Word: sagan
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When convent-educated Francoise Sagan* dashed off her first novel, Bonjour Tristesse, in a summer month in 1953 after flunking out of the Sorbonne ("With my family angry at me, I had to do something"), she became one of Europe's fastest-selling, most controversial authors. The limpidly written tale of 17-year-old Cecile (a year younger than the authoress), who maneuvers her father's two mistresses to meet her own needs and causes the suicide of one, quickly became France's biggest bestseller (450,000 copies). Translated into 14 languages, it won the Prix...
Cried Nobel Prizewinner Francois Mauriac of Sagan's talents: "The literary merit burst forth from the very first page and is indisputable." Others hailed her as a new star of letters. But not all were favorable; Paris divided between the pro-or anti-Sagan factions, and the critics honed their pens in anticipation of Author Sagan's second book. Would it prove her a writer or just another hot flash...
Bonjour Tristesse, by Françoise Sagan, a French girl with an existentially sad face, had a trivial triangle plot, raised above itself by unerringly accurate writing-and by the reader's chilling realization that its worldly insights were achieved by a 17-year-old author. It was the most successful book from outside the English-speaking world. The Germans continued to disappoint (Gerhard Kramer's We Shall March Again, and Heinrich Büll's Adam, Where Art Thou?), but other countries contributed moving items...
When Publisher Rene Julliard saw the first verses in Minou's childish scrawl, he thought he had found a literary prodigy even greater than his last discovery. Teenager Franchise Sagan. whose short, sexy Bonjour Tristesse is an international bestseller. He brought Minou from Brittany, along with 49-year-old Spinster Claude Drouet. who had adopted the child at age of two. Then he brought out a slim limited edition containing ten poems and ten poesy-struck lett&rs. Sample: I picked...
Within the limitations of this plot, the acting is superb. The teacher, played by Dorothea Wieck, is effective because she acts with amazing restraint. Hertha Thiele, as the tear-stained orphan, is occasionally coy, but she is usually anemic, thus revealing her psychological state. Director Leontine Sagan, however, pushes her a little too far in the last scene, where she becomes a sort of warmed-over Ophelia. Luckily, the acting is not generally so melodramatic, and the cast as a whole is very good. Maedchen is, perhaps worth seeing, if only for the sake of proving to oneself that...