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Leontine Sagan

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Leontine Sagan
Born
Leontine Schlesinger

(1889-02-13)13 February 1889
Budapest or Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died20 May 1974(1974-05-20) (aged 85)
Pretoria, South Africa
Occupation(s)Theatre director and actress
SpouseVictor Fleischer

Leontine Sagan (born Leontine Schlesinger; 13 February 1890 – 20 May 1974) was an Austrian-Hungarian theatre director and actress of Jewish descent.[1] She is best known for directing Mädchen in Uniform (1931), a film that has been celebrated for its scathing indictment of German military schooling, as well as its sensitive portrayal of same-sex intimacy between a teacher and a student at the school.[2][3]

Sagan was born in Budapest in 1890 but grew up in South Africa.[4] After training with Max Reinhardt in Vienna, she acted on stage in the Austrian provinces, and later in Germany, Britain, and South Africa, where she also directed theatre. She co-founded the National Theatre Organization of South Africa in 1947, and died in Pretoria, South Africa in 1974, at the age of 85.[5][6]

Personal life

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Born in Budapest in 1890, Sagan spent her early childhood in Vienna at a time when these cities were the twin centers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her father Isidore Schlesinger was largely absent, as he traveled to seek fortune in the South African diamond fields. Leontine and her siblings were raised by their working mother, a rarity among educated Europeans at that time, and she credits her mother with inspiring her to likewise seek a career.[7] In 1899, as a child, they moved to South Africa with to join her father, just before the Second Boer War. She was educated in a German-language school in Johannesburg and later worked for the Austrian consulate there.[8]

After returning to Vienna to study with Max Reinhardt, Leontine adopted the stage name Sagan and acted on stage first in the Austrian provinces and in the 1910s and 1920s in Vienna, Frankfurt and Berlin.[9] In 1916, she married Austrian publisher and writer Dr. Victor Fleischer.[5][10][11] Forced to leave Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933, the pair moved to Britain, briefly to the United States and later,in 1939, to South Africa, where they spent the years of World War II (1939-45).[12] After the war, Sagan directed theatre abroad in Britain and Australia, as well as in South Africa, where she founded the National Theatre Organisation and also taught theatre practice to black as well as white students.[13][14]

Despite her life-long marriage to Fleischer, who died in South Africa in 1950,[15] Sagan expressed interest in lesbian themes and characters throughout her career as an actor before making Mädchen in Uniform.[16] This film and Sagan's choice to play the role of the teacher in English versions of the original stage play, variously titled Girls in Uniform and Children in Uniform,[17] in Britain and South Africa in the 1930s and her taste for masculine dress as seen in the photographs illustrating her autobiography Lights and Shadows, suggests a commitment to sensitive representation of lesbian lives and loves, if not also to personal attachments.[18][19][20]

Career

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Supported by her mother and funds from working in the consulate, Leontine moved to VIenna in 1911 to train with Max Reinhardt, who was already known for elaborate and imaginative sets and theatrical direction, as well as his theatre school.[21] After acting in small roles in provincial Austrian theatres, she played Abel in Comrades by August Strindberg in the Munich Kammerspiele This major role in a play by a controversial modern playwright led to an engagement at the Albert Theatre in Dresden, where Sagan played Nasya in Maxim Gorky's Lower Depths in 1913, and at the avant-garde Neues Theater in Frankfurt, during World War I, where Sagan originated roles in expressionist drama by Walter Hasenclever and Georg Kaiser.[22] After the war, she played major roles at the Frankfurter Schauspielhaus, where she played in classical German plays by Goethe and Schiller, as well as the lead in a historical drama on Catherine the Great.[23] She also appeared in films, such as The Holy Mountain (1926), The Great Leap (1927), The White Ecstasy (1930).[24] At the Schauspielhaus she also turned to directing, including Strindberg's Ghost Sonata, and G.B. Shaw's Caeser and Cleopatra. as well as plays on topical Jewish themes such as Die Jagd Gottes (Hunted by God), a play about a pogrom by the Rabbi Emil Bernhardt, which proved controversial.[25] Sagan's choice to play the lesbian Countess Geschwitz in Frank Wedekind's Pandora's Box in 1919, early in her career at the Schauspielhaus, reflects not only her interest in lesbian subjects, but also the relative tolerance of same-sex lives and institutions in the Weimar Republic, including the Institute for Sexology (1919-1933) as well as informal groups.[26][27]

