (1990) — “The bugle calls… …may be a reminder that the wider society that produces homophobic repression is still in place, but it does not necessarily undercut the vitality of the rebellion”. Some of the critical commentary on Mädchen in Uniform has also drawn on readings of the two quite different theatre versions and the novel that Winsloe also wrote, sometimes muddying the water and diverting focus from the film itself as it stands. It is what it is, and it ends where and how Sagan, Winsloe, and Froelich decided it would end. But the final images and sounds of the film do not have to be the defining ones. There are memorable images of defiance and hope throughout the film. Repeated close viewings of Mädchen (a practice not available to Kracauer) may reduce the headmistress’s retreat and the resurgent bugle calls to a convenient aesthetic note on which to process a final fade to black and the “ende” title card. The more enduring image is of the mass of girls rampaging through the school in open rebellion and then tenderly rescuing their sister from the peril to which a harsh rejection and denunciation of her nature had driven her. Nearly ninety years later, we still have teenagers wanting to die because they believe they are unloved or unwanted, and new bugles in Europe’s dark places are again rousing the demons of prejudice, discrimination, and fear. Mädchen in Uniform was a warning in 1931 and it stands as a warning still.  “One film, the effect of which was probably greater than that of any others I have mentioned, was first shown in public in November 1931 in Berlin. This was Mädchen in Uniform, received by the Press and the public with extraordinary enthusiasm. A controversial educational problem is discussed with great ability. The setting is outstanding, and the direction a major achievement by Leontine Sagan.” H H Wollenberg, Fifty Years of German Film (1948) NOTE: Some of the above material forms the basis of this 2021 blogpost
BIBLIGRAPHY: Dyer, Richard, with Pidduck, Julianne. 1990. Now You See It, Studies in Lesbian and Gay Film. Eisner, Lotte. 1969. The Haunted Screen. Eisner, Lotte. 1931. Film-Kurier, no.279. (Nov 28 1931). In Kardish, L. 2011. Weimar Cinema, 1919-1933, Daydreams and Nightmares Garber, Marjorie. 1992. Vested Interests, Cross Dressing and Cultiral Anxiety Kracauer, Siegfried. 1947. From Caligari to Hitler McCormick, Richard W. 2008. Coming Out of the Uniform: Political and Sexual Emancipation in Leontine Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform. In Weimar Cinema, Ed. Isenberg. Ohm, Lisa. The Filmic Adaptation of the Novel “The Child Manuela”. In Gender and German Cinema, Vol 2. 1993. Ed Frieden et al. Rich, B Ruby. 1984. From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic liberation: Girls in Uniform. In Gender and German Cinema, Vol 2. 1993. Ed Frieden et al. Schlüpmann, Heide, & Gramman, Karola. 1981. Interview with Hertha Tiele: http://archive.li/AHlAQ
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