The Ancient Law

Baruch Mayer is the son of a rabbi. His family lives in a shtetl in Galicia. It is a poor place. Baruch wants to act. That wish goes against the tradition. His father is against it. Baruch leaves all the same. He joins a travelling theatre. The story is set in the 1860s. Jews were moving from Eastern Europe to Vienna in those years, and Baruch takes the same road. In Vienna he finds a benefactress, the Archduchess Elisabeth Theresia. He goes on at the Burgtheater and his name spreads, and at a performance of Don Carlos he meets his father again. Ernst Deutsch and Henny Porten appear in the hundred and twenty eight minute silent film, a German production E.A. Dupont finished in 1923.