Seddok and the Satanic Postwar Jew
Audiences tend to associate the cinema of Hebraic caricature – films such as Jud Süss , Der Ewige Jude , and Die Rothschilds , all from 1940 – with the official propaganda of the Third Reich. As F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Fritz Lang’s films Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) demonstrate, however, anti-Semitic stereotypes in German cinema predate the establishment of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Moreover, as David Lean’s Oliver Twist (1948) illustrates, such characterizations also found currency outside the Axis countries and well after the Allied victory in the Second World War. As at least one less-well-known Italian movie shows, even more than a decade of American military occupation and coerced cultural liberalization failed to fully reconstruct postwar Italians’ attitudes toward Jews. Seddok: l’erede di Satana (“Seddok: The Heir of Satan”), known in its truncated, English-dubbed version as Atom Age...
