Professor Mamlok

The number of anti-Fascist films produced in the Soviet Union before the War is rather limited. In this respect, PROFESSOR MAMLOK, director Gerbert Rappaport’s debut movie, stands out as the work best known internationally and most impressive from a formal point of view. In chilling black-and-white images, the film is an excruciatingly analytical study of anti-Semitism that addresses all shades of humiliation, degradation and extinction. The clinic, the formerly charity-owned workplace of renowned surgeon Mamlok, is gradually turning into a strange and cold place. In the end, the professor is forced to leave wearing the “Jew” sign around his neck. Formerly believing in enlightenment, research and liberal values, he used to have a problem with the Communists, and would avoid the class issue. He is now faced with the Nazi terror gang and its “race theory”. He commits suicide in the (German) book; the (Soviet) film – constantly referring to a revolutionary future, even where there is none – calls for different means of resistance: the “Rotfront”! (Olaf Möller, Barbara Wurm)