Two head teachers, who may or may not have been lovers, compete for the allegiance of their well-bred, high-spirited students in a French finishing school. The stakes are raised and the balance of power is shifted with the appearance of an English girl, Olivia, whose mad crush on one teacher is nearly reciprocated.

Revived in a new digital restoration, “Olivia,” which was released in France in 1951 and the United States three years later, is a fascinating study of love and repression by Jacqueline Audry (1908-1977), a French director who has long been hiding in plain sight.

Miss Julie ( Edwige Feuillère ) is remote and graciously domineering . Even more manipulative is her longtime associate, the temperamental and flirtatious Miss Cara ( Simone Simon , whose brief Hollywood career included an indelible performance as the possessed woman of the original “Cat People”). The school is both an idyllic retreat and a hot house of petty jealousies — divided, so Olivia (Marie-Claire Olivia) is told, between “Julistes” and “Caristas.” She finds herself in the middle.

A posh, literate costume drama, “Olivia” exemplifies the post-World War II “cinema of quality” that would be anathema to the firebrands of the French New Wave. Audry’s fluid camera work, particularly evident in her use of the school’s grand staircase to mark a shifting hierarchy of students and teachers, suggests the influence of Max Ophüls, for whom she worked as an assistant .