Film Review: The City Without Jews (Die Stadt ohne Juden, 1924)

One of the most macabre ironies of the 20th century is that the piece of cinema that can be described as the first Holocaust film was produced a long time before the actual Holocaust. And an even more macabre irony is that the film is, or at least was supposed to be, a satirical comedy. That film is The City Without Jews, a 1924 Austrian silent film directed by Hans Karl Breslauer.

The film is based on the eponymous novel by Hugo Bettauer, inspired by the troubled post-First World War years of his native Austria, a country which had lost the empire in the war and suddenly became impoverished, with traditional anti-Semitism quickly finding the Jewish minority as the reason for all the country's troubles. The script, co-written by Breslauer and Ida Jenbach, changed the setting to the fictional "Republic of Utopia". The country is in turmoil, beset by labour protests and the collapse of the national currency. The government, led by the Federal Chancellor (played by Eugen Neufeld) and goaded by right-wing Pan-German councilmen like Bernart (played by Hans Moser), conclude that the popular discontent could be removed if the entire Jewish population is expelled from the country by Christmas. The decree, which involves even children from mixed marriages, is brutally enforced, with people being chased from their homes, many of them boarding trains to take them to faraway places like Paris, Hamburg or "Zion". The country, on the other hand, soon learns that it can't properly function without its creative and talented Jewish population, including fashion designers without whom the textile industry collapses. Further problems are international boycotts and the refusal of foreign banks to give necessary loans to Utopia. In the meantime, Leo Strakosch (played by Johannes Riemann), one of the deported Jews, returns under a false identity as a French painter in order to reunite with his fiancée Lotte (played by Anny Miletty), but also uses the opportunity to publish pamphlets under the banner of the "Union of the Authentic Christians" advocating the repeal of the decree. As the economic pressure mounts, the Chancellor relents but the repeal is still one vote short of the necessary majority. Strakosch solves that problem by making councilman Bernart drunk and miss his vote.

Hugo Bettauer was a prolific and controversial author known for his liberal views, whose best-known work is Joyless Street, a best-selling novel that would in 1925 serve as the basis for eponymous film, one of the classics of the silent era which launched Greta Garbo into international stardom. Compared with it, The City Without Jews is a much more obscure film. This might be explained by Breslauer not being particularly inspired or talented as a film-maker, at least compared with true masters of the silent era. The editing is chaotic and the plot, made of various vignettes, confusing, so the audience would, despite intertitles, need to pay extra attention to realise what is really going on. There are bits and pieces that are interesting, like the scenes of expulsion that seem strangely prescient or one of the scenes near the end, when Bernart ends up in a mental asylum surrounded by visions of Stars of David and Expressionist scenery clearly inspired by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The acting is, just like in most silent films, overly theatrical but Riemann and Miletty (who would later become Breslauer's wife) provide the best performance, partly because the romantic subplot is the most coherent part of the film and partly because they, unlike other members of the cast, don't use excessive make-up. Probably the biggest problem of the film is that, in some ways, it actually employs some of the tropes of anti-Semitic propaganda by showing international Jewish bankers conspiring against sovereign states and having a single Jew thwarting the democratic process through deception.

One of the fiercest critics of the film was Bettauer. He was furious over the changes to the source material, mainly its dark satirical tone being replaced with broader comedy and the film's message – that even the most enlightened and progressive countries might succumb to medieval, absurd and self-defeating levels of bigotry – being muddled by an ultra-happy ending that explains all events as a bad dream of Bernart who, after waking up, learns the errors of his ways. Real history didn't provide a happy ending and Bettauer was one of the first to find out, being assassinated a year after the premiere by a fanatical supporter of the emerging National Socialist Party. Breslauer, perhaps seeing that even watered-down political satire can cause too much trouble, effectively ended his film-making career and switched to literature, even becoming a member of the Nazi Party after the Anschluss (like Riemann, who also became a Nazi despite playing the Jewish hero in the film). His co-writer Ida Jenbach fared much worse and, as a Jew, disappeared after being "transported to the East" during the Final Solution. The City Without Jews almost had the same fate. Uncomfortable for those who saw it, dangerous for many who made it during Nazi rule over Austria and deeply unpleasant when comparing its fiction with the much darker reality, it was considered lost until 1991. Its rediscovery was followed by years of restoration and the more or less complete version became available only in 2015.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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