Loved it! VERY CUTE!

Queer classic! Highly recommended!

love when you're watching something in a foreign language with subtitles and there's a random phrase that's pronounced exactly the same as in english. you're telling me they also call it "sex appeal" over there? awesome

Really great movie! handles it's topic matter in a sweet way; way better then most modern depictions of queerness!

This movie is unfit for viewing because it promotes and glorifies unhealthy human behavior.

I cannot believe this movie was produced in 1930. Incredible story and performances, which are somehow explaining the rise of the Nazi party

A beautiful and moving film.

I can't believe this film was made in 1931! A teenage girl sent to a very strict and conservative all-girls boarding school falls in love with her beautiful female teacher. Yes, a lesbian drama involving teenagers! Though the film has no sex scenes or nudity, the themes tackled are still pretty daring. I can't imagine viewing this through 1931 audience's eyes. But it's Europe so I guess they must be more liberal and open-minded there. That alone makes this film worth checking out. Add to that the great performances and the emotional third act. This also strikes me as the female equivalent of budding-sexuality-in-repressive-boarding-school subgenre that includes "If..." and "Zero for Conduct". It doesn't quite reach the heights of greatness of those two films but this is still a film more people should see.

interesting history/social studies lesson, sort of. student has a crush (in fact, the whole dorm had ) on her female teacher and the events that that ensued after the student declared her scandalous love during a drunken stupor . guess this was quite a controversial and taboo subject back, nothing was really 'said out loud'. repressed, but then those were quite different times.

Death to Colorization! When I was in high school, the gifted English teacher for sophomores, Mr. Garden, threatened to fail my friend Steven for saying he didn't understand what was wrong with colorization. (The look on Steven's face was priceless; Steven wasn't sure if Mr. Garden was serious or not.) Gwen says she doesn't, either. And it is certainly true that some classic films had hand-tinted sequences. It is also true that the colorization on this is, unique to my experience, actually well done. (Elaine once saw a colorized movie wherein Frank Sinatra had brown eyes. Think about it.) It is certainly possible, too, that directors Leontine Sagan and Carl Froelich would have filmed this in colour had they had the opportunity. The fact, though, is that they didn't, and both were dead long before the film was colorized. We'll never know, for example, if this would have been their chosen colour palette. It's painting someone else's ideas onto the film, and the DVD doesn't permit watching in B&W instead. Manuela von Meinhardis (Hertha Thiele) is being sent to a convent school by her stern aunt (Gertrud de Lalsky). (Manuela says she is like the Moon--cold and pale and, thank God, very far away.) Her mother has just died, and she is in a very bad place. It's about to get worse, too; the school is run by the harsh Fräulein von Nordeck zur Nidden (Emilia Unda), who is determined that the girls be worthy daughters and mothers of soldiers. (She's going to do just fine under the new regime.) She is counterbalanced by sweet young Fräulein von Bernburg (Dorothea Wieck), Manuela's teacher. Manuela is warned not to fall in love with her, because one of the other girls (I missed her name) is jealous of Fräulein von Bernburg's affections. But the teacher is such a relief from the harsh discipline of the school and such a genuinely good and beautiful person that Manuela, who is mourning her loss anyway, can't help it. I wouldn't say this is any great lesbian masterpiece. It's true that Manuela is very much in love with her teacher, but I wouldn't say it's entirely clear that Manuela is actually a lesbian. I don't think it's clear that she would fall in love with another woman. Manuela is fourteen and in a great deal of pain, and Fräulein von Bernburg is kind to her. Manuela has also just lost her mother, and much of how she relates to Fräulein von Bernburg is as a mother figure. She also wants to be held and loved as the woman she is in the process of becoming, and I think the two get all mixed up for her. Note that I am certainly not saying that you can't know your own sexuality at that age, and I do think the other student really is in love. I think it's different for Manuela. This is not a claim of "situational homosexuality." I don't blame the girls' school environment. I just think that Manuela would grasp at anyone is she thought that person would love her just a little. Of course, historically, people have disagreed with me on this one, and I think Hertha Thiele's performance has a lot to do with it. She does portray naked longing and abject despair quite well, and she does very much aim it at Dorothea Wieck. This is a girl in a delicate place, both because she is lonely and because she is fourteen. Fourteen is a rough time, and it's easy to latch onto something, anything, that you think will make you feel better. Even just a little. Fräulein von Bernburg is kind. Fräulein von Bernburg works to soften the harsh Prussian discipline of a school whose goal is not actually what's best for the girls within its walls. The girls form a bond against a common enemy, the headmistress, and toward a common benefactor, the teacher. If there's a single male in the cast, I missed him. This is a female world, and any love shown must logically be between females. Though I hesitate to say women, quite; the students are often very much children. This is the thing no one quite seems to remember, either within the film or without. There is a sharp divide here, because it is a school, between students and teachers. Fräulein von Bernburg comes the closest to crossing the line, but she is still an adult. Manuela is fourteen, and presumably the other girls are about the same age. Wieck was in her early twenties at the time, actually exactly the same age as Hertha Thiele. However, her character is still a child. Yes, the girls are at that uncertain age, the one where they are becoming women. However, the school certainly doesn't teach them what to do about it. Their mail is censored. They actually aren't even allowed to have books. Their womanhood is strictly confined to what the headmistress believes to be proper for Prussian women. This was a movie about a lonely girl who falls in love with her teacher, but it also seems to have a Youth in Rebellion movie tip-toeing around its edges. Manuela's final actions in the film can be seen as a couple of different kinds of escape.