Although best known for her film Mädchen in Uniform, Sagan came to film directing indirectly. In 1931, she directed Gestern und Heute, a play about an intimate relationship between a teacher and a student at a girls school, by the lesbian writer Christa Winsloe.[28][29] At Winsloe's insistance, Hertha Thiele played the role of the student and caught the attention of Carl Fröhlich, head of the German Film Chamber. Although Fröhlich maintained overall control as artistic supervisor and changed Winsloe's title to Mädchen in Uniform, allegedly to attract more male viewers, Sagan cast and directed the actors, including Thiele and, in the role of the teacher, Dorothea Wieck.[30] Sagan's direction of the all-female cast was ground-breaking not only for its portrayal of lesbian and pedagogical eros and for its critique of Prussian militarism, but also for the production's co-operative and profit-sharing financial arrangements.[31][32]. The film was a national and international hit.[33] Even after the Nazified German Film Chamber, still run by Fröhlich, stripped the film of all references to Jewish contributors, including Sagan and many of the young actresses playing the schoolgirls, Mädchen in Uniform continued to circulate in Nazi Germany with advertising favoring Wieck, who disavowed any lesbian content and continued to work in Nazi Germany, after Sagan, Thiele, and others left the country..[34] After the war, a more sentimental remake of Mädchen in Uniform, starring Romy Schneider, appeared in 1958, but from the 1960s, renewed interest in lesbian film brought viewers back to the 1931 original.[35]

After Hitler's rise to power, Sagan moved to England.[5][36] While Fleischer continued until t1938 to manage his publishing house in Vienna, Sagan was in England, directing in 1933 first a stage version of Mädchen in Uniform called Girls in Uniform in London, and then in South Africa with the perhaps less controversial title Children in Uniform.[37] Her reputation as a director of young people led her to work with students at Oxford University, directing male students and professional actresses in plays by Shakespeare.[38] Her observations of student rivalry between athletes and aesthetes at Oxford inspired the script for Men of Tomorrow which Sagan directed under the auspices of Alexander Korda at London Film Productions.[5] Although releases have been documented by the U.S. Library of Congress as well as the British Film Institute, this film has since vanished. It was on the strength of Mädchen in Uniform that Sagan was invited to Hollywood by MGM studios, where she stayed for six months in 1936, describing the period as a "joyride".[39] On the strength of her film, she was able to connect with former colleagues who had become famous in Hollywood such as screenwriter Salka Viertel, whom Sagan had known as Salke Steuermann when they were both acting in Austria but, although Sagan wrote treatments, among them for a biopic on Cecil John Rhodes, she had no success.

Instead, Sagan returned to acclaim in the London theatre; she was the first woman to produce plays at London's Drury Lane in the West End, where she directed Ivor Novello's hit musicals Glamorous Night (1935), Careless Rapture (1936), Crest of the Wave (1937), The Dancing Years (1939) and Arc de Triomphe (1943).[10][40][41] The popularity of these shows is credited with saving Drury Lane from potential closure in the 1930s.[42] In 1930, she and Fleischer moved to South Africa, where she directed mostly amateur actors but also taught black students including later famous theatre people such as the creator of the township musical Gibson Kente. [43]. After the war, she was able to return to directing Ivor Novello in London and to take his and other plays on tour to Australia.[44] Between international tours, she was also able to develop theatre in South Africa by co-founding with Andre Huguenet the National Theatre Organisation that toured the country from its base in Pretoria.[5] In February 1948 she directed the NTO's first English production Dear Brutus by J.M. Barrie, followed by An Inspector Calls. Directed In Theatre Street for the East Rand Theatre Club in 1950. (Leontine Sagan - ESAT. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.)

Filmography

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*Mädchen in Uniform (1931) Sagan’s most significant film featured an all-female cast. It was the first film in Germany to be produced cooperatively (both the crew and cast obtained shares rather than a salary).[45] Mädchen in Uniform is based on the play by Christa Winsloe. It survived but was much censored until the 1970s. Eleanor Roosevelt is credited with helping to revoke its censorship in the US. It was released in its surviving form on video-tape, with English subtitles, in the US in 1994 and in the UK in 2000. The film centers on an all-girls boarding school. It examines various emotional and physical pressures caused by the authoritarian rule and militarism of the Prussian headmistress.[5] It is thought to be[by whom?] an anti-fascist film that critiques the Prussian education system. Many critics also argue that the film is suggesting of feminist notions, since the women characters openly express their emotions and sexual orientations.[46]

The film is among the first to suggest lesbian themes. Throughout Mädchen in Uniform, girls are depicted holding hands, shown dressing and undressing, and in one scene two women are depicted kissing on the lips.The film’s main character Manuela, a 14-year-old girl, develops a crush on her teacher Fräulein von Bernburg, which affects her performance in her class and in the school's theatre production.[5] Manuela eventually has a public and drunken breakdown in which she confesses her love for Fräulein von Bernburg, after which she is sanctioned by the headmistress, but supported by her fellow students. The headmistress forbids Fräulein von Bernburg to see or speak to Manuela again. Manuela nearly kills herself but is found and saved. The film was banned by the Nazis as 'decadent', but it has left a significant mark on history for its female imagery and anti-militaristic themes.[45] This film was influential at women’s film festivals in the 1970s.[47]

Books

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  • Loren Kruger, ed. Lights and Shadows: The autobiography of Leontine Sagan, Johannesburg 1996[5]
  • Michael Eckardt (ed.): Leontine Sagan. Licht und Schatten. Schauspielerin und Regisseurin auf vier Kontinenten. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-941450-12-7.

