The Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre, TJFF, and the Goethe-Institut Toronto just hosted a screening of Herbert Rappaport & Adolf Minkin’s 1938 Russian antifascist film “Professor Mamlock”, based on the German 1933 play by Friedrich Wolf. It is one of the earliest works dealing with violent Nazi antisemitism and foreshadows the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. In 1961, Friedrich Wolf’s son Konrad Wolf adapted the drama again as a successful DEFA film.
Together with historians
Dan Panneton and Olga Gershenson, Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I discussed the three versions of this early antifascist drama.
Many viewers were not aware of many of the early treatments and asked for more film recommendations around the Holocaust and antifascism.
My personal and very partial list of feature film recommendations (+ one doc) focusses on early, (East or West) German or European, some American films around antisemitism, Holocaust, resistance, or explorations of guilt and accountability, leaving out the wave of films from the last two to three decades you have likely seen: the stellar "Son of Saul" by László Nemes, Spielberg’s "Schindler’s List", which had great impact n my youth; Tarantino’s satisfying revenge caper "Inglourious Bastards", Petzold’s enlightening duo "Phoenix" & "Transit", Schloendorff’s "Ninth Day", "Diplomacy" or "The Tin Drum", Lars Kraume’s "
The People vs. Fritz Bauer" (the German Jew who brought Eichmann to justice), von Trotta’s emphatic "
Hannah Arendt" (who reported on the Eichmann trial from Jerusalem), Canada’s “Sunshine” by István Szabó & Israel Horovitz and “Remember” by Atom Egoyan, or currently “
The Collini Case”, written by lawyer Ferdinand von Schirach, who has dedicated his career to addressing the crimes of his grandfather, National Socialist youth leader Baldur von Schirach, and others in books about crime, guilt, dignity and terror.
An incomplete watch list of antifascist cinema:
“Night Train To Munich” (UK, 1940) by Carol Reed is often said to be the first “Holocaust” film, and while the plot shows fictional but fairly real-looking images of a concentration camp, the film is a spy thriller and does not deal with political prisoners or Jewish persecution. It was nominated for Best Writing of an Original Story at the Academy Awards 1942.
How to watch: Available on
Daily Motion
“Rome, Open City” (Italy, 1945) by Roberto Rossellini
Nazi occupied Rome. As Rome is classified as an open city, most Romans can wander the streets without fear of the city being bombed. But life is still difficult, with curfews, food rationing, and the persecution of the Italian resistance, which the dramatic plot focusses on. The film won Rossellini the Grand Prize at Cannes and a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards.
How to watch: Available to buy at
Criterion Collection & Amazon
“The Murderers Are Among Us” (East Germany, 1946) by Wolfgang Staudte is one of the first German immediate post-war
Trümmerfilme (rubble films) that tackled German guilt and shame. Susanne Wallner (star actress Hildegard Knef) returns to the ruins of Berlin from a concentration camp after the end of WWII to discover that someone else lives in her apartment: Dr. Hans Mertens, traumatised by his own war experience. They share the apartment and even discover a love for each other. The glimmer of hope is squashed when Brückner appears, Mertens’ former captain who ordered his men to kill over 100 innocent people on Christmas eve 1942 in Poland.
The film was nominated for the Grand International Award at the Venice Film Festival. When Knef five years later appeared in the West German social drama “The Sinner”, causing a bare-breasted scandal, she later famously said: '
'A country that had Auschwitz and caused so much horror and then, a few years later, behaves in this manner because I was visible naked on screen is utterly absurd''.
How to watch: Part of the DEFA catalogue on Kanopy (free with many Canadian library cards)
“In Those Days” (West Germany, 1947) by Helmut Käutner, addresses issues of collective guilt during the Nazi era in formally innovative ways, using the device of a car built in 1933 and dismantled in 1947 narrating the various experiences of its owners in a series of seven separate episodes. The film's objective was to highlight the private resistance of various figures to the Nazis even while they publicly accepted the repression of Nazi society. Käutner had several of his earlier films banned by the Nazis, which led to him being perceived as having greater moral authority than many of his colleagues.
