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Ossi Oswalda plays a wild young woman -- Ossi -- who lives with her wealthy uncle and a strict governess. Finding the girl to be out of hand, Uncle employs a man, Dr Kersten, to control her and teach her proper behaviour. At first he seems as strict as Uncle would hope, and Ossi is uncomfortable at the restrictions placed on her. If only she could be a man!
She decides to do something about that, and goes at once to a man's tailor's and gets an evening suit. From there she goes to a dance hall; travelling on the U-Bahn (subway) she forgets to stand up and give her seat to a stamnding lady, and is rebuked by a man. WHen she gets to the dance hall she flirts with young women, and consorts with "other" men, in particular she befriends Kersten himself, although eh doesn't recognise her. This sequence involves all the taboos of the time, in particular getting very drunk and smoking cigars -- shocking for a wman at that time. After a visit to the lavatory -- yes, she nearly goes into the ladies' -- they get increasingly drunk and eventually they hire a cab and get taken home. Their friendship now extends to passionate kissing, surely breaking a very serious taboo in 1919, and this is not explained in the film; hoewever they are both so drunk that they end up in one another's houses.
The next morning Ossi wakes up and realises that being a man isn't such fun after all; she rushes home and finds Kersten there; as he is waking up he realises the truth, and they embrace happily.
As so often with feature films at this early date, a lot of plot elements are not developed fully and seem out of place; it seemed to be more important that there was a happy and moral ending -- the wayward girl accepts her lot in life -- than that all the loose ends are pulled together neatly.
The film has been released in an English-language subtitled version with the title I Don't Want to be a Man (although the German translates more neatly to "I wouldn't like to be a man").
HF March 2011
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