The Ancient Law (Das alte Gesetz)

This 1923 silent drama offers fascinating insight into how the Weimar-era German film industry viewed its Jewish population. Set in the mid-19th-century, the story follows the journey of Baruch, the son of a Galician shtetl rabbi, who defies his father’s wishes and pursues a job as a theater actor. Through a quick series of admittedly too-convenient circumstances, he becomes the protégé of the Austrian archduchess and a star of the Vienna stage. But Baruch’s assimilation into secular society is tested when the archduchess falls in love with him. Director E.A. Dupont explores the uneasy relationship between Christians and Jews, with deeply sympathetic performances by Ernst Deutsch as the conflicted Baruch, Avrom Morewski as his old-school father, and a subtle Henny Porten as the obsessed, taboo-breaking archduchess. The original German negative was lost, and this reconstruction was created from five disparate nitrate prints released in foreign markets. Presented with two musical accompaniments—an ensemble score by Donald Sosin and Alicia Svigals, and an orchestral score by French composer Philippe Schoeller—extras include a featurette on the restoration, a surviving excerpt from a 1923 documentary on Weimar Germany’s cinema, a photo gallery, and a booklet with essays. Highly recommended. (P. Hall)