BERLIN It is still one of the most notorious films ever made a rabble-rousing, antisemitic product of the Nazi era, an infamous work of propaganda that is still kept under lock and key in the German film archives since it was banned in 1945. Jud Süss, originally made in 1940 and currently available for viewing only by a handful of bona fide academics and film historians, is back in the public eye as a new film about its creation has been released, in what is the latest attempt by German cinema to dramatise the country's recent past.

Jud Süss A Film Without a Conscience premiered at the Berlin film festival last week, and tells the story behind the Nazi project to make a historical costume melodrama so powerful and star-studded that it had the potential to take the wind out of Hollywood's sails, as well as performing its main task of inciting anti-Jewish sentiments.

The first Jud Süss was conceived by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as an answer to the successful British film Jew Suss, made in 1934 and starring the German actor Conrad Veidt (recently escaped from Germany). Jew Suss itself was adapted from a 1925 anti-Nazi novel by German-Jewish writer and one-time Brecht collaborator Lion Feuchtwanger about a well-known historical figure, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, who was a “court Jew” in 18th-century Württemberg. The British film was a thinly veiled plea on behalf of the victimised Jewish population of Nazi Germany, and enjoyed success in Britain and the United States, but was banned in Vienna, where its censors did not like its pro-semitic tone.

The Goebbels “remake”, on the other hand stressed the Nazi stereotypes of Jews as crafty, untrustworthy, hooked-nosed beings. Feuchtwanger's version of the Süss story has Suss Oppenheimer achieving great wealth, but turning against his protector when the duke tries to rape his daughter. In the Goebbels film, which was directed by Veit Harlan, Suss's brazen actions almost cause civil war to break out in the dukedom and end with him raping a German girl, torturing her father and fiancée, before he is tried and hanged himself.

To increase its impact, the film opened simultaneously in 80 Berlin cinemas. In the Third Reich alone, 20m people saw it, and it was a huge success abroad, where it sparked anti-Jewish violence, particularly in France and Italy. It was also frequently shown to SS troops and concentration camp guards to boost their morale and confirm to them the Final Solution was a worthy cause. “Contrary to expectations that it would be artistically lame, cinematically primitive and lacking in spirit, the film was drooled over by film enthusiasts, as a subtle masterwork of the art of seduction,” according to Harald Jähner, film critic of the Berliner Zeitung. Droolers included director Michelangelo Antonioni, then a young critic, who swooned over its “cinematic refinement”.

The new film, directed by Oskar Röhler, depicts the moral qualms of lead actor Ferdinand Marian who, it suggests, was more or less forced into playing the role of Süss. Goebbels (played by Moritz Bleibtreu, better known to most for his role as the 1970s terrorist Andreas Baader), throws an ashtray at him as he warns him he will “crush him like a fly” if he refuses to play ball. Historians have questioned Röhler's account, citing an extract from Goebbels' diary, which makes the encounter sound less dramatic “Spoke to Marian about the Jud Süss material. He's not keen on playing the Jew, but I'll work on him a bit and win him over.”

Röhler says he did not intend to make a documentary “Our aim was to enter the innermost sanctum of Nazi high society, and to portray how seducible artists were in the Third Reich.” In the film's most criticised scene, that high society is embodied by an SS officer's wife who insists on having rough sex with Marian as they lean out of a window, as Berlin burns all around them. It produced hisses, boos and sniggers from the Berlinale audience.

Röhler's decision to change major biographical details have also come under fire. Marian's wife is portrayed as being half-Jewish and is murdered at Auschwitz. In reality, his wife, Maria Byck, came under suspicion for having once been married to a Jew, but she survived the war to give evidence at Harlan's trial — where he was acquitted of charges that his film had contributed to the Holocaust. She later killed herself.

But it is Bleibtreu's exaggerated, cartoon cut-out portrayal of Goebbels that has received the most negative reactions. The actor has sought to defend himself, saying “The guy was a clown. From today's viewpoint, it's inexplicable how so many millions could have fallen into their trap.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service