Product Review

The First and Rarest of the Nazi Anti-Semitic Pictures! In A Deluxe Remastered Version
The road to the Holocaust proceeded in fits and starts, from exclusion to expulsion to elimination. Anti-Semitism in Nazi cinema also developed gradually, becoming fully vituperative only during the Second World War. Robert and Bertram, the first of the four major Nazi anti-Semitic films, is an otherwise delightful musical comedy set in 1839, directed with skill and panache by Hans H. Zerlett, a Goebbels favorite who specialized in musicals and action pictures. It relates the misadventures of two vagabonds who escape from prison and become fugitives on the run. Rudi Godden s Robert and Kurt Seifert s Bertram are suggestive of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, even performing a dance routine reminiscent of Stan and Ollie s in Way Out West.

The rascals foil the plans of a swindling creditor who is foreclosing on the local innkeeper. Posing as the Count of Monte Cristo and friend, they attend a soirée given by Counselor of Commerce Nathan Ipelmeyer (Herbert Hübner). The masked ball is populated by heavy-handed, exaggerated Jewish caricatures, all obsessed by money and young Aryan maidens. Bertram steals Frau Ipelmeyer s jewelry, allowing the innkeeper to pay off his mortgage. This soirée forms a suggestive, conscious link to the Jewish drive for world disruption and domination. Nazi anti-Semitism was total, implacable, uncompromising; the Jewish caricatures here are shown to be as dangerously destructive as they are unappealing and corrupt.

Robert und Bertram is a preview of coming attractions mild in its use of anti-Semitic stereotypes when compared with Erich Waschneck s smirking Die Rothschilds, Veit Harlan s magisterial Jud Süss, and Fritz Hippler s astonishingly toxic Der ewige Jude.

Germany, 1939, B&W, 87 mins. Directed by Hans H. Zerlett. Starring Rudi Godden, Kurt Seifert, Carla Rust, Fritz Kampers. German dialogue, Switchable English subtitles.

DVD Special Features:
- Historical Background Slideshow "Third Reich Cinema: Hans H. Zerlett's Robert und Bertram and Anti-Semitic Tradition" by film author R. Dixon Smith

- Original Promotional Materials Slideshows: Illustrierte Film Kurier and Original Tobis Press book (Presse Heft) (Both Include Interactive English Translations of Original German text and song lyrics)