The dance pupil


There was one thing that really struck me about this film: the anti-Semitic stereotyping of the Jewish man who answered Thymian's ad for dance lessons. Remember, this was 1929 Germany, a time when the Nazis were campaigning for power by blaming Germany's economic malaise on the Jews and the SA were roaming the streets stirring up trouble. And there was Sig Arno (euphemistically credited as "The Guest") who dramatically pulls away his folded newspaper to reveal his long beard, huge nose, and huger wad of cash, from which he peels one miserly note to pay for his "lesson" while stuffing the rest away in another pocket, his evil intent clear as he leers and tests the bed. He proceeds to make a fool of himself with his grotesque dance moves, then he advances on Thymian, ready to ravish the pretty girl, until the heroic Dr. Vitalis arrives and Sig cowers in fear. The girls all laugh at him as he scrambles to get away from the good doctor.

It's an eerie glimpse into the way Jews were viewed in Germany back then. The film has nothing to do with Nazism or the social issues that led to the war, which makes this example of anti-Semitism all the more terrifying because it was so matter-of-fact, so natural to portray the Jew as an amoral coward who uses his wealth to take advantage of others. There can be no mistake about the filmmaker's intent to employ the Jewish stereotype, given the way Sig's character was introduced. The scene opens with a direct close-up of a man whose face is hidden from view by a newspaper, which is slowly pulled down to draw our attention to his prominent nose, which looks just like the ones on the anti-Semitic posters that the Nazis plastered all over Germany.

What a spine-chilling lesson about a dark chapter in history.

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The appearance of the character in the movie was similar to the sterotypes of Black men in movies around the same time period. It accomplished two things:

1) Shorthand. Everyone "knew" what to think when they saw such a character. No need to go into long explanations about who he was and what he represented.

2) Comic relief. These kind of characters trained the audience not to take people seriously and to look down on them. Troubling, plenty of people didn't know where the movie ended and life began, so attitudes would leak out in everyday life.

Sadly, many actors were in a position to either play such grotesque roles or not work in front of the camera for movies. There was a Black actress, whose name I can't remember, who said something like, I can either be a maid for $7/week or play one in a movie for $1,000/week." I don't remember the exact numbers, but you get the gist.


Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

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Too true.

I think the reason this scene struck me so hard was that a few days earlier I had watched a documentary on PBS about Joseph Goebbels. The "shorthand" film characterization of a Jew in Germany in 1929 really stood out after that.

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I noticed this character and wondered, but in the end I couldn't believe it was intended to be anti-semitic caricature. Pabst had a reputation as a left wing director, ("Lost Girl" itself is hardly politically conservative) and made a film of "The Threepenny Opera" by Berthold Brecht, the granddaddy of Marxist political theatre. It seems totally out of character that he would just bung in a Nazi-esque racist stereotype as you're suggesting.

Are we entirely sure about this? Or are we reading too much into the scene? Is the guy definitely Jewish as opposed to just a weird looking punter?



I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to leave the room with a little dignity.

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Are we entirely sure about this? Or are we reading too much into the scene? Is the guy definitely Jewish as opposed to just a weird looking punter?
Yes, I'm entirely sure about this, though I'll grant that it's my subjective interpretation because there is nothing in the film or the credits that explicitly states the character is Jewish. I'm not familiar with Pabst's history or body of work so I can't comment as to whether a reputation for being left wing makes antisemitism seem out of character for him but I'll note that that, too, is a subjective opinion. So I guess we just have a difference of opinion. But mine is correct. ;-)

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Leftwingers and Marxists can be anti-Semitic too; in fact Karl Marx was notorious for his anti-Semitism.

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Karl Marx was notorious for his anti-Semitism

Karl Marx was Jewish, at least by descent. I know that's not entirely a get-out clause, but in any case I've never seen conclusive evidence of him being anti-Semitic.

I do recall him once referring to petty cheating by Jewish merchants in his hometown, but that was to make a more general point about how Capitalism works - about a basic level of trust being necessary to the system. I didn't assume he was making a general point about Jews.

I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to leave the room with a little dignity.

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Lenin and Trotsky were also jewish. Those were not their real names but ones they changed them to.

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Half correct. Trotsky was Jewish, ( Lev Davidovich Bronstein) but Lenin wasn't (Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov)

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When i watched it, Jewishness didn't even cross my mind. I just thought he was being played as a comedy character. Frankly the majority of the characters were weird, creepy, slimy and odd (or in Louise Brook's case, hot!!) So i just assumed it was another weirdo creepy... albeit a funny one. I liked his performance and felt it was a well needed comic interlude.

"What are you, some kind of doomsday machine, boy?"

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Agreed, I didn't think about his being Jewish at all. He was just a guy who looked and acted weird.

