Girls in Uniform

Directed by Géza von Radványi, this 1958 French West German co production remakes the famous 1931 film adapted from Christa Winsloe's play. It is set in 1910 at a strict Prussian style girls' boarding school in Potsdam. Romy Schneider plays Manuela, sent to the school after her mother's death, and Lilli Palmer plays Fräulein von Bernburg, the warm teacher who encourages artistic expression. After the school's production of Romeo and Juliet, a drunk Manuela declares her love for her teacher in front of everyone, and the headmistress demands the teacher's resignation. The 1931 original was made with an all female cast and crew, banned by the Nazi regime, and is considered a landmark of queer cinema. This remake noticeably softened those same themes to fit the conservative climate of the 1950s, to the point that scholars treat the 1931 version as a lesbian classic while barely counting this one as part of the genre at all. Comparing the two, Bosley Crowther wrote that the older film was vivid and realistic while this one was pale and polished. For Romy Schneider, the film was an attempt to escape the Sissi typecasting she had come to resent. Who it's for: Anyone interested in queer film history and in how the same text gets told differently across eras. Who it's not for: Not for viewers seeking the original's nerve, since this version deliberately blurs the very thing that made it matter.