Le troisième sexe

At the end of World War II, during which he directed "Jud Süss" the vilest genocide-inciting anti-Semitic movie of all time, the mediocre director Veit Harlan escaped going to jail on a technicality: it could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt that the Reich's propaganda minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels', office did not tamper with a few minutes' of film of Harlan's supposedly "well-meaning" movie.

Harlan soon staged his much-awaited comeback and started making movies in which the word Jew was taboo. Alas, all he was interested in making, were movies inciting hatred. So if you are no longer allowed to openly incite hatred of the Jews --- though soon even that may be allowed again in a unified Germany where the death of thirty thousand Aryans during the bombing of Dresden is nowadays widely viewed as comparable, if not worse, than the wanton genocidal murder of six million Jews--- there is always some other group to pick on.

Not aware that homosexuality was on its way to becoming legal in the land of Roehm, Harlan had decided he would make a gay-hating movie for a change. The story is so inane, that I will forgo any spoilers. What no one can miss though, is the fact that the way the "good Germans" in this movie talk to and about gay men, is a mutatis mutandis quotation of the way they used to talk in Harlan's wartime movies to and about the Jews shortly before murdering them. This does not stop at spoken language but extends to body language as well.

Though the word Jew is never uttered in "Anders als Du und Ich," the movie's openly gay bad guy goes by the certainly non-Aryan name of Dr. Boris Winkler, and his man-servant is known only by his, in Germany most Semitic of surnames, Maurice. I guess the Goebbels boys must have been at it yet again, even though like his child-murdering spouse, the cowardly propaganda minister had swallowed his cyanide more than a decade before the shooting of "Anders als Du und Ich.."

Maybe the most disgusting feature of this movie is the participation of the legendary stage actress Paula Wessely, who had acted in Nazi propaganda movies during the war and then asked to be forgiven for this "lapse". There is no denying that Wesssely was one of the most spellbinding stage actresses of all time. But to participate in a movie in which she is asked to act the role of a mother, who after having heard rumors that her son may be gay, learns all she ever wanted to know about homosexuality, by furtively looking up the one-paragraph entry "Third Sex" in a Hitler-era lexicon, indicates that a very limited intelligence informed Wessely's great acting talent.

ANDERS ALS DU UND ICH (Different From You And Me), a 1957 gay-themed film from Germany, has always had a bad reputation due to it's Nazi-era director, Viet Harlan, who was said to have done for queers here what he did for Jews in his infamous JUD SUSS (1940), but, in fact, the opposite is true. This highly entertaining film would, despite it's ignorance (homosexuality can be cured by having sex with a woman), have been quite progressive if German censors didn't cut the parts they felt were "advertizing homosexuality" since those deleted and altered scenes (included on the DVD) were actually pleas for tolerance and understanding. For instance, someone tells a mother who's son is gay that it's fate but that was changed to him telling her she shouldn't just accept it and a gay lawyer, the picture of normalcy and the voice of reason amid all the hysteria, advocated either abstinence or monogamy (still relevant in this day and AIDS) but was excised altogether. Gay bars were also said to be condoned by the government so homosexuals could have a place to go but that was out, too, of course, and what's left is "artistic" teens seduced by a chicken hawk at parties where the floor is cleared for some Greco-Roman wrestling. In the uncut version, a mother goes to prison for procuring the services of the family maid to seduce her son (which shows how counter-productive the laws criminalizing homosexuality were) but in the cut film, what she did wasn't so bad and she only gets probation. Melodramatic, absorbing, and absolutely fascinating -a must see, I must say!

Former UFA director Harlan was cleared of war crimes in 1948, claiming he was only following orders and that Goebbels tampered with his JUD SUSS but judging by what the censors did to DIFFERENT FROM YOU AND ME (an implicitly prejudiced title changed from the original THE THIRD SEX) there might be some truth to that.

What can you possibly say about a film that a) portrays homosexuality as evil and even diabolic and that b) was made by the infamous Veit Harlan, director of nazi-propaganda-films like "Jud Süß" and "Kolberg"? Well, it's surprisingly quite entertaining, despite (or because of) its reactionary message. An extremely simple plot, melodramatic twists, great villains and a great score and a guest appearance by Oskar Sala (...Hitchcock's "Birds", anyone?) provides you with the viewing pleasure you have the right to ask for. This is true document of German "Spießertum" (look it up in your German dictionary) ... :)

The original title of this film and the title under which it appeared uncensored in Austria was "The Third Sex". This expression does not date from the "Hitler era" as one rather hysterical reviewer suggests but from the Weimar period. It was associated with the theories of Magnus Hirschfeld, who was not only openly gay but also Jewish. Two films had been made during that period, both hostile to the notorious article 175 of the German legal code. Both refer specifically to Hirschfeld's theories that there was a naturally occurring "third sex" whose orientation should not therefore be regarded as abnormal. Hirschfeld himself appears as the sexologist in Richard Oswald's Anders als die andern (1919) and Dreyer's Mikaël (1924) was subtitled "the third sex"

The reviewer is also wrong in supposing that post-war Germany was well on the way to reforming the law. It actually took a very hard line not greatly different from that of the Nazis. Homosexuals incarcerated by Hitler were not released in 1945 but obliged to continue their terms of imprisonment under article 175. The official view as represented by the film-censorship body the FSK was that homosexuality should be portrayed as a menace to society. The situation in Germany was very different from that in Britain where the Wolfenden Report in this same year advocated a reform of the law for which there was now a favourable consensus although the actual reform would have to wait for the election of a Labour government. Basil Dearden's 1961 film The Victim restates the case for reform but it was already in fact expressing a view endorsed by the Wolfenden Commission.

