"Stories of what I see" - Happy, Coming Up, Act 2
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the propaganda agenda of the cinema
My exploration of the byways of cinema history has taken me to some strange places, but few as haunting and disturbing as the 1940 German film Jud Süß. This epic production was a remake of the well-known story of the Jewish advisor to the Duke Karl Alexander of Württemberg, one Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, who was tortured and excecuted on a trumped-up charge in the early 18th century. The Nazis turned a historical story which had previously been the basis for a 1934 liberal British film with Conrad Viedt into a piece of racist propaganda; I saw a clip of the film in The Sorrow and the Pity, and again saw clips when I visited the film museum in Berlin last year. I had a hankering to see it, as it looked a strange mix of exceptional filmmaking technique and horrifying ideology. And that's exactly what it is.
The film is quite magnificently directed by Veit Harlen, who I know very little about but who, it is clear from Jew Süß, was a prodigious talent. The camera direction is a thing to marvel at, with sweeping movement and sensuous tracking to match the best that Hollywood was producing in that era. I think that I can see techniques in the film which remind me of moments in Kubrick (the backwards tracking), Scorsese and Verhoeven - I wonder if they've seen the film? Purely as a set of cinematic fireworks, the film is popular entertainment at the height of its then powers. Which only makes the content more disturbing. If it has been talentless no-hopers caught up in producing this stuff, I don't think it would be nearly so chilling now.
The film has Joseph Süß Oppenheimer inveigling his way into the court of the Duke by lending the fat profligate monies to pay for a personal bodyguard and the arts. When the Duke cannot repay his debts, Süß suggests that he is given the roads which he then privatises and charges tolls on. Eerily, the film is a more upfront political drama than we are used to getting, and what Süß is effectively instigating is a non-progressive stealth tax. Horribly, you can see how a party like the BNP can appeal to voters who are browned off with the financial mismanagements and tax burdens imposed by the major political parties; Süß is privatization in action, and it is really creepy seeing how legitimate concerns about the private ownership of national resources can be turned into props for racist ideological arguments.
The "good" Germans characters in the film are loud, boorish, Puritanical prigs, with the exception of the Duke who, for all his faults, has a Falstaffian grandeur. Süß is far and away the most compelling character, a man of charisma, craft, imagination and intelligence who is far and away the most empathetic character on screen; a large part of this is due to the racist abuse heaped on himself and his fellow Jewish citizens from the off - you can understand (as with Marlowe's Barabas) why he should want to play Machiavel to these hypocrites and stuffed shirts. The main gist of the plot is a rerun of the wicked judge folk scenario which Shakespeare used in Measure for Measure, with Süß sexually abusing a wife who pleads for her husband's life. In Jud Süß the wife kills herself, presumably because having been defiled by a Jew is a fate worse than death, an act which leads to the final rebellion of the people and the judicial murder of Süß.
As can be seen from above, the plot deals in simple black and white characterisation - and in this there doesn't seem that much distance between Nazi and mainstream Hollywood dramaturgy; many a German, Russian and, latterly, Arab has been portrayed as just such a villain in the films we've flocked to see. There's really not that much difference between the worst excesses of populist Hollywood cinema and Jew Süß, except there's many a moment in Süß where the gloves really come off and you can feel you're stomach turning at the implications - I am thinking specifically of a speech where a Jew boast that his people's ashes would be spread over the four corners of the earth.
The production values are top notch and the best actors of the day give stupendous performances. Werner Kraus, the original Dr. Caligari himself, plays two Jewish roles with a verve worthy of Peter Lorre. The fate of the actors who stayed on in the Reich is both tragic and worth thinking on't; Mephisto indeed. As for Veit Harlen, his name will always be associated with this horrible film and a few other Nazi propaganda pieces like it. Should a film like Jud Süß be forever condemned to an underground existence, or should we allow audiences wider access to it as an example of rich cinematic technique but also as a warning about the dangers and potency of a cinema of hideous ideological propaganda? Films by Griffith, Eisenstein and Riefenstahl are all freely and easily available, and all made adverts for some deadly ideology. And I can't help wondering how many of our contemporary filmmakers will be seen in a similar light when the curtain falls on Western hegemony?