by michael fox
correspondent
Much of the appeal of silent movies — or any art from a distant era — lies in the glimpses they provide of the way people used to live and think. But more often than one might expect, 85-year-old films speak directly to our own time.
Such is the case with “Nathan Der Weise” (“Nathan the Wise”), German-Jewish director Manred Noa’s 1922 adaptation of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s 1779 play. Set in and around Jerusalem at the time of the crusades, the story throws Christians, Muslims and Jews together in a melodramatic maelstrom of epic proportions.
With battle and crowd scenes that Cecil B. DeMille must have admired, and emotional displays of anarchy, enmity and revenge, “Nathan Der Weise” is packed with pomp and prejudice. In other words, most of the time it’s quite a show.
Viewed through the prism of 1922 Germany, the movie is a plaintive post-World War I plea for the end of armed insanity. From a current vantage point, where the differences between West and East are framed by some as a battle between terrorism and civilization, Christianity and Islam, “Nathan Der Weise” presents religious intolerance as an opportunistic tool wielded by mistrustful and powerful men.
“Nathan Der Weise” screens Tuesday, Jan. 16 at the Castro Theatre in the annual Berlin & Beyond series of new films from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The film is co-presented by the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and will be introduced by the director of the Filmmuseum Munich, which restored the film.
The actor Werner Krauss, coming off his star-making role as the maniacal lead in the German Expressionist classic “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” plays Nathan as a model of restraint and suffering. We are introduced to the bearded Jewish elder some minutes into the film as a voice of moderation, counseling nonviolence among his sons as a marauding gang approaches.
Nathan’s family appears to have escaped the violence until a child, pursued by the rampaging criminals and desperate for a hiding place, approaches the synagogue. Nathan shields the boy, a just and brave response by any measure. But the mob torches the shul, and Nathan’s wife and children are killed in the blaze.
By the sheerest of coincidences, Nathan subsequently is given a baby to hide by a fleeing horseman. We know from the opening scenes of “Nathan Der Weise” that this is a Christian baby from a powerful family, yet Nathan raises the girl as his own.
Later, the Sultan Saladin lays siege to and eventually defeats Jerusalem’s Christians. Those soldiers who can’t buy their freedom become his slaves, but the kind and good Nathan steps in and ransoms a large number. Yes, a case can be made that Nathan is the most positive Jewish figure in the history of movies, with the obvious exception of Paul Newman’s character in “Exodus.”
Needless to say, “Nathan Der Weise” and its portrait of a generous, pacifist Jewish hero did not jibe with the venal image of Jews that Heinrich Himmler and the Nazi Party were hawking to a hungry, embittered nation. Once in power, the Nazis banned the film and years later, in a twisted irony that may or may not have been intentional, cast Werner Krauss as a stereotypically rotten Jew in the infamous 1940 propaganda film “Jud Suss.”
Fortunately, “Nathan Der Weise” is now back in circulation to partially offset the overriding perception of Jews in German cinema, namely the painful scenes recorded for Nazi newsreels and immortalized in countless Holocaust documentaries.
“Nathan Der Weise” screens t 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 16 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., S.F. Tickets: $7-$10. Information: www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco or www.ticketweb.com.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California