A legend amongst LGBT films, Leontine Sagan's "Madchen in Uniform" is also so much more. This German film, made in 1931, not only presents us with a positive view of a lesbian relationship but it also highly critical of the rules and regulations prevalent in Germany at the time and it's extremely unlikely it would have been made even a few years later.
Set in a German boarding school, standing in for the nation and ruled over with a rod of iron by its disciplinarian headmistress, (Emilia Unda, terrific), a young girl, (Hertha Thiele), falls in love with her teacher, (Dorothea Wieck). That is the film's core but around it swirls a whole host of relationships and incidents, all beautifully handled by first-time director Sagan, (who only made two subsequent films in a very short-lived career). Indeed, on the strength of this film alone it's clear she could have been one of the major film-makers of her generation. All the performances are excellent, particularly that of Thiele as the fourteen year old schoolgirl, (she was actually twenty-three at the time). In some respects this is a film that could sit quite comfortably on a double-bill with Lindsay Anderson's "If..." and its status as a classic is richly deserved.
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