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Marx used anti-Semitic language and tropes in the second part of his early essay "On the Jewish Question". However, he used them to criticise capitalism as practised by the overwhelmingly Christian / Gentile bourgeoisie.

The argument of this section of "On the Jewish Question" is that the negative characteristics stereotypically attributed to Jews could with equal or greater accuracy be applied to the overwhelmingly Christian bourgeoisie and the culture which they dominated. Obviously, that's not an anti-Semitic argument or purpose - quite the reverse. This is especially true when one remembers that the essay was written in reply to Bruno Bauer's arguments that the Jews should have to give up their religion before achieving political emancipation, and that Marx, a strong supporter of Jewish emancipation, disagreed in spite of his hostility to religion in general. However, the essay starts from the assumption that those stereotypes were accurate when applied to the Jews. That assumption is absolutely typical of its time; indeed, it would have been revolutionary if Marx HAD challenged it.

Effectively, what Marx did in "On the Jewish Question" was to frame an anticapitalist argument, not itself anti-Semitic, within a set of anti-Semitic ideas and language which he never thought to challenge. The essay is uncomfortable to read, and is a reminder that Marx was a man of his times. Whether his own Jewish heritage had any effect on his views, I can't say.

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"Black actress, whose name I can't remember, who said something like, I can either be a maid for $7/week or play one in a movie for $1,000/week." I don't remember the exact numbers, but you get the gist."

I think that was Hattie McDaniel who played Mammy in GWTW.

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Thanks [b]lagal[\b]. I know it was a high profile actress from the 1930s or 40s.

>>Oh, well that's different. Nevermind!<<

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It never occurred to me that the dance student was Jewish. I considered him to be "comic-relief". I have watched many movies and documentaries concerning the Nazis and WWII, so it is not that I am naive. But this was a compelling, beautifully photographed and incredibly well-acted film. Louise Brooks was fascinating to watch and gave a riveting performance. Very impressive film.

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That's understandable, the bit that I've commented on in this thread is only an undertone to a minor story device which could easily have flown under your radar while you were enjoying the broader film as a whole. It's a very impressive film, indeed!

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My interpretation is that he was Scottish ( tartan trousers and all that ) also the Scottish are portrayed as "Parsimonious " and "miserly".
Other than the few famous cases of blatant anti Semitism "Jud Suss"(1940) and
" The eternal Jew" (1940)this had the reverse effect on audiances Geobles left film makers to their own devices - self censorship and market forces were the order of the day. He himself favoured escapist entertainment ( his favourite being Walt Disney's "Snow White and the seven Dwarfs 1937) on the other hand Hitler's favourite we are told was "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)the Furer being a distant admirer of the British Empire.

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The flip of the argument is the following question:

Is an unflattering portrayal of a (presumably) Jewish character necessarily "antisemitic" in intent when that portrayal is no worse (and in many ways much less malevolent in intent) than how the majority of the Christian (or, at least gentile) characters are depicted in the movie?

Note that the characters who are the most blatantly sadistic, who appear to enjoy hurting those over whom they have power just for its own sake, are also the ones who most prominently identify themselves with Christian iconography (wearing extremely obvious crosses and such).

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It's been a year and a half since I watched this film so forgive me if my recollection is muddy, because I can't recall whether Christian characters were presented in both lights, good and bad. But for the sake of discussion, even if the film was completely negative towards Christians, portraying them as everything from harmless hypocrites to outright sadists, that still doesn't change the negative stereotype embodied by the (clearly) Jewish dance pupil.

I don't think the blatant sadism of the Christians who ran the girls reform school was intended to make the Jewish character be seen in a positive light by comparison. However worse the other characters were, the dance pupil was still portrayed negatively. If he wasn't sadistic, it's merely because sadism didn't fit the stereotype fostered by the Nazis, which was tilted more towards deviousness and cowardice than violence.

I'd like to make something clear, in case anyone objects to this discussion: I'm not Jewish nor am I anti-Jewish. In fact, I don't have any agenda whatsoever regarding the Jewish people or any other religion. I'm merely a person who's interested in history and I found this one particular character to be illuminative of a notable era. Racial hatred and religious intolerance are vile and dark things. They're best dealt with by exposing them to examination in the light of reason.

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I thought he was Amish; but like all the movies made around that period in Germany, it portrays very interesting attitudes and behavior of German people

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zwot, I am amazed to read that four responders doubted your interpretation of that scene as a caricature of a Jewish figure. Clearly, we have now had several generations to dilute what once was blatant cultural shorthand. In a sense, that's a good thing-- we don't pick up on bigotry in old films because we feel it so much less in our daily lives-- but in another sense, it's a dangerous thing, as we must retain a cultural-historical memory of how such forces worked in society-- especially given where these forces led within a few years of this film.

