Anders als du und ich/The Third Sex (1957)

Anders als du und ich (US titles: Bewildered Youth (dubbed), The Third Sex (subtitled)) is a 1957 German exploitation movie which purports to deal with the then-taboo subject of homosexuality.

Arca, a small Berlin production company specializing in lowbrow entertainment (like Liane (1956)), picked up a topical theme: In 1957, the German Federal Constitutional Court had re-inforced the § 175 (the paragraph declaring homosexual acts illegal, punishable by jail) in its Nazi version, thus denying gay victims of the Third Reich reparations. Arca assembled a quite above-average cast, including famed Austrian stage and film actress Paula Wessely (Frank Noack compares her to Greer Garson), Paul Dahlke and young Christian Wolff, later a well-regarded star of TV series, in his first role. They had Felix Lützkendorf, an old pro, write a screenplay, and had Veit Harlan, another old pro, infamous for Nazi propaganda like Jew Suess, direct. It must have looked like a sure moneymaker.

However, the FSK (Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle, roughly the German equivalent to the MPAA) wouldn’t let the finished film pass: it would “foster perversion”, the officials claimed, even promote the “decadent weaklings”, the typical homosexuals. Thus, desperate Arca had to re-cut the film, shoot new scenes, re-dub others and rename the film from its original title Das dritte Geschlecht (The Third Sex) to Anders als du und ich (Different from you and me), the subtitle “§ 175” being more than a slight hint about what kind of difference the film dealt with.

The plot: 18-year-old Klaus Teichmann (Wolff) is introduced to Dr. Boris Winkler (Friedrich Joloff), an art dealer with a propensity for very long handshakes. Klaus’ parents, reading about “the third sex” in an encyclopedia, are wondering about their son, while Dr. Winkler starts to inflict his influence on Klaus by means of modern art and offers for boxing lessons. Klaus’ father (Paul Dahlke), a stolid bank director, places charges against Dr. Winkler just in case (“Art? Whatever dubious person is this now?” and “It is from these circles that the criminals come!”), while Klaus’ mother (Paula Wessely) takes things in their own hands and has her maid Gerda (Ingrid Stenn), who is conveniently fond of Klaus, seduce him, thus “saving” him from the horror of homosexuality. Dr. Winkler leaves Germany for Italy and Mrs. Teichmann goes to jail for procuring.

On reviewing the initial script, then called Eltern klagen an (Parents accuse), on March 27, 1957, Harlan wrote to the producers:

If the film is to be effective to the public, then it is necessary that the public is not only merely into indignation against homosexuality (nobody pays DM2.50 only for indignation!), but the audience has to be offered both something demonic but also as something pleasant. (That’s what they pay for!) Therefore, I am warning against making an “anti-film”. All art is — “pro”. (…)

The script fails to mention that there are two kinds of homosexuals in the script — those in whom nature has done something wrong, and those who are criminals against nature. The latter do this either out of inherent immorality or for material reasons or for damnable weakness. The former, on the other hand, deserve our full sympathy. The film must not condemn or persecute these homosexuals, whom we have to consider tragically if we want to be magnanimously, not damn or persecute them for bourgeois motives. We may only persecute them in the sense that they seduce young people whose nature is basically all right.

Although the subject takes action against such homosexuals, since no word is said about the nature and the demons of homosexuals, the content of the script only generates hatred against homosexuality. But compassion for these sexual cripples must be anchored in the film if it wants to arouse people’s interest. (…) Scenes expressing the tragic hopelessness of homosexuals and their fear of persecution or the curse of society are therefore missing. Maybe only one such scene is required for the subject to be defeated at all.

This is merely a short excerpt; the whole letter — in Harlan’s somewhat clumsy phrasing — offers more comments and suggestions on the script’s perceived narrative faults.

Das dritte Geschlecht started shooting on May 8, 1957. Harlan “was passionate,” recalled Christian Wolff in an interview with Harlan’s biographer Frank Noack.

“That was the most intense collaboration with a director, ever. And after thirty-seven years in the profession, I have seen a lot. I remember exactly the focused rehearsals, prior to shooting, in my film-mother Paula Wessely’s hotel room. Harlan was pugnacious, no sign of resignation. Maybe that was his fault. Maybe he should have — like so many of his (more clever) colleagues — kept more silent after the end of the war. Maybe then he wouldn’t have been the only one deemed guilty for every misdeed that the Reich’s Film Chamber had committed.”

On August 5, 1957, the FSK rejected the film, then called Das dritte Geschlecht:

(…) The broad portrayal of homosexual activity is bound to violate the moral sensitivity of an average audience of all ages. Also the film, since it does not offer any clear statement against the doings of the homosexuals, and since it lacks any moral standard, must have a morally confusing and thus desecrating effect on wide, normally-feeling circles. Not only for moral reasons but also from the point of view of public health, the film, which contributes to the popularization of perverse sexual behavior, must be kept away from the public.

