Karla
Karla is the type of person to whom it is more important to have an opinion of one's own and not to put up with simplistic solutions than to teach parrot-like pupils with hardly any minds of their own. But many of her Form 12 A pupils no longer know how to ask questions, to contradict or to look for solutions independently. The principal, a man in his late fifties marked by the war and bitter about his post-war experiences, sticks to the motto: the simpler matters are, the clearer they become. They quite like each other, but their differing attitudes to authority, truth etc., still have to face the test of reality. On the one hand, there is the school inspector who keeps a dubious system of moving or not moving pupils to the next form. On the other, there are the pupils who in part are already too adjusted and apathetic.
Karla slowly and imperceptibly comes to give up her ideals and her own uncompromising attitude. Now, they all are satisfied - both teachers and pupils. Everything inches along in its familiar old rut. But the young teacher suddenly realizes where all this convenience and adjustment leads to. She rediscovers her contrariness, and thereby her own personality. The price she pays for this, however, is high: at the end of the school year, she is forcibly transferred to another post.
Director: Herrmann Zschoche, b/w, 134 min., 1965/66
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