Winsloe also wrote the screenplay and was on the set during filming. Due to the film's overt and openly lesbian themes, the film remains an international cult classic [ 1 ] and enjoys widespread acclaim from critics.
Manuela feels out of place in this strict environment. The first spark of love begins with a goodnight kiss. Shortly after, Ilsa von Westhagen, another student, writes a letter to her parents about the conditions of the school and has a worker smuggle it out. When the girls prepare to put on the play Don Carlos by Friedrich Schiller for the headmistress's birthday, Manuela plays the lead male role, Don Carlos.
Ilsa is also supposed to play a large role but is not allowed to perform after her letter is returned to the school. During the afterparty, the girls are served punch containing alcohol. The headmistress overhears and Manuela passes out after her speech. The headmistress puts her in solitary, but Manuela is moved out of solitary when the princess arrives at the school.
The movie ends with all the girls watching the headmistress as she slowly walks down the stairwell and down the hall in shaken silence. After Leipzig the play was produced on the stage in Berlin as Gestern und Heute [ 2 ] with a different cast and a more prominent lesbian theme, which was again toned down somewhat for the film. It was largely shot at the Potsdam military orphanage, now a teacher training college for women. Carl Froelich's studio in Berlin- Tempelhof was also used.
The film's original working title was Gestern und heute Yesterday and Today but this was thought too insipid and changed to increase the chances of box-office success. Although sound had only been used for two years in cinema, it was used artfully. The film was groundbreaking in having an all-female cast; in its sympathetic portrayal of lesbian "pedagogical eros" see Gustav Wyneken and homoeroticism , revolving around the passionate love of a fourteen-year-old Manuela for her teacher von Bernburg ; and in its co-operative and profit-sharing financial arrangements although these failed.
