Germany's Latest Nazi Drama: New 'Jud Süss' Flops as Faustian Tragedy

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Stylistically it has much in common with other recent World War II films that have become Germany's prime cinematic export. It is largely a conventional historical drama, although there are several sex scenes, including a risible seduction by Marian of the wife of an SS officer who shouts "Jew" lustfully as they make love.

Told chronologically in a classic biopic style, we follow Marian's descent from confident actor and charmer to slovenly drunken loser, interspersed with almost comic turns by Moritz Bleibtreu, of "Run Lola Run" fame, as Goebbels. Just in case we forget we are watching a Faustian drama, there are frequent allusions to the Goethe play, as well as to Gustaf Gründgens, the actor on whom Klaus Mann's novel "Mephisto" was based.

Still, there are some interesting touches. The film's palate is almost completely black and white, with splashes of red, making us almost believe we could be watching a film from the period. And the way it recreates many of the scenes from the banned 1940 film is also technically accomplished with Tobetti mimicking Marian's performance to the last gesture.

However, the conventionalism of the film is somewhat surprising given the director's status as the enfant terrible of the German film industry. Roehler's recent films "The Elementary Particles," and "Lulu and Jim," have led some to dub him as the new Fassbinder.

History Film Get the International Audience

Yet his latest film has little in common with the intellectually stimulating and avant-garde films of Germany's New Wave of the 1960s and 1970s, when auteurs like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Volker Schlöndorff and Alexander Kluge sought to deal head on with the uncomfortable Nazi past of their parents' generation.

"Jud Süss," though sometimes in bad taste, instead fits comfortably with the many historical films made over the past 10 or 15 years like "Downfall," " A Woman in Berlin," "Comedian Harmonists," or "Nowhere in Africa." These much more commercial films have enjoyed considerable success abroad, revealing an international appetite for stories made by Germans themselves about the country's difficult past.

"Those films particularly were designed with international audiences in mind", says Paul Cooke, Professor of German Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds in the UK. "What is interesting is that these kinds of films are getting mainstream multiplex releases, which is something that German cinema hasn't experienced for decades really."

"Nazism is a form of branding for the German film industry," Hake of the University of Texas says, pointing out that "these are the films that play well internationally, that get prizes." It is after all, these historical films rather than the many more interesting and experimental films set in contemporary Germany that are invariably the ones competing for the best foreign-language film Oscar.

Fetishizing Authenticity

Partly this is because Germans telling stories from the Third Reich have the whiff of authenticity that moviegoers appreciate. "It may be telling you the story we have heard a million times before but it's got Bruno Ganz (who played Hitler in "Downfall") speaking German in it," Cooke says. And the attention to historical detail is also part of their attraction. "You really can see that the ash trays in Hitler's bunker did actually have swastikas on them. That is the kind of example of fetishization of authenticity that a lot of these films are after. "

Even if they may not be great art, the fact that a new generation of filmmakers are not shy of tackling these themes could be interpreted as a sign that Germany has matured and come to terms with its past. This new Germany is as capable of making commercial films about the Nazis as any other country.

Bleibtreu, whose turn as Goebbels in "Jud Süss" is at times clownish and at times menacing, says that it is about time that Germans started feeling more free when depicting the Third Reich period. "We have to be able to at some stage free ourselves from this past, even while never forgetting," he told reporters on Thursday.

Cooke, of Leeds University, says that though many of the recent historical movies may not be intellectually stimulating, some critics in Germany argue that they serve to engage the emotions of younger people who have no direct experience of National Socialism. "Without that emotional working through of the past Germany will never ultimately be allowed to let the wounds of the past heal," this logic goes. "Should we now be allowed to simply experience the pain in its own right? And emotionally engage with it in order for us to move on?"

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• Part 1: New 'Jud Süss' Flops as Faustian Tragedy
• Part 2: Nazis as a Brand for German Cinema