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Hot for Teacher: 1950s Lesbian Drama "Olivia" Is Still the Head of Its Class

Back and newly restored, the 1951 French film about a lusty all-girls boarding school remains as strange and sensational as ever.

A legendary and rarely seen lesbian classic, the 1951 film Olivia is being rereleased in theaters thanks to Icarus Films. Like the better-known 1931 German drama, Mädchen in Uniform, this story of a young girl's love for her teacher was written and directed by women. Olivia bears many striking resemblances to Mädchen, but at least it does not end with a suicide.

Based on the 1949 British lesbian novel of the same name by Dorothy Bussy (née Strachey), which was published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press, Jacqueline Audry’s Olivia was first released in France, then in the U.S. in 1954 (Colette Audry wrote the screenplay). Its sensational original U.S. title, Pit of Loneliness, was clearly meant to evoke Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness.

Olivia’s initial tone of girlish playfulness and its quaint period atmosphere shifts in fits and starts to become lurid and even creepy. Like other early portrayals of homosexuality on screen, we get a little titillation and a lot of psychological warning.

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Marie-Claire Olivia in "Olivia."

Marie-Claire Olivia in Olivia.

It’s the late 1800s in the French countryside. Impressionable, innocent English girl Olivia (Marie-Claire Olivia) arrives to her posh new boarding school in a horse and buggy and is quickly immersed in the dramas of her new home. We soon discover the strange partnership and rivalry of the two women who run the school, Miss Julie (Edwige Feullière) and Miss Cara (Simone Simon), who clearly share a special relationship and also seem to compete for the affections of their students—"the Julists and the Carists,” one character calls the two factions.

The languid Miss Cara is a caricature of manipulative, neurotic femininity—all flounce and lace and coquettishness. Her pouting and obviously feigned illness (she suffers from “migraines” when she gets upset) is at once a ploy to earn Miss Julie’s sympathy and a passive-aggressive jealous brooding over the fact that the students seem to prefer Miss Julie to her. We get additional shades of lesbian pseudo-psychology in fellow teacher Frau Riesener (Lesly Meynard), who co-dependently cares for Miss Cara, looming as a constant presence. Serving as a comic chorus, the school cook, Victoire (Yvonne de Bray), and math teacher Miss Dubois (Suzanne Dehelly) gossip incessantly and often hilariously about Frau Reisener, Miss Cara, Miss Julie, and all of their nonsense.

But the film’s primary arc is the evolving relationship between Olivia and Miss Julie, some of which is depicted in private in their one-on-one scenes and much of which is acted out in classroom and dining hall sequences—this public display of tension makes the story all the more shocking.

Icarus Films / Distrib Films US

Marie-Claire Olivia (left) in "Olivia."

Marie-Claire Olivia (left) in Olivia.

“Did you see? She was walking as if in a dream,” says one of the girls after seeing Olivia utterly smitten with Miss Julie after a classroom reading of Racine.

Our young protagonist grapples with her increasingly passionate crush on her teacher, and Miss Julie’s feelings for Olivia also gradually blossom—the portrayal of this dilemma vacillates between subtle restraint and overwrought torment as Feullière unfolds a masterful performance of pedophilic lesbian agony.

Similar to Mädchen in Uniform, we get numerous scenes in which the student recklessly makes known her feelings for the teacher. When they visit a museum together in Paris to see Jean-Antoine Watteau’s painting The Embarkation for Cythera, Olivia gazes not at the painting but at Miss Julie. Riding back home on the train, she again fixates on her in the coach. When she asks Olivia to sit next to her, Olivia grasps Miss Julie’s hand and we see Miss Julie, realizing Olivia’s intent, pull away and look strangely at her.

Later, when Miss Julie’s beloved former student Laura (Elly Claus) drops by, Olivia tries to understand whether Laura and Miss Julie had a similar experience together. “Laura, do you love her? Tell me,” Olivia says, and it’s more a proclamation than a question. “Does your heart beat when you see her? Does it stop when your hands touch? Does your throat close up when you speak to her?”