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Bernard Sachs, South African Personalities and Places (pitzer.edu), Kayor Publishers, Johannesburg, 1959.
  2. ^ "Leontine Sagan - Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos - AllMovie". AllMovie.
  3. ^ Mennel, Barbaa (2023). Mädchen in Uniform. London: Bloomsbury/British Film Institute. ISBN 9781839024177.
  4. ^ Sagan, Leontine (1996). Kruger, Loren (ed.). Lights and Shadows: The Autobiography of Leontine Sagan. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. pp. 1–16. ISBN 9781868142880.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Foster, G. (1998). Women Filmmakers and Their Films, pp. 361-62. Detroit: St. James Press. ISBN 9781558623576
  6. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 220-29
  7. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 14
  8. ^ "Leontine Sagan profile". esat.sun.ac.za. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  9. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 40-109
  10. ^ a b "Historical Papers, Wits University". www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za.
  11. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 74
  12. ^ Sagan, LIghts and Shadows, 116-205
  13. ^ Sagan, LIghts and Shadows, 206-29
  14. ^ Kruger, Loren (2019). A Century of South African Theatre. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 58, 203–210. ISBN 9781350008014.
  15. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 229
  16. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 59-96
  17. ^ Mennel, Mädchen in Uniform, 8
  18. ^ Kruger, Loren. Introduction. Lights and Shadows: The Autobiography of Leontine Sagan, xxxvii-xli
  19. ^ Mennel, Mädchen in Uniform, 14-26
  20. ^ lespress.de "vermutlich lesbische Regisseurin" (Eng.: "possibly lesbian director")
  21. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 40-53
  22. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 75-96
  23. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 91-93
  24. ^ Leontine Sagan profile, filmdirectorssite.com; retrieved 2 May 2015.
  25. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 94-96
  26. ^ Mennel, 14-18
  27. ^ Kruger, Introduction, Lights and Shadows, xvi-xxiv
  28. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 110
  29. ^ Mennel, Mädchen in Uniform, 18-23
  30. ^ Mennel, Mädchen in Uniform, 9-13
  31. ^ Mennel, Mädchen in Uniform, 27-63
  32. ^ Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey (1995), Women Film Directors: An International Bio-Critical Dictionary, Greenwood Press, p. 322, ISBN 0-313-28972-7
  33. ^ Mennel, 64-67
  34. ^ Mennel, 67-83
  35. ^ Mennel, 92-99
  36. ^ "Hitler Comes to Power", ushmm.org; retrieved 8 May 2015.
  37. ^ Sagan, Lights in Shadows, 139-45
  38. ^ Sagan, 140-46
  39. ^ Sagan, 151
  40. ^ "Leontine Sagan - Theatricalia". theatricalia.com.
  41. ^ Sagan, Lights and Shadows, 161-74
  42. ^ "Novello approach - Ivor Novello - Features - The Stage". 1 June 2005.
  43. ^ Sagan, LIghts and Shadows, 198-213
  44. ^ Sagan, 214-19
  45. ^ a b Acker, A. (1991). Reel women: Pioneers of the cinema, 1896 to the present (pp. 320-22). New York: Continuum.
  46. ^ Knight, Julia (1992). Women and the New German Cinema. Verso. pp. 4–5. ISBN 9780860915683.
  47. ^ Mädchen in Uniform review; retrieved 2 May 2015; accessed 16 May 2017.

References

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  • Acker, A. (1991). Reel women: Pioneers of the cinema, 1896 to the present (pp. 320–322). New York: Continuum.
  • Bernard Sachs. South African Personalities and Places. Kayor Publishers, Johannesburg, 1959. Excerpt
  • Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey (1995), Women Film Directors: An International Bio-Critical Dictionary, Greenwood Press, p. 322, ISBN 0-313-28972-7.
  • Foster, G. (1998). Women filmmakers & their films (pp. 361–362). Detroit: St. James Press.
  • lespress.de "vermutlich lesbische Regisseurin" (Eng.: "possibly lesbian director")
  • Mädchen in Uniform. (n.d.). Retrieved May 2, 2015, from http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Le-Ma/M-dchen-in-Uniform.html
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