Girls' School (1938)

'Natalie' (Anne Shirley) attends a private school on a sort of grace-and-favour basis as her scholarship is looked down upon by headmistress 'Miss Brewster' (Cecil Cunningham). In order to try and make her life easier, she acts as a monitor - a sort of spy - for the boss and keeps a diary of any mischief. When she reports 'Linda' (Nan Grey) for being out all night with her beau she swiftly finds herself completely ostracised by her fellow students. Indeed, it is looking like she is going to be expelled until the parents of 'Linda' show up and her father (Pierre Watkin) suggests to his daughter that she might want to make peace with 'Natalie'. That all goes spectacularly wrong at a school dance not only for the girls, but it also pitches 'Michael' (Ralph Bellamy), who is courting teacher 'Miss Laurel' (Gloria Holden), and the supercilious 'Edgar' (Kenneth Howells) into some fisticuffs of their own. In many ways this film is quite a potent critique on the snobbish and the élitist but it also contrasts that by poking some fun at the girls' own desires for one-upsmanship set amidst an environment of envy and hormones. Therein is the problem for me, here. There are just no personalities for us to get to know, or like, and if the film is remarkable for anything, it is it's shallowness. Perhaps it is trying to be a social commentary on the double-standards and hypocrisies that prevailed in 1930s America - doubtless imported from Edwardian or Victorian Britain, but somehow it never really beds in and neither Shirley nor Grey really seem to have any skin in this game. It's watchable enough, and it is quite cheerily scored - but it's all a bit flat.