How to watch: On
YouTube (in German)
“Long Is the Road” (West Germany, 1948) by Herbert B. Fredersdorf & Marek Goldstein. Written by Israel Becker, this is t
he first feature film to represent the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective and the first German-made film to directly portray the Holocaust (“Morituri” was released earlier but made later). Shot on location at Landsberg, Bavaria, the largest Displaced Persons (DP) camp in U.S.-occupied Germany, and mixing neorealist and expressionist styles, the film follows a Polish Jew and his family from pre-war Warsaw through Auschwitz and the DP camps. A major aim of the film, made with the support of the United States Army Information Control Division, was to lobby for Jewish survivors still living in DP camps to be allowed to emigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine.
How to watch: Available to buy at
The National Center for Jewish Film
"Morituri" (West Germany, 1948) directed by Eugen York, written & produced by Artur Brauner. As the end of the Second World War approaches and the Soviets are advancing, a group of concentration camp inmates escape into the woods. The soldiers come perilously close to the hidden fugitives, but at the last moment have to retreat before the approaching Red Army.
The acting debut of 21-year-old Klaus Kinski as a Dutch concentration camp prisoner premiered at the Venice Festival. The Polish Jew Artur Brauner, who survived the Holocaust in Soviet exile before coming to Berlin (while he lost 49 relatives to Nazi crimes), went on to make about 250 mostly mainstream movies.
In 2009 he donated “Morituri” to Yad Vashem along with 20 other Holocaust-related films he had produced. He died in 2019 at age 100.
“Lissy” (East Germany, 1957) by Konrad Wolf, written by Konrad Wolf & Alex Wedding, is a story about the rise of Nazism
based on a novel by a German-Jewish author who survived by fleeing to the USA. The movie focuses on working-class Berliner Lissy, who marries clerk Alfred believing he can provide her with a better life. In 1932, his Jewish boss fires him. Alfred turns to the Nazis, quickly rising in the SA and becoming wealthy. Lissy, however, discovers there is a price to pay, as the Nazis shoot her brother, a former Communist, and her parents and friends shun her.
How to watch: Part of the DEFA catalogue on Kanopy (free with many Canadian library cards)
“Stars" (East Germany, 1959) by Konrad Wolf is the film that won the filmmaker the
Special Jury Price at Cannes. Stationed in a remote Bulgarian village in 1943, the sensitive artist and Wehrmacht officer Walter channels captured Greek Jews to Auschwitz. His world is turned upside down when young prisoner Ruth turns to him to help a pregnant woman.
How to watch: Part of the DEFA catalogue on Kanopy (free with many Canadian library cards)
“Judgement at Nuremberg” (USA, 1961) by Stanley Kramer. It has been three years since the biggest Nazi trials when a retired American judge faces four Nazi judges who colluded in sterilization and “cleansing” actions. But the Cold War is heating up and neither Germany nor the Allies wants more prosecutions. In 2013,
“Judgment at Nuremberg” was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
How to watch: Online / for purchase at
Amazon
“Naked Among Wolves” (East Germany, 1963) by Frank Beyer. As rumors reach them that the Allied armies are advancing on their concentration camp at Buchenwald, Polish prisoners renew their feeble hope for survival and freedom. When a group is transferred from Auschwitz, a four-year-old child is smuggled into the camp. He is Jewish and will be killed if discovered. The prisoners decide to protect the child and hide him--moving from one place to another within the camp as the Nazis comb it. Threats and torture by SS men fail to turn up the boy who becomes a symbol of the struggle between captives and captors.
Based on the novel by German writer and Buchenwald survivor Bruno Apitz, which in turn is based on real events. The film was remade in 2015 by Philipp Kadelbach.