We’re an hour in at this point, and Olivia has offered mysterious and confusing implications that vaguely suggest lesbianism. The progression toward an explicit showcase of lesbian desire in the latter part of the film grows more astounding as the love that dare not speak its name becomes both audible and visible (it’s doubly astounding given that the film’s period setting makes it seem even older than it is).

Icarus Films / Distrib Films US

Edwige Feuillere (left) and Marie-Claire Olivia (right) in "Olivia."

Edwige Feuillère (left) and Marie-Claire Olivia (right) in Olivia.

Miss Julie keeps finding reasons to go visit Olivia in her room at bedtime. On one particular night, as Miss Julie goes to tuck Olivia in, we see a genuine hunger in her that she’s trying to suppress. She tells Olivia to shut her eyes and then leans over and kisses them far more intensely than she should. Olivia clutches Miss Julie’s hand and begins kissing it.

“You’re too passionate, my dear,” Miss Julie responds, pulling away.

The next day, together in Miss Julie’s office, Miss Julie plays it cool, but stares longingly at Olivia when she’s not looking. Olivia suddenly looks up and meets her gaze, and then lunging towards Miss Julie and kneeling next to her desk, Olivia declares, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” Miss Julie does not move—her reaction betrays her mixed emotions. She averts her eyes, half in despair and half in shock, as Olivia buries her face, crying.

In another sequence that closely resembles Mädchen, the girls have a Christmas pageant in which half of them dress in drag, adding another layer of queer possibility to the tale. Here we have Miss Julie and Miss Cara opening and presiding over the ball by dancing together, until one of Miss Cara’s migraines takes her away—which gives Miss Julie the opportunity to publicly and heedlessly hit on one of her students, the beautiful Cécile (Nadine Olivier). This is the point at which the film reaches an absolute 10 on the mind-boggling-depiction-of-lesbianism-in-a-1950s-film meter.

Icarus Films / Distrib Films US

The poster for "Olivia."

The poster for Olivia.

As Miss Cara walks off, Miss Julie sees Cécile among the other girls on the dance floor. She stands admiring her. “Our beautiful Cécile. Turn around and let us see you,” she coos, grasping Cécile’s shoulders before kissing her on the neck. From across the room, Olivia sees this (somehow no one else does). Miss Julie recovers and brazenly strides toward Olivia. Her sudden boldness makes it seem like she must be drunk or that she’s lost her mind. While it’s pleasurable to see such an overt illustration of lesbian desire on screen, it’s also creepy because, of course, Miss Julie is a teacher and her students are all at least half her age.

It gets even creepier as Miss Julie grabs Olivia, telling her that she has “lovely eyes, a lovely mouth, a lovely body… But if I wanted to kiss you, how would I go past all these veils [of her costume].”

Let me tell you a secret, she whispers seductively, pulling Olivia against her. “I will come tonight.” Pause. “I will bring you candy.” Candy? She walks away, and Olivia swoons as we collectively wonder out loud, “What the fuck?!”

Numerous similar scenes unspool from here, but I’ll stop with the spoilers. However, it’s worth noting that we’re never given a scene in which the women actually kiss, which raises the question of whether this new restoration of Olivia is from an uncensored print. In his groundbreaking book, The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo reprints the following U.S. censor's notation on the film: "Eliminate in Reel 5D: scene of Miss Julie holding Olivia in close embrace and kissing her on the mouth. Reason: immoral, would tend to corrupt morals."

Sadly, these morals remained uncorrupted. Like Mädchen in Uniform and its subsequent remakes (the fabulous 1958 German production and the wonderful 1951 Mexican version, Muchachas de Uniforme), Olivia’s scenes are the classic tortured images of lesbian desire we expect from films made before the lifting of the Production Code in the 1960s, especially in the small but significant genre of lesbian girls’ boarding school movies—a list that also includes 1961’s The Children’s Hour (starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine) and 1968’s Therese and Isabelle.

As Olivia evolves from subdued period piece to lurid melodrama, we wish we could cheer for the lesbians to end up together, yet given its context and setting we can really only marvel at how weird this movie is. But now that you know what you’re in for, enjoy.

The new 4K restoration of Olivia opens August 16 at the Quad Cinema in New York.

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