永遠のユダヤ人 (1940)

Some wak job put a DVD copy of this in my letter box along with an anti Semitic leaflet. I don't know whether I was targeted or they did the block. It was considerate, because it saved me the $25 they charge for the thing in gun shops and I was always curious about it.

Of course I have no way of telling if the American narrated version I have has been tampered with - a whole range of possibilities.

First I'm amazed that people praise the film making. The graphics and protracted live action scenes are inferior to the enemy's propaganda films of the day. Like Leni Reifenstahl's documentaries, this is lumbering stuff. I was never part of the intended audience but I can't see any general public sitting through an hour of this.

It is of course disturbing as well as tedious but it is also fascinating. It lays out the Nazi view of the Communist-Jewish world conspiracy in a way we never find articulated now.

While it has contradictions that anyone who gave it a second though would have noticed - the Jews avoid employment/ half the country's doctors are Jews, some sections are particularly intriguing. The two segments showing endorsed European art painting contrasted to the debased bogus "modern" work are skillful and revealing, suggesting a hand more effective than some of the cruder passages. These do communicate the maker's stance.

The rats, the Kosher slaughter house, the transformed orthodox Jews - even the more blatant of the American WW2 propaganda documentaries (think Why We Fight: Battle for China) never reached the extremes of this. It does provide a re-assurance, which is often needed, that the good guys won that one.