Love One Another

A Jewish family in Russia at the start of the twentieth century. The daughter, Hanne-Liebe, leaves home to study, while her brother hides his Jewishness and drifts into revolutionary circles. Around them, preparations for a state-encouraged pogrom are under way. The film is not interested in individual drama. It is interested in the mechanics of incitement: it shows a crowd being directed towards an attack not spontaneously but in an organised way. The roles of the provocateur and the state official are drawn plainly. The form has the epic scale of silent cinema: crowded street scenes, large numbers of extras, and an early version of the facial close-ups Dreyer would later be known for. The conditions of the production are a history in themselves: Carl Theodor Dreyer shot it in Germany, and real émigrés who had fled Russia appeared as extras in the pogrom scenes. The film was considered lost for a long time and was rediscovered later. Who it is for: anyone interested in silent film history and early Dreyer, and in how European antisemitism was handled early in cinema. Who it is not for: viewers wanting pace. Melodrama dominates and some scenes are over-explanatory today.