Dir. Frank Beyer, East Germany/ Czechoslovakia, 1974, 100 mins, in German with subtitles.
Cast: Vlastimil Brodsky, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Erwin Geschonneck, Henry Hubchen, Blanche Kommerell, Manuela Simon
Review by Colin Dibben
In a Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Poland, Jakob Heym (Brodsky) is ordered to report to a police station by a Nazi watchtower guard, where he overhears a radio broadcast suggesting that the Red Army is closing in on Poland. He tells his friends and neighbours that the Germans are losing the war and that better times are on the way, but the exhausting terror of their daily lives makes this inconceivable to them. To make his story plausible, Jakob claims to illegally possess a radio. Soon everyone is asking for updates on their liberation and Jakob finds himself lying to keep their spirits up.
The film is based on a novel by Jurek Becker, also the source for a 1999 film starring Robin Williams. There is a nightmarish, Kafkaesque mood to the start of the film, with Jakob being punished for breaking a curfew that all the clocks in the police station show has not started yet; but the subsequent exploration of issues of hope and falsehood felt a bit dishonest to me. Isn’t this just putting a positive spin on propaganda?
The approach in this film lends itself to a Hollywoodization of the story, it feels as if it is happening before your eyes as you watch. There is something disavowed in the grimy, comic and sentimental depiction of mundane ghetto life that detracts from the film’s implied message of hope and resistance.
Extras include:
- Lessons of the Past – new interview with Jewish studies scholar Sue Vice on Holocaust cinema
- Jurek and Jakob – new video essay by film and literature scholar Mary Going on Jurek Becker and DEFA’s adaptation of Jakob the Liar
- A Diary for Anne Frank (Joachim Hellwig, 1958) – DEFA documentary on the story of Anne Frank
- Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on Jakob the Liar by Sebastian Heiduschke, author of East German Cinema: DEFA and Film History
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