Leontine Sagan

Who was Leontine Sagan?

Leontine Sagan was an Austrian-Hungarian theatre director and actress of Jewish descent.

Born in Budapest or Vienna, Sagan trained with Max Reinhardt. She is best remembered for the first of two films she directed, Mädchen in Uniform. It has an all-female cast and was ground-breaking not only for its portrayal of lesbian and pedagogical eros, but also for its co-operative and profit-sharing financial arrangements in the production. Whether Sagan herself was a lesbian is unrecorded; the book Women Film Directors lists her as "lesbian film director" as she directed Christa Winsloe's play, that is said to contain lesbian themes.

An alternate ending of the movie, which pandered to pro-National Socialist ideals, enabled the film to be screened in Germany, but eventually even this version of the film was banned as 'decadent' by the National Socialist regime and Sagan fled Germany soon after.

She also directed Mädchen in Uniform in 1932 at the Duchess Theatre in London, featuring Jessica Tandy and Cathleen Nesbitt.

Sagan briefly worked on films with Alexander Korda in England, but then moved to South Africa and founded the National Theatre of Johannesburg.