Review of The City Without Jews

Firstly I feel compelled to contradict a previous review that inexplicably states that Stadt ohne Juden "goes a long way towards making the Holocaust look dull and boring"!??! The foolishness of that statement can hardly be surpassed, except perhaps that Leo's comically obvious false whiskers make him "look more Jewish". Anyway, the idea for the film and the novel on which it is based is important and reflective of popular antisemitism that pervaded Europe (and elsewhere) at the time. But the bowdlerization of the book, by having the whole story shown to be a harmless dream in the end, destroys the impact of the social commentary. Beyond this, the direction and handling of the good cast is very uninspired. The only sequence showing cinematic imagination is the madhouse scene, and this is thanks to the art direction, not Breslauer. Admittedly, the 115 minute version I recently viewed is incomplete, but what I saw was devoid of any compelling handling of camera position, staging, close-ups, or shot editing.