穿制服的女孩

这是一部黑白片子，但我从头到尾都没有感受到女同色彩，我认为本片的核心是批判，通过同性之爱批判当时社会现状，为什么很多学生喜欢女老师并爱上女老师？这背后的原因是当时社会迂腐制度的必然结果。

这所军官家属的女子学校，校长们高呼德国意志信仰培养学生，老师却必须摆出高高在上姿态，服从是学生们的必须义务，学生给家里写信要被老师看过才能寄出，毫无平等自由可言。

而那位思想平等的老师成为了所有女生喜欢的对象，她关心学生，不咄咄逼人，很多女生都爱她喜欢她，她是被学校压迫下所有学生内心唯一可以慰藉的光，但需要强调是这不是爱，在那种环境下，那么多人爱上女老师是必言，是时代造成的必然，一位喜欢女老师的女生在醉酒后说出对女老师的喜欢被校长听到，校长要求所有老师学生孤立她，女学生无奈跳楼，好在有惊无险，女老师与校长谴责学校方式的影响，最后校长浑浑噩噩在走廊中行走的背影，让我看到了根深蒂固的压迫思想可能会觉醒的一丝丝微光。

通过很直白的方式体现了寄宿学校中女孩们受到的普鲁士式教育的摧残，因为拍摄的年代很早，黑白画面还有低画质让整个氛围显得有些阴森……严苛的校长认为纪律与饥饿才能让普鲁士重获荣光，作为士兵的子女，寄宿的女孩们不仅不允许拥有自己的零用钱，出行和着装被严格限制，连发出的信件也要受到审核。印象很深的是校长让各位学生排队站好，一排排走过去检查仪容仪表，与其说是“检查”不如说是在“检阅”，当然，学生们并没有因学校的纪律而磨灭自己的个性以及年轻人所有的热情、好奇心、乐观，电影中出现的配角都相当有个性，伊尔莎喜欢收藏当红明星的海报，嘲讽不近人情的校长。伯恩博格老师与校长不同，她坚信仁慈才能感化孩子们，她在睡前亲吻每一个女孩，用包容的心对待她们。我觉得玛奴薇拉爱上老师这件事是必然的，她缺失的母爱在温柔的老师那里得到了弥补，她与老师的血液里同样流淌着的叛逆因子，她们是普鲁士畸形教育的挑战者，玛奴薇拉难以独自挑战强大畸形教育的卫道士，她依然选择用最惨烈的方式（自杀）表达自己的不屈，她的努力唤醒了其他受残害的女孩，虽然这场对决实力悬殊，但最终她们获得了胜利。玛奴薇拉和伯恩博格老师之间的感情圣洁如白百合

*合唱中*

黑短发女孩乱入："每个人都竭力大喊 我们什么时候开饭呀?"

——"你知道你住哪间宿舍吗?" ——"马加尔说我住冯·伯恩伯格夫人的宿舍" ——"当心别坠入爱河！因为所有的女孩都对伯恩伯格夫人一见钟情"

女校长："我们普鲁士人不懂得饥饿 她们是士兵的孩子 若能如愿 也将成为士兵的母亲！通过纪律和挨饿 我们才能重返光荣 否则根本不可能"

姨母："军官的女儿居然还哭！"

——"…我想到等我再长大些就得离开这学校 每天晚上您也会亲吻其他女孩…" ——"你都在想些什么啊" ——"我太爱您了！"

——"妈妈说我不能太柔弱 祖国需要钢铁一般的人民" ——"我妈妈也在这里待过四年 她难道忘了这里环境多糟么?"

女教师："我不会放不下我的岗位 我知道我不能再留在这里 我不能站在一旁看着孩子们成为被恐吓的无助的动物"

Double features time! German female filmmaker Leontine Sagan’s MÄDCHEN IN UNIFORM is a vanguard of queer cinema made in 1931, and William Wyler’s THESE THREE, arrived 5 years later, is based on Lilian Hellman’s sapphic play The Children’s Hour, but lesbianism is completely effaced due to the Hays Code, and Wyler would later remake a “veritable” version in 1961 starring Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine and James Garner.

