Long Island Jewish Film Festival
THE CITY WITHOUT JEWS
Sunday, April 16th at
2:00 PM
Members $12 | Public $17
With live accompaniment by Alicia Svigals & Donald Sosin
The City Without Jews is a 1924
expressionist film by Austrian filmmaker H. K. Breslauer, based on
the novel of the same title by Hugo Bettauer. The novel and
film predicted the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe in the following
decades. The original pressing of Bettauer's novel, published in 1922,
became a wide success and sold over 250,000 copies. The film premiered on
July 25, 1924. Shortly after the premiere of the film, Bettauer was
murdered by Nazi party member Otto Rothstock, who was quickly
released from jail after public outcry surrounding his
conviction. The City Without Jews film was shown in
public for the last time in 1933 at the Carré theater
in Amsterdam as a protest against the rise
of Hitler’s Germany.
Set in the Austrian city of Utopia (a thinly-disguised
stand-in for Vienna), the story follows the political and personal consequences
of an anti-Semitic law passed by the National Assembly forcing all Jews to
leave the country. At first, the decision is met with celebration, yet when the
citizens of Utopia eventually come to terms with the loss of the Jewish
population—and the resulting economic and cultural decline—the National
Assembly must decide whether or not to invite the Jews back. Though darkly comedic
in tone, and stylistically influenced by German Expressionism, the film
nonetheless contains ominous and eerily realistic sequences, such as the shots
of freight trains transporting Jews out of the city. (Austria, 1924, 80min., Silent | Dir. H.K. Breslauer)