In Germany it was now much more difficult to make a film sympathetic in its treatment of homosexuality, more difficult than it had been in the much more tolerant atmosphere of 1919 or 1924. Although the Harlan film is based on a screenplay by Felix Lützkendorf entitled Eltern klagen an (Parents Accuse) designed to highlight the dangers of homosexuality,he also employed homosexual activist Hans Giese as scientific consultant for the film and very clearly intended it to be broadly sympathetic towards homosexuals and to shift German opinion towards reform of its archaic laws. It is, even in the original, a somewhat timid and clumsy effort but Harlan's intentions are not really in doubt.

The film does not portray homosexuality as "evil". The homosexual characters are not simply demonised, and the depiction of the gay world is not altogether unsympathetic. As other reviews have pointed out, the original film refers to the more tolerant attitudes in other European countries and is implicitly critical of German intolerance in this respect. The audience's sympathies throughout are with the tolerant uncle and mother, not with the hectoring, blackmailing father whose intolerance is clearly shown to be part of the problem.

Of course homosexuality is not "cured" by a heterosexual relationship but this is not really the intended message. Harlan is on record as believing that there were both those who were naturally homosexual (the Hirschfeld thesis) and those who were attracted towards homosexuality for other reasons (the case of Klaus in the film). Harlan typically hedges his bets, warning against homosexuality in the second case (n conformity with the official view) but nevertheless making a case for more tolerant attitudes with regard to the first category.

The FSK certainly had no doubt whatsoever about its sympathies and not only was the title changed for release in Germany (but not in Austria) but Harlan was obliged by the censors to make many small changes that greatly mitigated the message of the film (you can find a catalogue of these changes in the relevant article on Wikipedia).

The US was at this time quite as bigoted in its attitude as Germany but censorship was more relaxed with regard to foreign films and Harlan was able to release a version there under the original title (The Third Sex) which still omits material from the original (including, comically enough, cuts to the heterosexual scenes) but is closer to the original than the heavily censored version that appeared in Germany itself. This dubbed version is also available on Youtube.

It is ironic that, having been condemned for his wartime complaisance towards official German policy, to which he may have had no strong objections, Harlan should have been condemned again in 1957 for the changes that official censorship had imposed, this time very clearly at variance with his own intentions.

Jud Süss is not really the "genocide-inciting" film that. It is racist but its racial thesis is almost identical to that of The Birth of a Nation and its treatment of Jews and Jewish culture distinctly less caricatural and dehumanising than Griffith's treatment of blacks). It is entirely possible to sympathise with Süss in the film (in a way in which it is not really possible to sympathise with "blackface" Gus in The Birth of a Nation) and to feel that he is treated hypocritically when he is condemned - an interesting element in common with this film - by an archaic law. The mean-minded German bourgeoisie who take their revenge on him for his support of a petty tyrant (historically accurate enough) are portrayed in a not dissimilar to the intolerant father in this film). Jud Süss is in many respects a good film (it won the Coupe Mussolini at the Venice Film Festival and was praised by young Italian critic Michelangelo Antonioni) and would doubtless have been less racist had Harlan not had Goebbels breathing down his neck just as this film would have been different had Harlan not been up against German censors.

The trouble is that Harlan made little effort to resist Goebbels and was just as pathetically compliant with the censors in 1957, re-dubbing significant sections of the film and even re-shooting scenes at their behest.

Perhaps Harlan's real crime was simply a consistent lack of moral courage.....

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This film was meant as a condemnation of Adenauer's Germany and its vicious attack on homosexuals following WW2. Veit Harlan's film was cut to shreds and no version of it which is available can be trusted. It is still on the Banned list of films in the UK and nobody has submitted it again for certification. What is left of the film is still very well worth seeing. That the son is ' cured ' is a very debatable issue but what is not debatable are the cruel facts in Germany's LGBT history that punishment for homosexuals was in law up until 1994. It is a fact which is still a stain on supposedly Post-Nazi history. One small fact is that I received a shocking letter from a survivor of those times. He said that two men entering a room together were arrested. I believe him. Watch what is left of the film and realise that Fascism was still alive and well, and who gives a damn for Paula Wessely and her great actress reputation. It was a crime then to make any positive statements, and the film that is available shows a few if you watch carefully. It is not a cinematic masterpiece but is still relevant today as persecutions continue in many countries including Capital Punishment and with the rise of the extreme Right in Europe Germany itself could still learn from it.