MÄDCHEN IN UNIFORM is adapted from Christa Winsloe’s play and old hand Carl Froelich is credited as the artistic director to lend a helping hand to Sagan’s first feature. Corralling an all-female cast, the story is exclusively confined in an all-girl boarding school in the dog end of the Weimar Republic.

Governed by a prim and property headmistress (Unda, an exemplary schoolmarm adorned by a pair of pince-nez), the school aims to groom young daughters from military families to be child-bearers of future soldiers, the headmistress exclaims that they should be raised on hunger and discipline. But where there is oppression, there is revolt, not all the girls are toeing the line, especially the vivacious Ilse von Westhagen (Schwanneke), a mischief-maker whose misdeed (smuggling letter to her parents for more money because them girls are always hungry, even in Sundays), doesn’t deteriorate only because the caring intervention of Fraülein von Bernburg (Wieck), the judicious, tender governess who doesn’t see eye to eye with headmistress’ imperious command.

Fraülein von Bernburg is the star teacher that every girl admires and adores, and her goodnight kiss is a ritual of utter bliss. For a 14-year-old Manuela (Thiele), her attachment to Fraülein von Bernburg is more intense, unlike others, their goodnight kiss is on the lips, and she falls in love with her (she can barely speak in front of Fraülein von Bernburg, a fool-proof sign of infatuation), but as an adult, Fraülein von Bernburg knows better not to spoil this fragile bond and overstep the boundary. When Manuela is the worse for drink after a successful school play, she lets slip her secret in a fit of euphoria, and its repercussions are resoundingly pathos-stricken, yet, the film is anything but a misery porn, after flags up its anti-Fascist message, it propitiously brings down the curtains and leaves the denouement in ambiguity rather than anything more concrete. That said, its "love is love" affirmation ought not to be eclipsed by its vehement political opprobrium.

Wieck has a very peculiar presence of mind and impassive mien which suggests charisma, mystery and indissolubility, and Thiele possesses that photogenic and expressive visage of innocuousness, youthfulness and vulnerability, it is very hard to credit they have the same age, both were born in 1908. Kudos to the casting process! Then, speaking of Sagan’s directorial endeavor, it is to her credit that we do not feel constrained in a single location, her camera never feels plodding, her sense of composition is overall felicitous, like the vertiginous shot which foreshadows where a tragedy might occur, or the remarkable close-ups foregrounded in soft focus. Moreover, her female identity also helps to reassure the young female cast and elicit most spontaneous reactions and outburst from them, not to mention the jubilant solidarity. Sagan’s proficiency can contend with those from any member of the other sex, yet she only made three movies in her entire life, which makes MÄDCHEN IN UNIFORM such a puissant hue and cry to redress the inequality in the director’s chair, and individually, it is an endearingly stirring film completed with true grits and pluperfect tact.

THESE THREE, on the other hand, except for being marred for its inborn cop-out, is almost identical with THE CHILDREN’S HOUR (1961), Hellman’s dialogue remains largely intact even if the central Uranian affection is debased to a heteronormative love triangle. Two best-friends-cum-school-teachers, Martha Dobie (Hopkins) and Karen Wright (Oberon), both attract to the wholesomely handsome doctor Joseph Cardin (McCrea), but he takes the shine to Karen, so Martha has to hide her feelings.

But a vicious lie from one of their care, the bratty, self-serving, manipulative Mary Tilford (Granville) will shatter the fabric of their school and relationships, as simple as that. However, poetic justice might arrive belatedly, it is never absent. But by that point, audience might be too despondent and benumbed to toss a care. Most afterthought can be aptly copied from my review of THE CHILDREN’S HOUR (1961), but there are some divergence.

