School for Love

Brigitte Bardot was only 20 when she starred in this adaptation of a 1920 Vicki Baum novel. She's Sophie, one of a platoon of young music conservatory students in postwar Vienna, but the one that stands out, especially to the head singing teacher Walter (Jean Marais), whose real love is his wife, a famous and unstable diva (Denise Noel), but who routinely dallies with his more beautiful students. The story details the hothouse triangle between the saucy and self-confident Sophie, Walter, and a third student, Elis (Isabelle Pia), a talented but melancholic blonde from a troubled home whom no one realizes is nearing the brink of suicide.