![]() ![]() The expressionistic cardboard shore of the Dead Sea is vividly juxtaposed against the stereotypical, cursed Jew, forced to wander throughout eternity for having refused water to the suffering Christ. The most notorious of these was “The Wandering Jew” (1904). The French surrealist Georges Melies made several short films at the turn of the century which had blatant anti-Semitic tones. Germany was hardly alone in expressions of anti-Semitism in film. ![]() “Jew Suess” (1940) was one of many anti-Semitic films produced in Germany during the Nazi regime, but in the medium of film the latent seeds of depicted racist attitudes began in the silent film era, especially in films immediately following the end of the first world war. ![]() Krauss had also starred in the unsettling Nazi propaganda film, “Jew Suess” which was a box office hit in Germany and inspired mob violence against many Jews upon its release. That play starred German actor Werner Krauss in the role of Shylock. The Nazis certainly thought so and utilized the play for their own means in an extreme, notorious production staged at Vienna’s Burgtheater in 1943. Critics have long debated the extent of anti-Semitism in the play, but even the most resistant critics have admitted that, at the least, the character has the outline of anti-Semitic stereotypes. Shakespeare’s Shylock, from The Merchant of Venice, manifested Elizabethan attitudes of a stereotypical Jew demanding a “pound of flesh” for unpaid debts. Anti-Semitic expressions in the arts can nearly be traced back to the dawn of Christianity. ![]()
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