Leopold Jessner

Who was Leopold Jessner?

Leopold Jessner was a noted producer and director of German Expressionist theater and cinema. His first film, Hintertreppe, is considered a major turning point which paved the way for the later German Expressionist experiments of German filmmakers F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, and G.W. Pabst.

A native of Königsberg, Jessner was a touring actor in his youth and turned to directing in 1911. He was director of the Berlin State Theatre from 1919–1925 and was known for bare stages in which flights of steps served as different spaces for scenes and directing actors to act in an oversimplified, unnatural manner.

Hintertreppe, Jessner's first film, highlighted Jessner's use of these heavily stylised staircases. These staircases would become regular fixtures in later German films, nicknamed "Jessnertreppe" in Jessner's honor, and would be used to full effect in the 1926 German Expressionist film Faust, directed by F.W. Murnau. Jessner's direction is often considered heavy-handed and clusmy in regards to this picture, and critics accuse Jessner of forcing inappropriate theatrical conventions into the cinema.