For one thing, Granville’s Oscar-nominated performance of an obnoxious bad seed is so extreme and single-minded (Patty McCormack gives a more superior impression of spill-chilling apathy in Mervyn LeRoy’s THE BAD SEED, 1956), a sense of awe actually transpires when she finally gets a whack in the face, in the hands of none other than the fearsome Margaret Hamilton, how satisfactory it is! And in the realm of prodigious child actors, Marcia Mae Jones’ extraordinary embodiment of the patsy Rosalie Wells is every bit as stupendous if not more. Tellingly, those young girls' copious theatrics may betray the difference whether they are handled by a man or a woman.

While THESE THREE is unexceptionable in its narratology and stock soundstage artificiality, no one should deny Hellman’s script is a fertile land for its actresses, Catherine Doucet’s highfalutin and exceedingly self-serving Auntie Mortar (a role played by Hopkins in the 1961 remake) might be bracketed as one of the most odious characters ever on the screen (with Granville’s Mary hot on her heels), yet her unrepentant carriage and locution is fabulous to gape. As a different kind of irritant, Amelia Tilford, Mary’s doting grandmother, stage thespian Alma Kruger, in her very first screen role, presides over with utter composure and later, registers a dignified pang of guilt and pain that comes to save the day.

Among the three leads, McCrea ekes out just adequate charm to convince us he is a catcher, he has more fun throwing sideswipes at Auntie Mortar than spouting sweet-nothings; and Oberon, right in her prime and is game enough to be chipper but also has that essential demureness as a classic Hollywood diva, almost virtuous to a fault. So, we can only rely on Hopkins to ginger up a semblance of perversion that goes missing in the revamped story, and she is there does what she does best, adding layers and layers of pent-up emotions (both to Joseph and her aunt) even there is nothing happens exteriorly. Why her Martha shouldn’t have a darling of her own? There must be a man for her in Vienna too, perhaps a woman even? In THESE THREE’s gynophobic backwater, Martha is an echt heroine and the film fails her cravenly.

referential entries: Wyler’s THE CHILDREN’S HOUR (1961, 7.3/10); Josef von Sternberg’s THE BLUE ANGEL (1930, 7.4/10).

Title: Mädchen in Uniform

Year: 1931

Country: Germany

Language: German, French, English

Genre: Drama, Romance

Director: Leontine Sagan

Screenwriters: Christa Winsloe, Friedrich Dammann

based on the play by Christa Winsloe

Music: Hanson Milde-Meissner

Cinematography: Reimer Kuntze, Franz Weihmayr

Editing: Oswald Hafenrichter

Cast:

Hertha Thiele

Dorothea Wieck

Emilia Unda

Hedy Krilla

Ellen Schwanneke

Gertrud de Lalsky

Erika Mann

Annemarie von Rochhausen

Else Ehser

Rating: 8.1/10

Title: These Three

Year: 1936

Country: USA

Language: English

Genre: Drama, Romance

Director: William Wyler

Screenwriter: Lillian Hellman

Music: Alfred Newman

Cinematography: Gregg Toland

Editing: Daniel Mandell

Cast:

Miriam Hopkins

Merle Oberon

Joel McCrea

Catherine Doucet

Bonita Granville

Alma Kruger

Marcia Mae Jones

Carmencita Johnson

Walter Brennan

Margaret Hamilton

Rating: 6.7/10

作为历史上第一部女同片，其实我觉得女性之间的爱还是表达得比较含蓄的，如果不是夫人对女主特别的吻，以及上课时看向女主的目光，再加上女主最后因为再也见不到她想跳楼，我还差点以为这只是单纯的学生对温柔、理解学生的老师的倾慕崇拜。这部电影虽然是以学生与夫人之间的爱为线索，但我觉得它更多是在批判那个时候偏执地以纪律为上，贫穷就是幸福为上的思想(其实我觉得贫穷本质上还是经济本来就不好，校长为了要面子才这样说的)。最后校长黯然地退场，其实暗示着旧思想旧规则终将退场，人们终将迎来适合他们的真正幸福的生活。 其他:学生们在老师不在场时一起欢腾的场面以及学校工作人员也跟着他们一起欢乐的场面真的太可爱啦。