Frank Noack
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780813167008
- eISBN:
- 9780813167794
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813167008.003.0015
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter deals with the world premiere of Jud Süss at the Venice Film Festival in 1940, where it is praised by the young critic Michelangelo Antonioni, and its subsequent box-office success in ...
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This chapter deals with the world premiere of Jud Süss at the Venice Film Festival in 1940, where it is praised by the young critic Michelangelo Antonioni, and its subsequent box-office success in Nazi-occupied Europe. Several factors behind its success are analyzed, such as an ingenious publicity campaign aimed separately at men and women and Harlan’s use of genre motifs such as illicit love between a curious virgin and a seductive villain. Jud Süss raises questions about the seductive quality of films because various SS members would later claim, when put on trial, that the film influenced them negatively. Harlan follows Jud Süss with another historical epic, Der grosse König (The great king, 1942), and has to endure the mutilation and limited release of a more personal project, the Western comedy-drama Pedro soll hängen (Pedro must hang, 1941).Less
This chapter deals with the world premiere of Jud Süss at the Venice Film Festival in 1940, where it is praised by the young critic Michelangelo Antonioni, and its subsequent box-office success in Nazi-occupied Europe. Several factors behind its success are analyzed, such as an ingenious publicity campaign aimed separately at men and women and Harlan’s use of genre motifs such as illicit love between a curious virgin and a seductive villain. Jud Süss raises questions about the seductive quality of films because various SS members would later claim, when put on trial, that the film influenced them negatively. Harlan follows Jud Süss with another historical epic, Der grosse König (The great king, 1942), and has to endure the mutilation and limited release of a more personal project, the Western comedy-drama Pedro soll hängen (Pedro must hang, 1941).
