YMMV / Jew Süss (1940)

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: While the film's intended message is "Jews are parasites," the film can also be interpreted as a condemnation of unbridled greed and ambition. The Duke's dream to build Wurttemberg is what allows him to be manipulated by Süss. Süss' inability to control his greed and lust for power is what drives many people against him, with even his rabbi warning him that his greed and lust for power will be his downfall.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is Oppenheimer really a malicious and evil Greedy Jew out to destroy Württemberg, or is he trying to avenge the oppressed Jewish populace and punish the bigoted city folk for their ignorance? The latter angle is clearly the basis of both the original novel and the 1934 British film. In the 1940 film, the Greedy Jew thing is very much enforced.
  • Veit Harlan claimed that he actually tried to soften the antisemitism of the film and make Suss into a Tragic Villain, but Joseph Goebbels bullied him into making Suss as despicable as possible, a claim that is disputed by historians who believe Harlan was trying to absolve himself of responsibility.
• Anvilicious: Inverted. The film's success, at least when it was first released, comes from having its racist message toned down in favor of telling a more nuanced historical drama with a hidden antisemitic message.
• Broken Base: The film is quite controversial, to say the least:
  • Was Veit Harlan trying to make the film less antisemitic or was that an excuse he told to absolve himself of any responsibility?
  • It is just a sleazy propaganda piece that should be dismissed? Or is it an example of the compelling power of subtle propaganda that should be seriously reviewed by historians?
• Condemned by History: Upon its release, the movie was a major critical and commercial success, grossing more than three times its budget and earning the top award at the 1940 Venice Film Festival. Opinions of it quickly soured in the aftermath of World War II and The Holocaust, however, for a simple reason: its rampant anti-Semitic content. Commissioned by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels for the explicit purpose of stoking hatred of Jews, the film's Villain Protagonist Josef Süss Oppenheimer is a purely malevolent Greedy Jew stereotype with no redeeming qualities, and every other Jewish character is also depicted in a resoundingly negative light. The film was screened for concentration camp guards and reportedly triggered multiple instances of anti-Semitic violence, which only further soured its postwar reputation. Today, the movie is seen not as a legitimate work of art or entertainment, but as a hateful screed that subjects an entire ethno-religious group to horrific demonization, and one would be hard-pressed to find anybody talking about it except in the context of bigotry and propaganda.
• Draco in Leather Pants: According to Wikipedia, "Marian's portrayal of Süß was considered to be quite sympathetic; so much so that he received fan mail from women who had become infatuated with his character."
• Evil Is Cool: Suss is supposed to be the bad guy...but damn if he isn't a successful and ambitious one.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The movie has, as its "happy ending", Suss being lynched and Jews being expelled from Württemberg. The following years would see Jews expelled from their communities, lynched in pogroms, and finally subjected to industrial genocide. Tragically the film was quite effective at indoctrinating people into the Nazi's racist ideology.
  • Dorothea commits suicide by drowning herself in a lake after being raped by Oppenheimer. Maria Byk, the wife of Oppenheimer's actor Ferdinand Marian, killed herself the same way in 1949.
• Spiritual Antithesis: Goebbels intended this movie partly as a response of sorts to the 1934 British film of the same name, which adapted the original book more faithfully and condemned antisemitism. Notably, both movies include a rape victim who drowns herself, but while it happens to Süss's daughter at the hands of the Duke in the earlier film, this movie makes Süss himself the rapist who forces himself on an unwilling gentile woman.
• Spiritual Successor: The film can also be seen as a German version of The Merchant of Venice, which carries similar themes (YMMV on how it does so either with or without much of the sympathetic reading that's possible in William Shakespeare's play with Shylock, however).
• Values Dissonance: This is a film that applied Nazi ideology in full force, with the antagonist being a dastardly Jew who corrupts society. No wonder it's accompanied by messages that warn about the context in which it was made.

---