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Leontine Sagan's groundbreaking 1931
girls-school melodrama stands as one of the
most passionate films about sexuality
evermade. Like most classics, this now
legendary film has over the years meant
different things to different people in
different cultural contexts. The following
composite sample of how the move has
been read and re-read indicates something of
its subtle impact and enduring importance.
Following the furore created by her ‘sucees
de scandale', director Sagan made only one
more film, (Men of Tomorrow for Alexander Korda in 1952 in the UK) after which she returned to her first calling, the stage, in England and later, South Africa, where she became instrumental in developing the dramatic arts during WW2 and was a co-founder of Johannesburg's National Theatre.

“There's another angle that will help sell
the film for a short run on Broadway.
That's the whispering campaign that
managed to get started to the effect that the
picture has to do with no such subject... it's
merely an overlong and sometimes dull
psychological study of a school girl's crush
on her teacher... as entertainment it hasn't a
leg to stand on." - Variety 27/9/1932

"One of the few films to have an inherently gay sensibility, it is also one of the
few to be written, produced and directed by
women. Thus the film shows an under-
standing - missing from most films that
touch on lesbian feelings-3 of the dynamic of
women relating to women on their own
terms.” - Vito Russo, 'The Celluloid
Closer, 1981

"A willowy young girl in a fashionable
school is unhappy under the harsh, Prussian
discipline, she flowers when a sympathetic,
understanding teacher gives her special
consideration. This consideration is
ambiguous and certainly sensual. The
teacher is not viewed as decadent, or even
naughty; she appears to be on the side of the
liberal, humanitarian angels, yet she seems
unmistakably lesbian... The picture is
always described as sensitive, and it is, it's
also a rather loaded piece of special pleading.” - Pauline Kael, '5001 Nights at the
Movies', 1983

“The first German film to incorporate
sound skilfully and thematically; the first
film to treat lesbianism sympathetically ;
and a film that dared attack authoritarianism at the time the climate was right for
Hitler's rise to power - later Goebbels would
ban the film and Sagan and much of the cast
would flee the country." - Danny Peary,
'Guide for the Film Fanatic', 1987

Prints circulating in many countries
including Australia have traditionally been
incomplete, (due to the censorship standards of the day) and often dubbed into
English. The Festival has imported an
english inter-titled version, believed to he
the best quality and most complete print
available, for a special presentation by
Festival guest Karola Gramann of her
celebrated analysis of the film directly
following the screening, Friday June 24th.