This film is not about sex among lesbian schoolgirls. No "hot girl on girl action". It's a touching story of a lonely teenage girl who develops a crush on her older female teacher. Very well-made, as most 1930s German films are, IMHO. Haven't seen it in years, and when/if I get to see it again, I'll write a more complete review.

Absolutely amazing movie.You can really feel the sexual tension like you were the student.Brilliantly played especially considering at what time it was shot.

Follows exactly the sort of steps one would expect in a boarding school drama such as this, but does so competently and with enough small surprises to make it enjoyable.

A lesbian love story in a boarding school that is actually more coming-of-age than porn. Also asks some interesting questions about the nature of teaching. Wonderful camerawork, too.

Dark, but I enjoyed it.

Ehdottomasti paras sisäoppilaitoksen lesboteinistä kertova elokuva ikinä!

This is both a great indictment of fascism and a wonderfully appealing film. The contrast between its warm characterization and stark aesthetic are quite powerful. It has gained a cultish following at my girls' boarding school!

Risque and mature, Sagan's talkie drama was a thing of utter power in its time. The lesbian undertones and themes of loneliness are portrayed with rigor.

Good film. Obvious lesbian theme does not detract from the film; indeed, the film couldn't exist without it. This film is a time capsule, showing the inside of a Wiemar era girls school. The characters are well played, and the camera work good for the period. The verion I watched was a poorly and inconsistently subtitled VHS with muddy audio. I would watch it again on a restored DVD. It is an elegant story, carefully filmed. It is not for everyone, but if you want to see how far the social revolution in pre-WWII Germany had gone, rent it. It will put today into better perspective. It is at Alternative Video on Whyte Ave, in Edmonton.

To all those critics who figured that Brokeback Mountain was such a vibrant sign in how far our attitudes concerning homosexuals have come, I'd suggest they look back at this Weimar-era German flick. Considering that most films before the 1960's depicted homosexuality as a temporary problem or as a demonized interpretation of sexuality, the frankness and positivity with which the film depicts its lesbian romance is quite surprising and refreshing. And to think it was made just before the Third Reich came into power. Anyway, the film's set in an all-girls boarding school ran by an authoritative head mistress (traditional criticism has focused on the anti-authoritarian bent that's certainly a key component of the film). A young lady who has just enrolled falls in love with the one teacher who dares to treat her students with love rather than punishment (although it's a bit more complicated than that). What follows it not a traditional romance by any means. Although the teacher engages in semi-erotic activities with the students (before bedtime, she kisses each on the forehead; this ritual leads to the most sexually overt sequence in the film, done with masterful skill in terms of lighting, framing, and pacing...they must have gone crazy for this back in the '30s), she still maintains a bit of the harsh discipline of the school. This divide makes the teacher the most interesting character in the film, infinitely more interesting than the protagonist, enamored school girl Manuela whose one-note character propels the film's events. Both protagonists, however, are played with a great deal of skill by Dorothea Wieck and Hertha Thiele, respectively. Wieck stands out in the piece though, maintaining the tight rope of care and forced coldness, her face always hesitating to show compassion yet always breaking, if just a little in each scene. Thiele also puts in a fantastic performance, imbuing her performance with just the right kind of realistic longing that transcends the specific relationship to appeal to nearly any viewer and to do justice to the film's overall plot. Perhaps just as vital as these actresses are, though, are the secondary cast. The way in which the casual and deeper friendships are portrayed here are without stereotype, and the realistic way in which the girls interact with one another helps to sell some of the more determined moments like one in which the climax of the film is foreshadowed by two girls playing on a stairwell and estimating how long it would take to hit the bottom. That kind of ease and natural interaction also pushes the dramatics in a more realistic direction with even the most melodramatic of moments (like the climax itself) coming off as a bit more viable than one would probably expect. Although I'm not sure I'd recommend this to a casual viewer, if you're in the mood for an older style of film or even just a story about adolescence, I'd say that you'd find much to like. And if you're interested in historical depictions of homosexuality, I'd strongly urge you not to miss this one, despite the probably embarrassment you'll feel when the clerk at the video store looks at you like you're renting pornography. *** and 1/2 * out've