{"id":46275,"date":"2025-02-07T08:26:52","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T13:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=46275"},"modified":"2025-12-30T18:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T23:13:11","slug":"the-bootleg-files-professor-mamlock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/07\/the-bootleg-files-professor-mamlock\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Professor Mamlock"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 896:<\/strong> \u201cProfessor Mamlock\u201d (1938 Soviet drama focused on Nazi anti-Semitism). <\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> It fell through the cracks. <\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> If any film deserves a release, this is it.<\/p>\n

After Adolf Hitler\u2019s rise to power and his subsequent persecution of Germany\u2019s Jewish population, the Hollywood film industry found itself in a quandary. Many of the studios were owned and operated by Jewish businessmen who were not supportive of Hitler\u2019s anti-Semitic policies \u2013 and many German creative artists who fled Hitler\u2019s Germany were welcomed in the Hollywood studios. But at the same time, the German market was a lucrative export destination for Hollywood films and the studios did not want to jeopardize the revenue stream they enjoyed from German cinemas. As a result, no Hollywood film criticized Nazi policies against its Jewish population, while \u201cConfessions of a Nazi Spy\u201d released by Warner Bros. in May 1939 broke the taboo of clearly identify Hitler\u2019s government as an enemy to Americans.
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Oddly, the first feature film to call out Nazi anti-Semitism came from a country that was not known for its democratic values \u2013 Joseph Stalin\u2019s Soviet Union, which put forth the 1938 feature \u201cProfessor Mamlock\u201d as a harsh condemnation of Germany\u2019s despicable treatment of its Jewish citizens. The film created a controversy when it was shown in the United States but today is nearly forgotten by everyone except scholars of Holocaust-focused films.<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessor Mamlock\u201d is based on a play by Friedrich Wolf, a German Communist playwright who left his homeland in 1933 and emigrated to Moscow. The play centered on a prominent Jewish surgeon and decorated World War I veteran who is prevented from practicing medicine after the Nazis take power. The play was staged in several European capitals and in New York, and it was during a Moscow theater production that Austrian-born filmmaker Gerbert Moritsevich Rappaport (who settled in the Soviet Union in 1936) saw the potential for filming \u201cProfessor Mamlock.\u201d Stalin himself reportedly gave the greenlight to create a film version, with Russian filmmaker Adolf Minkin collaborating with Rappaport on the production.<\/p>\n

The film version of \u201cProfessor Mamlock\u201d makes some significant alterations to Wolf\u2019s play, most notably in highlighting the depiction of Nazi persecution of Communists along with the anti-Semitic campaigns. The character of the professor\u2019s son Rolf, a Communist anti-fascist agitator, is given a larger role in the film and is shown as both a beacon of physical power \u2013 he is first seen doing gymnastics on the parallel bars \u2013 and as a politicized activist who openly praises Marx and Lenin and expresses his desire to fight against the fascists in pursuit of a Communist paradise. Rolf suffers for his politics through torture by Nazi captors, but he emerges as a modern Communist hero.<\/p>\n

(SPOILER ALERT) Mamlock\u2019s character is also emotionally strengthened, to the point that the play\u2019s ending with his suicide as a broken man was changed to having him assassinated after giving an impassioned anti-fascist speech. <\/p>\n

The film expands on the play\u2019s most harrowing scene, where SA militia fighters storm into the hospital operating room and order Mamlock\u2019s expulsion. The thuggish intruders write \u201cJUDE\u201d across Mamlock\u2019s operating tunic and parade him through the hospital and out into the street. Semyon Mezhinsky plays Mamlock with a dignified sense of purpose and he dominates the scene by refusing to cower and grovel in the midst of this unconscionable humiliation. Indeed, the performance is so strong that Edward G. Robinson would later claim that he wished he could play the role in an American remake of \u201cProfessor Mamlock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessor Mamlock\u201d resonated with Stalin, who ordered it be shown in the widest possible distribution across the Soviet Union. The film opened in New York two months after its Soviet premiere and it had the distinction of being the first Soviet film to be approved by the Production Code of America. The New York Times critic Frank Nugent declared, \u201cThat long-overdue indictment of Nazi persecution of the Jews has arrived at last. As we might have expected, it has come from Russia, which is beyond Hollywood’s anxiety about the foreign market.\u201d And the film took on a greater importance when the Kristallnacht pogrom occurred in Germany two days after the New York premiere.<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessor Mamlock\u201d would be the runner-up for the New York Film Critics Circle Award as Best Foreign Film \u2013 \u201cGrand Illusion\u201d won the prize \u2013 and it was cited as being among the Top 10 Foreign Films of 1938 by the National Board of Review. Outside of New York, however, audiences had difficulty seeing the film. The local censorship board in Chicago called it “purely Jewish and Communist propaganda against Germany” and banned it from being exhibited, while the state film censors for Ohio, Massachusetts and Rhode Island prevented its release for similar reasons.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s international release was also checkered. British censors would not allow it be seen in 1938 due to diplomatic pressure \u2013 it was feared that it would heat up an already tense relation between Britain and Germany \u2013 but it was eventually released once World War II began. After the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, it was banned in the Soviet Union \u2013 it was put back into theaters after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. German audiences didn\u2019t see the film until 1947; the East German film industry made its own version in 1961.<\/p>\n

But since that era, \u201cProfessor Mamlock\u201d has been mostly out of circulation. I don\u2019t believe the film was ever shown on American television and it was never made available in an American home entertainment release. There is an unauthorized upload of the film on YouTube, but it is not from the English subtitled print \u2013 YouTube has its own closed captioning translation of Russian into English, which is a bit wobbly but nonetheless captures the tone of this amazing production.<\/p>\n