Word: maedchen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Brattle has resurrected another museum piece, this time in the form of a German film made in 1931. Maedchen in Uniform does have some antique interest. As the Museum of Modern Art introduction says, its photography does have a bit of the modern freedom, but the "during" shots are easily recognized: they are used over and over again. Maedchen's musical background is also interesting, largely because it occurs so rarely. Unless one is a connoisseur of the development of the movie industry, however, he will find Maedchen only moderately absorbing, for the plot is a little lacking in intensity...
...story of the struggle for love and sympathy amid the discipline of a German girls' school, Maedchen has all the characters one would expect. At one extreme, there is the headmistress, who is the essence of rigidity, both in attitude and in bearing (she appears to be slightly rheumatic). At the other, there are the repressed girls, led by one especially revolutionary gamin. Between them are the two figures who bear the main stress of the struggle, the sensitive orphan who needs sympathy and the teacher who must endanger her position to give the girl the love she needs. This...
...usually anemic, thus revealing her psychological state. Director Leontine Sagan, however, pushes her a little too far in the last scene, where she becomes a sort of warmed-over Ophelia. Luckily, the acting is not generally so melodramatic, and the cast as a whole is very good. Maedchen is, perhaps worth seeing, if only for the sake of proving to oneself that the acting style of twenty-five years ago is not always ludicrous...
...film and costs less than such $20,000-and-up New York productions as Philco Playhouse, Robert Montgomery Presents and Ford Theater, Fireside actors are relatively unknown and scripts are picked impartially from obscure free-lance writers and the classics. Producer Brewster Morgan and German-born Director Frank (Maedchen in Uniform) Wisbar will try almost anything. They have retold the plot of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in 30 minutes and a modern setting, and turned Thomas Hardy's The Three Strangers into a western...