The 1924 film “The City Without Jews” depicts what's supposed to be a fictional Austria. After a rabid antisemite rises to power and expels Jews, the nation suffers culturally and economically. The film was notorious even a decade before Hitler’s rise to power. By World War II, it was essentially a lost film until 2015, when a pristine copy was discovered in Paris.
“Once again, the film has become sadly, poignantly and enragingly relevant,” said Alicia Svigals, klezmer violinist and founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics. She co-composed a score for the film with pianist Donald Sosin, and they’ll perform it live during a showing at Oberlin College October 25 at 7:30 p.m. in the David H. Stull Recital Hall.
“The thing about silent movie music in its day: There was no soundtrack,” Svigals said. “In small theaters, there might be a pianist who had never seen it before… reacting musically. Often, the film companies would send out cue sheets where they would say, ‘At this scene, play this popular tune that everybody knows. And at that scene play that one.’ There is no score… that we know of for this film.”
Svigals said the film’s eerily accurate portrayal of the future is something she thinks about while performing. And given current events, it might be difficult for her to get through the 80-minute performance and maintain her composure.
“The film is about antisemitism and more broadly, it's about a group of hypocritical politicians pitting one group of people against another for political gain,” she said. “The violence that that presaged, and the slaughter of innocents that happens just a few years after the film, is also happening now in this horrific week full of the killing of civilians, children - unspeakable horror.”
Yet even before this week, she said audiences frequently lament the antisemitism they still see in the world.
“It's a really bad part of human nature that there's this capacity somewhere in some people that keeps erupting,” she said. “I hope one day we get that one figured out, because the pain in the world right now is hard to bear.”
