An absolutely astonishing and hugely important film from 1931, Madchen in Uniform was written and directed by women, and features an all-female cast. A hit in several countries upon its release, it was suppressed by the Nazis, who attempted to destroy all copies of the film (stupid Nazis!), but it lives on and, indeed, retains its power to this very day.
In an all-girls boarding school, sensitive new student Manuela finds not-unrequited love with her teacher, Fräulein von Bernburg. Brimming with sensuality and decidedly anti-authoritarian (Nazis hate that), Madchen in Uniform is “one of the few films to have an inherently gay sensibility, (and) it is also one of the most central to establishing a history of lesbian cinema,” according to film historian B. Ruby Rich.
In addition to its importance, it’s just a helluva movie, beautifully staged, acted and photographed. It’s more evidence that Weimar Germany was well ahead of the curve in filmmaking and could have challenged the U.S. had it not been for…Nazis. Instead, the U.S. film industry benefited greatly from the flood of German artists and craftspeople who managed to flee the country.
The film was popular in the U.S., though it almost didn’t make it to our screens. A push was made to ban the film in the U.S. prior to its premier in 1933, but the First Lady of New York, Eleanor Roosevelt, supported the film, and the ban failed.
Director Leontine Sagan left Germany for England in the early 1930s and worked in the London theater, becoming the first female producer at the famed Drury Lane. Screenwriter Christa Winsloe also made it out of Germany but she and her partner, author Simone Gentet, were wrongly accused of being Nazi spies and murdered without trial by French nationalists in 1945.