How to watch: Part of the DEFA catalogue on Kanopy (free with many Canadian library cards)
“Farewell To Yesterday”/”Yesterday Girl” (West Germany, 1966) written and directed by Alexander Kluge. Born in 1937 to Jewish parents, Anita G. leaves the GDR for West Germany in search of a better life. With no home or job, she is caught stealing and sent to prison. After her release her probation officer tries to help her, but she has trouble adjusting to life in a new society and becomes a drifter. When she falls in love with a married civil servant, she finally begins to feel a sense of security, until she is recognized by a woman she betrayed. With a semi-documentary style,
Kluge’s critical German-German feature film debut launched the West German New German Cinema movement. Multiple awards at Venice; German Film Awards; and winner of a Special Film Award “40th Anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany” at the German Film Awards 1989
How to watch: Available on
YouTube
“I Was Nineteen” (East Germany, 1968) by Konrad Wolf. April 1945: Gregor Hecker, 19, reaches the outskirts of Berlin as part of the Red Army's scouting team. Having fled Germany with his family when he was eight, he is confronted with the dilemma of having to fight men from the very country he was born in. Through dealing with challenging situations (e.g. he talks to many disillusioned Germans) he grows more confident that not all hope is lost for post-war Germany. Based on the diaries of director Konrad Wolf, the episodic movie authentically portrays the protagonist's struggle to come to terms with his own past and identity.
The film depicts the personal experiences of Wolf and of his friend Vladimir Gall on the Red Army front in fictionalized form and questions the meaning of “homeland".
How to watch: Part of the DEFA catalogue on Kanopy (free with many Canadian library cards)
“Jakob the Liar” (East Germany/Czechoslovakia, 1974) directed by Frank Beyer, written by Jurek Beyer & Frank Beyer. A Jewish ghetto in central Europe, 1944. By coincidence, Jakob Heym eavesdrops on a German radio broadcast announcing the Soviet Army is making progress towards central Europe. He tells his friend Mischa and (wrongly) announces that he is in possession of a radio--in the ghetto a crime punishable by death. It doesn't take long for Jakob's secret to spread and create new hope. Jakob now finds himself in the uncomfortable position of having to come up with more and more fibs to keep the story going. Work on the picture had begun in 1965, but production was halted and Becker, who had originally planned “Jacob the Liar” as a screenplay, decided to make it a novel instead.
In 1972, after the book became an instant classic, work on the picture resumed and it was then nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards 1977. Peter Kassovitz’s 1999 US remake with Robin Williams in the lead was not as successful.
How to watch: Part of the DEFA catalogue on Kanopy (free with many Canadian library cards)
“The White Rose” (West Germany, 1982) by Michael Verhoeven, produced by Artur Brauner. The true story of a small group of students at Munich University who during the war begin to question the decisions and sanity of Germany's Nazi government. The students form a resistance cell called "White Rose" after their secret newsletter. At first small in numbers and fearful of discovery, the White Rose gains massive support after a Nazi leader nearly incites a student riot after a provocative speech. Now the Gestapo hunt the young dissenters.
Winner of the Special Film Award “40th Anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany” at German Film Awards 1989.
How to watch: On
YouTube (in German)
“How Holocaust Came To TV” (Germany, 2019), documentary by Alice Agneskirchner. At the beginning of 1979, a dramatized and emotional US television miniseries starring Meryl Streep and James Woods ensured that the German population was reminded of the Nazi atrocities against the Jews after years of repression. What is now expressed with the hitherto unknown word led to a paradigm shift in the perception of Nazi crimes in Germany. Even before the TV broadcast, neo-Nazis in vain blasted transmission towers in Germany to prevent the show from being aired.
How to watch: On demand at the
Toronto Jewish Film Festival.
“Resistance” (USA, 2020) written & directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz
A biographical film inspired by the life of Marcel Marceau (Jesse Eisenberg) and the story of a group of Jewish Boy Scouts who worked with the French Resistance to save the lives of ten thousand orphans during World War II. Also starring German actors Matthias Schweighöfer ("Valkyrie") and Alicia von Rittberg ("Fury"; "Barbara").
Released on March 27, 2020 but immediately off-screen because of Covid.
I will leave documentaries by Alfred Hitchcock (recently rediscovered and in turn popularized by the 2014 documentary “
Night Will Fall”), Alain Resnais’s “Night and Fog” and Claude Lanzmann’s “
Shoah” for another time.
by
@JuttaBrendemuhl
