This was the second time this film has been screened in
London and after Olga Neuwirth’s radical and assertive score at the
Barbican last year, we had the specialist improvisation of Stephen Horne which
allowed the film to fully make its own statements. Stephen started more emphatically
than perhaps is usual; every film leaves its mark on the playing and he has
such a range of themes and tone, not to mention instruments. Piano, accordion and kalimba were used in
assured synchronisation to bring out the humour, dynamism and the horror, in a
film that smiles out with agonising hope through the decades of subsequent disaster.
Hugo Bettauer’s book was written in 1922 when anti-Semitism
seemed just another weapon of cruel politics in post-war Austria as it tumbled
downwards to economic rock-bottom, the days of empire long gone. Someone had to
be blamed for this fall from illusory grace and power and in the “Utopia” (aka
Vienna) of the story, it is the Jews with their seeming control of finance, retailing,
creativity and patisserie… that are deemed the problem.
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| Karl Tema and Johannes Riemann |
The film had previously only survived in fragmentary form –
a censored version was in the Eye archive - and Fumiko Tsuneishi of Filmarchiv
Austria described how a chance discovery in Parisian flea market in 2015 of a nitrate
French edit enabled completion of most missing parts including the hitherto
lost ending. The restoration also now has the original tints and more details
on the religious lives of the Jews which had been expunged for the Dutch
audience… There are some narrative jumps but the result is a balanced story
with a resolution that makes its survival all the more poignant. But, above all
else, this must be viewed as an artefact from 1924 when things were already
serious enough. Any resemblance to 2019 is purely depressing.
Directed by H K Breslauer, the film is a good-looking and
fast-paced comedy drama that makes its point with all the satirical subtlety
you’d expect when the idea of one group in society being in anyway in control of
good fortune was as risible then as now. It’s sometimes described as an
Austrian expressionist film and yet, short of the ending, when an antisemitic
parliamentary representative Bernard (Hans Moser) is jailed in a room full of
twisted shadows and stars of David, it’s not going to pass Lotte Eisner’s test
but that sequence is a powerful one: this obsession is unreasoned and quite,
quite mad.
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| The people of Utopia have their say, marching for "out" then marching for "in"... |
The politicians fail their people as, in the face of Utopia’s
economic downturn the new chancellor, Dr. Schwerdtfeger (Eugen Neufeld) responds
to the voters’ need to find an easy target to blame in order to distract from broader
questioning of authority. Gradually he accepts the unthinkable – it’s far
easier to say what they want to hear - and he passes a law banning Jews who
must leave the country by 25th December – and a Happy Christmas to you too.
This impacts a number of the politicians’ families, almost
as if they hadn’t really thought through their plan. This includes the son-in-law of arch Jexiter Councillor Volbert (Ferdinand Mayerhofer) whose wife gives him a smack around the chops as their granddaughter is threatened with exile. There are also two sweethearts,
Lotte (Anny Milety), who is the daughter of one moderate assembly member Linder (Karl Tema), and a
Jewish artist Leo Strakosch (Johannes Riemann), who has to leave for Paris. Fathers and daughters,
rich and poor will all be separated and there are heart-rending scenes as the Jewish
population prays in the subterranean synagogues and then heads out to Zion on
foot and by train… refugees leaving their homes as those behind decorate their
Christmas trees and, largely, care less for their former countryfolk.
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| The councillors ignore the violence they encouraged. |
A rich American anti-Semite helps give the
economy a lift and for a while, things improve for the Christians at least… but
soon Utopia suffers as other countries refuse to do business with them and
then, shock horror, their Yankee benefactor marries a rich Jewish girl. At the
same time the cultural life of Utopia suffers without the creativity of the
Jews, their plays and even their fashions, whilst cafés become beer halls and a
culturally-impoverished society becomes an intoxicated one.
As hyper-inflation kicks in jobs are hard to get and Utopia
is heading for disaster, luckily, Leo, who has snuck back into the country
disguised as a catholic Frenchman with a beard (take that Clarke Kent), helps
to organise counter propaganda to get his people back. The reformers need a
two-thirds “super-majority” to change the constitution in order to allow the
Jews back but they are just one vote short until Leo has a plan to deal with that
troublesome Councillor Bernard…
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| Anny Milety and Johannes Riemann |
The story’s author, Hugo Bettauer was an investigative
journalist by trade who also wrote Die
freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street)
which was made into a film by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in 1925. He was described as a
"Red poet" and "corruptor of youth" by the Nazi Party and was
killed by one of their members, Otto Rothstock in 1925. Rothstock was found
guilty and committed to a mental asylum before early release in 1927…
City Without Jews
(1924) is now available on DVD from the FilmArchiv Austria and it comes with an
excellent score from Austria’s leading silent film accompanist Gerhard Gruber (piano),
Adula Ibn Quadr (violin) and Peter Rosmanith (percussion); as with Stephen
Horne the music is playful and as spirited as the film itself. This is an
essential purchase and, if you’re quick, you can grab a copy from the BFI Shop or from Filmarchiv Austria online.
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