Cinema Quarterly (1934 - 1935)

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JEW SUSS Production: GaumontBritish. Script: Rawlinson. Direction: Lothar Mendes. Photography: Bernard Knowles. Sets: Alfred Junge. Editing: Otto Ludwig. Length: 9,740 feet. Distribution: G.-B. Distributors. With Conrad Veidt, Frank Vosper, Benita Hume, Cedric Hardwicke, Paul Graetz, Gerald du Maurier. Nine years ago Feuchtwanger ushered in a new era of historical fiction by writing what is to some minds the greatest historical novel of all time. Jew Suss the film might have ended an era of costume pictures by in turn being the biggest effort of its kind. Instead it continues the vogue for which Korda must be given the credit of starting. But because of what Suss might have meant for cinema in general and British films in particular, because of the wide-spread discussion it must provoke, and because in some ways it is a very ambitious endeavour, it deserves greater space than the other historical pictures of the year. With his magnificent opening chapter, Feuchtwanger set the scale for his whole story of the Jew. We were conscious at once of the wide horizons of the eighteenth century, of the bustle and life and intrigue within these limits of Wiirtemberg. Everything that followed, the craft, the guile, the whoring, the praying, the intriguing, the private struggles and public issues fell into place on this vast canvas. Everything had significance within the boundaries of the epoch. Therein lay the greatness of the author's approach. It is precisely this vision, this magnitude of mind, that the film does not possess. The book has been well pilfered. All the plums are here, all the bombastic moments, all the bloody minutes, all the natty spectacle and all the shining pomp. On the surface it spreads a grand array. Men talk of doing this and doing that, but never do we see them doing it. Suss declares his lust for power, becomes the Duke's prop, is the indispensable and hated Jew, but why and how he contrives these things is a mystery. Never are we taken beneath the gilded scene, never are the real issues behind Siiss's behaviour or the economic motives underlying the political intrigue revealed. Here is no cross-section of the eighteenth century which might have been such grand material for movie. The film is founded on the superficial appearance of men and things, an approach that has never and can never achieve the level of greatness. This is no destructive broadside. The film is too big for that, big enough to stand criticism. Big in money. So big that all the 44