It amazes me that people don't understand this movie for what it truly is. Let's start with the author, Hugo Bettauer, who authored The City Without Jews. Born in Austria in 1872 into a Jewish family, Bettauer converted to Christianity when he was eighteen years old and enlisted in the army. Has anyone ever wondered WHY he did it? I won't reveal the solution, but you are free to keep speculating.
During his lifetime, a few of Bettauer's books were adapted for the big screen, including The Joyless Street, which tells the tale of oppression and misery in a Vienna slum lane during the post-war hyperinflation. That film was made by the Austrian director GW Pabst in 1925, with Greta Garbo, Asta Nielsen and Werner Krauss in starring roles. He was just another rich Jew, who was projecting what would happen next, because he WAS A PART OF ORGANIZING IT!
However, Bettauer's most well-known and contentious book, The City Without Jews, sold 250,000 copies in its first year of publication in 1922. It shows how the Jewish exodus leads to first joy, then economic ruin, and finally the defeat of the anti-Semites when the law is overturned. Voila... Jews are victims again, they are saviours again. And they kept all their riches - actually most of them profited on the guilt they projected on the "Utopians".
Later, in real life, we saw the REAL effects of meassures like this: The Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from Economic Life (Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben) was issued by the German government on November 12, 1938. Jews were prohibited under the order from running retail establishments, sales agency, or trading. Additionally, Jews were prohibited by law from selling goods or services at any type of institution. Did the economy collapse? Not at all! Before the Nazis took control of the Reichstag in 1933, around 6 million Germans were unemployed; the German economy was in total collapse, Germany had no international credit rating, and was almost bankrupt from World War 1 reparations payments. After this decree The Nazis sponsored building programmes for new Football Stadia, enormous housing projects, and planting of new forests. In 1937 a new state-sponsored car manufacturer was commissioned by Hitler to provide cheap cars for families. It was called Volkswagen, which meant 'people's car' and families were encouraged to buy one by making monthly payments. In the space of four years, Nazi Germany changed from a defeated nation, a bankrupt economy, strangled by war debt, inflation and lack of foreign capital; into full employment with the strongest economy and biggest military power in Europe.
But, the plan is to PROJECT failure and outcome... so there were useful tools out there, and one used was H. K. Breslauer. Having founded his own production firm, HKB Films, the director of this movie, Breslauer, was a somewhat well-known figure in the business when he started work on The City Without Jews at the end of 1923. The film doesn't fully follow the book... along with Jewish dramatist and screenwriter Ida Jenbach, he adapted the novel for the big screen. The two made some major alterations to the original work, almost like following orders and increase the film's appeal to a wider audience. It seems like certain scenes were rearranged in the restored Dutch Filmmuseum version but it's also possible that the original editing was simply bad. Bad directing was obvious but that was the time when they were still learning, I guess... Hans Moser, himself married into a Jewish family, who later became a legendary Austrian comedian, was wasted here. In his role, he ends himself in a psychiatric ward and some of the strange solutions of those scenes can be questioned further, especially the claims that here Breslauer exploits some classically Expressionist set design - if you really want to bother. I didn't...
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