We are talking here about the livelihoods of the state and society worthy of protection.

An appeal against this decision was dismissed:

It must be admitted that male homosexuality occurs in many ways. From the coquette, pansexual, egotistic sissy to the cold, self-centered male prostitute to the seduced, still childish boy in puberty (…) all forms of sexual lifestyle exist and are represented by every conceivable variation of sexual activity. However, a film (…) cannot show these numerous faces of homosexuality in detail. But instead of at least giving an insight, homosexuality is exclusively integrated into the aesthetic attitude with the alleged search for knowledge transfer, artistic inclination and friendship. This applies not only to the circle of boys gathering around Dr. Winkler, but also to his “friends” abroad, who are with him twice. The unbiased observer must therefore be convinced that art and literature have a home in homosexual circles, that real ties exist precisely there and that young people there will receive real help (…)

However, experience shows that, despite existing friendly relationships between homosexuals, their friendships are far rarer than one would like to admit, that homosexuals are in reality isolated, and that one does not take the other seriously, is not said. Homosexual relationships are just very often completely noncommittal remaining affections to changing partners. The partner only plays a role as a participatory object of execution or an object of suffering, while the decisive factor remains the own pleasure gain.

Just as the film does not show the true face of homosexuality, it does not show its extraordinary danger. (…) A film with such an effect can only be welcomed by homosexuals, while all sections of the population who still have a sense of morality and justice (and this is the vast majority of the people) are violated hardest in their feelings.

Harlan, always a stubborn and naive man, was struck by the hostile reactions. In a September 9 1957 letter to lawyer Horst von Hartlieb, he wrote:

I would never have accepted the film if I had had any inkling that our democracy, under the pretense of needing to educate children correctly, requires us to turn against persons who are not the least responsible for their predisposition.

Variety, April 9, 1958, quotes Harlan as saying:

“My prime intention,” director said, “was to oppose the German law (paragraph 175) which regards the homosexuals as criminals. This paragraph, which in most civilized countries doesn’t exist, is inhuman. People who are like that can’t be punished. Of course, my film didn’t intend to approve the public activity of these people. On the contrary, it was also an attack against those who attempt to seduce juveniles. Such persons, of course, are criminals; I tried to be as objective and tolerant as possible and to further understanding for those who are homosexuals by nature! My film showed, for instance, a scene in which the homosexual art collector (the evil-doer) looks up a lawyer as he needs a counsel. The lawyer, a queer himself, gives him a turndown saying that homosexuals have a special duty and responsibility to behave decently and not to trespass the law. This very important scene was cut. too. And all these cuts contributed to distorting this film’s message.”

The dubbed U.S. version (which followed an earlier, subtitled U.S. release), though cut in its own right (and denying Veit Harlan a credit, listing assistant director Frank Winterstein instead), appears to be based on an earlier cut than the German release version (as was the Austrian version — some of the scenes omitted in the German release version can be seen on the Filmmuseum DVD): It omits the painfully contrived subplot, added during reshoots, bringing Dr. Winkler into jail at the end, and keeps some scenes’ original dialogues as well as snippets of scenes cut from the German release. However, some odd cuts and narrative jumps indicate that the project underwent changes even before being submitted to the FSK.

All this accounts for the odd, self-contradictory character of the film. It is true that every gay character we get to know is a weakling (like Klaus’ friend, a pale bean-pole writing novels with too many adjectives in them), a pervert (modern art!) or a criminal. However, the representatives of the Philistine “normal” world, above all Klaus’ father, are hardly more endearing. It should also be noted that Dr. Winkler doesn’t harm anyone in the course of the film, and that the film hardly supports the fear of Klaus’ parents that homosexuality might be contagious.

While there’s a credit for the real-life “Frankfurt Institute for Sexual Research”, the film oscillates rather madly both in form and content — there are moments of reasonable realism (including a monologue of Dr. Winkler about being chased and harassed), as well as odd misconceptions (a gay bar looking as respectable and expansive as a restaurant set left over from a bourgeois drama) and unadulterated nonsense, as in the laughable “orgy” scene with its low key lighting, tilted camera angles and spindly semi-nude boys wrestling to Forbidden Planet-like music.

