Jew Süss

6/13/2022

Conrad Veldt is at the top of his game in this adaptation of Feuchtwanger's eponymous play published in the middle of WWI. Oddly enough, he didn't much care for it and it's exposure was short lived until picked up by Lothar Mendez almost twenty years later as a vehicle for this most enigmatic of actors. The story is simple enough. Veidt is a clever, ambitious man - not just for himself, but for his Jewish community in the feudal German duchy of Würtemburg. His task is made slightly easier by the fact that the hereditary dukes were little better than in-bred dolts, and soon he has the pretty nasty, womanising, "Karl Alexander" (Frank Vosper) in the palm of his hand. Except, that after a while even he realises that this odious individual is meritorious of little better than loathing. There's