But it should go without saying that zwot is 100% correct in identifying this anti-Semitic scene. As zwot says, the camera quickly helps the viewer cue in from the start-- from the focus on the hooked nose and trademark beard (NOT a Scottish or Amish or any other kind of beard), which the pupil strokes in THE stereotypically Jewish gesture, to the classic anti-Semitic moment in which he pulls out a huge wad of wrinkled, squirreled-away cash, only to peel off one bill with unmistakable parsimony, etc., etc., etc. There is zero room for doubt here.

But to my mind, this moment is all the more chilling in a liberal film. This is a film that is asking us to have sympathy for the downtrodden and the marginalized. This is a film that ends by telling us that with a little more love there wouldn't be any lost people. And the character of Thymian is the one person in the film who consistently shows this compassion, from the opening scene when she is horrified that the governess is being kicked out of the house, until the closing scene when she takes another 'wayward' girl under her arm. Yet Thymian joins in the laughter when the Jew is being bullied around the room. The more frightened the "disgusting, little Jew" is, the funnier it is to the girls. In other words, this is a scene that is training its audience to be de-sensitized to the persecution of Jews. And it just goes to show how deeply ingrained such prejudices were, as Pabst clearly has no idea what pernicious stereotypes he leans on for his comedy, and he has no idea that the effect of such scenes on any audience is the diametric opposite of the effect he was seeking for his film on the whole.

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And it just goes to show how deeply ingrained such prejudices were,
Yup, the Nazis merely fanned the flames of a fire that was already burning, ultimately producing an epic conflagration.

I guess the one thing I'd change about my original post from five years ago is to note that the anti-semitism depicted in this scene was by no means confined to Germany. Because Nazi codification of the prejudice led to events of unrivalled infamy, it's easy to forget how prevalent was anti-semitism in many other countries, including some healthy democracies. But with that said, it's certainly fascinating to get a glimpse of the zeitgeist Hitler exploited to such devastating effect.

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I haven't seen the scene yet. But I wanted to add one thing about anti antisemitism in Germany. Believe it or not Germany was actually one of the better places for Jewish people to live in Europe. That is why they actually were very slow in seeing what was going on, very slow to leave Germany. Places like Austria, the Netherlands and France were much worse.

It was easy to make Jewish people the scapegoats for a bad economy. But one of the reasons I believe Jewish people were used as they were is because the rest of Europe and America just didn't care about them. It was a calculating move by the Nazi's. But compared to the rest of Europe Jewish people did pretty well and were treated much better in Germany before the advent of the Nazi's then in most places in Europe. I think it is very disingenuous the rest of Europe to act like Germany was Ground zero for anti antisemitism in Europe. I would gather this country could compete for that dubious distinction as far as non European countries are concerned. So we cannot assume that the scene involved a Jewish person. I think our assumption he was Jewish tells something about our own stereotypical prejudices. But this is a very interesting discussion and it caught my eye when I was deciding to look at this. Pabst is one of my favorite directors.

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I just looked that the scene. The OP forgot to mention that she lived in the brothel and that is where the dancing lesson were. The madame even put "lovely" on the ad without her knowing about it. He was looking at her like she was nuts when she really looked like she was giving dancing lessons. He came there for a booty call, not a dance lesson. It is like going to a massage parlor for a real message. Come on I think the OP made too much of the scene. The actor is a comedian and it was a funny scene. One of few light scenes in the movie. Very few people in that movie came off looking good. The people who ran that reformatory were to me much more obvious a target of Pabst. Heck she wore a cross around her neck. There was no mistaking what she and her hubby was. But the dance scene, he just looked like a clown, more then a Jewish person.

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I didn't realize he was supposed to be jewish. He looked like an amish man to me but I supposed back then, that's probably what many german jewsish men looked like seeing as many amish are from german ancestry and they cling to traditional ways. I guess it's not much different from seeing how blacks were disparagingly portrayed in movies of that era. I also imagine that's part of the reason there are so many different prints of this movie. That character was probably edited out.

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The actor was Jewish, but the strange beard doesn't really fit the typical Jewish caricature. Really most of the people in the film are creepy, and if he is supposed to be a stereotype Jew he doesn't come off that bad

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I just watched the film for the first time (in a silent film festival) and while he seemed to me like the stereotype you write about, I enjoyed his funny shtick a lot even if it was completely out of place in otherwise dark film.

The first thing that came to my mind while the actor was fiddling his walking cane was Cosmo Kramer in Seinfeld! I don't know about Michael Richards' career beyond Seinfeld but I'm 100% sure that he has seen the dance lesson part in the film. There's just so many eerie similarities - discounting the beard of course! :)

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