Nurse Report (3 Stars)

Of all the "Report" films made in Germany in the 1970's this was the most controversial. It's closely connected with the Housewife Report films. The married couple Brigitte and Bernd Mittler, shown above with Matron Rosl Mayr, carry out interviews in the same way. There's the same mixture of sexual situations and comedy. The trouble is that Germany's nurses had no sense of humour. Immediately after its release there were protests against the film. Nurses demonstrated outside German cinemas. There was a large demonstration in Bonn outside the government buildings. Many nurses lodged legal complaints against the insults in the film. The leader of the state government in Bavaria complained about the film. Finally all copies of the film were confiscated and the film was banned, unfortunately for the film fans who hadn't been fast enough to see it in the first week, pushing their way through the hordes of nurses blocking the cinema doors.

Despite being sexually more explicit, "Nurse Report" was no different from the British Doctor films (1954 to 1970) and the American Nurse films (1970 to 1974). Nobody bothered about them, so why did the Germans make so much fuss? The problem was in the nature of the Report films. The Report films, whether they were about schoolgirls, housewives or nurses, were erotic comedies. What made them different to their British and American counterparts is that they pretended to be true. The off-camera voice-over repeatedly reminds the viewer that these are real examples of problems in our society. Anyone who believes these claims doesn't deserve to be allowed into a cinema.

The film begins with discussions in the office of an opinion survey office about the troubles in the healthcare industry. There's a lack of nurses. What are the reasons? Interviewers are sent to hospitals to speak to nurses. Bernd and Brigitte Mittler are sent to a large hospital in Munich. In the Housewife Report films they carried out their interviews separately, but in this film they work as a couple.

Okay, Bernd wasn't allowed into the nurses' bedrooms, but apart from that they walked round the hospital together. For fans of German cinema I'd like to point out that the nurse on the right is played by Ingrid Steeger and the naked nurse on the left is played by Ulrike Butz.

The problems for nurses are manifold. The wages are very low. Nurse Ingrid says that she could earn a lot more as a secretary, and if she spoke English she could earn twice as much as in the hospital. The regular working week is 48 hours, and there is a lot of overtime. Frequently nurses are called to do overtime at short notice. It's impossible for them to have a social life. If they had relationships before becoming nurses, the relationships break up because they have no time to see their boyfriends.

Up to this point I can imagine that the nurses in the audience were sitting nodding their heads. "Overworked. Underpaid. Broken relationships. Yes, that's us".

Now the film presents the solution to these problems. Since the nurses can't have relationships with anyone outside the hospital, they have to find someone inside the hospital to deal with their sexual frustration. There are three possibilities:

1. Doctors
2. Patients
3. Other nurses

To get the definitions right, in this film the doctors are all men and the nurses are all women.

The nurses, especially the student nurses, have to share rooms. An easy way to make use of this is to embark on a lesbian relationship. If the other nurses sit around naked like Ulrike the temptation is huge to sneak into her bed at night, and she's not unwilling.

It's more common for the nurses to fling themselves at the doctors, because they're all handsome and rich. This leads to sexual encounters between operations in the rest rooms and the janitor rooms. The doctors and the nurses are copulating whenever they can, wherever they can. Many of the nurses hope that a doctor will marry them, but this never happens. The doctors just want to have sex with as many nurses as they can lay their hands on. The emphasis is on the Turkish Doctor Ramin, who likes to "initiate" every new nurse in the hospital. He's handsome, he's charming and he recites the poetry of Omar Khayyam to conquer the hearts of the young nurses. He says that a nurse doesn't become a woman until she's slept with him.

After a while the nurses who want to get married realise the doctors are all womanisers and look elsewhere. They stay on the lookout for handsome patients who are still single. Nursing a man to health can win his heart, but it's even easier to take sexual advantage of him when he's too weak to resist. The nurse Doris Arden, shown in the photo, is 30 and feels like she's past it. The younger nurses are all prettier and slimmer than she is. She's desperate to find herself a man at any cost.

Sexual encounters like this are made easy by the clothing regulation. Nurses are almost naked at work. They only wear underwear under their short uniforms, and most don't bother with a bra. It makes me wish I'd been in hospital more often. I would have enjoyed Nurse Doris jumping on me.

But what's a hospital without a wonderful matron like Rosl Mayr? They say matrons are grumpy – or at least that's how they're portrayed in films – but Rosl has a beautiful warm personality.

Like the Housewife Report films, "Nurse Report" is split into different short stories, but the separation isn't as strict. It all takes place in one hospital, so we see the same nurses in different scenes. Nurse Doris is the film's main character. We see her throughout the film in her attempts to find love. I would have liked to see a happy ending for her, but when the credits roll she's still looking for love.

"Nurse Report" was released in 1972, almost 50 years ago. I wonder how it would be received today. Have German nurses developed a sense of humour by now?