The mere fact that Anders als du und ich actually spells out its theme — as opposed to, say, Tea and Sympathy (1956), Compulsion (1958) or The Strange One (1957) — makes it a genuine oddity. Still, some dialogue between Klaus’ parents is intelligent and to the point. (“You’re radiating an uncertainty that’s ridiculous”, he tells her. “And you’re radiating a certainty that’s scary,” she replies.) Hans Nielsen, as Klaus’ uncle, portrays the one sensible character in the film (most critics chose to ignore him): “The world is full of shadows, but these shadows also belong to nature.” is an enlightened statement for 1957 Germany.

To Harlan’s credit, he does manage to bring these disparate elements together, and the set pieces, which must have been quite daring in their time (including a short glimpse of the heroine’s nipple, missing in the U.S. cut), work well, until the film falls apart in its second half.

While the regular film score (Erwin Halletz) is the standard symphonic stuff, spooky electronic music for “gay” scenes was provided by Oskar Sala, later to work on German Edgar Wallace krimis and Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963). Dr. Winkler is played by Friedrich Joloff — gay himself, “outing” his lifestyle with remarkable courage — who was one of the best and most prolific voice actors of the 1950ies and 1960ies, specializing in villainous characters and James Mason. (Hans Nielsen and Siegfried Schürenberg — in a small role as persecuting attorney — were prolific voice actors as well.) While we don’t know what he thought of the film, he re-appeared, as a cynical drug dealer, in Harlan’s next movie, Liebe kann wie Gift sein (Love can be like poison, 1958).

Anders als du und ich — which Harlan called his favorite of his “last foolish little movies” — remains a curiosity piece of the highest order, if only for a child psychologist’s advising the mother to let her son have sex with a girl: “This is, so to speak, a homeopathic advice.” While it never comes close to the delirious high camp of Hanna Amon (1951) — another curiously schizophrenic narrative — , the jumbled morality of its lurid tale, performed by professionals as if it were a very important film indeed, is still something to behold.

German critics bashed the “foolish little movie” mercilessly, whether they accused Harlan of homophobia or were homophobic themselves. Günter Dahl, writing in Filmpress, concluded his review with this outbreak: “Disgusting! When the curtain goes down, one hurries in order to wash one’s hands. Deep at heart, one wants to take a bath.” Critics outside of Germany tended to be a little less outraged:

New York Times: Veit Harlan (…) has fashioned a discursive, fairly static and obvious feature out of a potentially explosive theme (…) Homosexuality, as presented here, has no more impact than a standard soap opera. (…) Although its title is slightly sensational, the content of this feature is not. The idea that homosexuality exists and that it sometimes results in domestic problems is hardly startling.

New York Daily News: There is talent in the movie, good, reliable performers. (…) Production wise the picture is no slouch, either. But, at best, the subject is distasteful on the screen, too raw for the general public (…)

New York Herald-Tribune: Approaches a forbidden subject with frankness and good taste. The acting is uniformly good.

Boston Globe: The sensational plot has not been handled indecently or in bad taste (….) There isn’t much else to recommend the picture (…) it’s just a bit dreary.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The clinical aspects of homosexuality are completely ignored in an obvious paperback recapitulation of the problem, and the sympathies are conveniently stacked and underlined in pedestrian terms. (….) Mr. Veit Harlan’s direction is rigidly form-fitting. Everything about “The Third Sex” is an amalgam of insincerity and dramatic downgrades.

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph: Although well-made and with a cautious approach, “The Third Sex” has such an unwholesome theme that the production is morbid and sick. (…) Most of the characters are stock caricatures, and nobody commands more than passing sympathy. The film offers no solution to the problem, merely noting that such conditions do exist. That hardly comes under the head of news — or entertainment.

Films and Filming: The film does not condemn or pity homosexuality (…) Some people may not like the viewpoints expressed in Harlan’s film; but it is at least honest in its reflection of an aspect of life in Germany, if not England, today (…) The film can be faulted because it goes from one extreme to another (…) The doctor and his covey of boys playing an electronic organ amid Japanese objects d’art and Greek wrestlers is too bizarre; and the serene purity of the household skivvy as she disrobes and the sudden revelation that comes over the young art-student’s face, is [sic] too novelette. It is as false to imply that all homosexuals are effeminate and “arty” — as this film does — as it is to imply that all heterosexuals are incapable of doing anything creative. (…)

Baltimore Sun: it’s not a shocker; at the same time, the problem with which it attempts to grapple is a bit unusual for screen treatment. The performances are good, too.
Beyond that, “The Third Sex” has little to offer the discriminating patron. It’s story is silly, its characters (apart from the excellent performances) unbelievable, its approach a peculiar mixture of esoteric sophistication and wide-eyed naivite.

The Observer: If the film means to be naughty, it has missed its mark. It has all the artless simplicity of a dull picture strip, which presents the story in terms without offence, but with no feeling and no personality whatsoever.