Jud Süß (1940, Germany) – Oh shit, I just realized I’ll be spending the next several months trying to remember how many people had been killed in the war at the time of the movie I’m watching. For instance, at this time, Europe’s Jews were still alive. As for the movie, it’s well made, and built on a story template that is more familiar than I expected. In a performance reminiscent of the English bad guys in Braveheart, a Jew who dresses like a Regular German worms his way into the confidence of the Duke of Württemberg, and becomes the most powerful man in the state. The Jew’s reign of terror ends after he rapes a German girl, which turns the people against him and all his kind. I admit it: I cried. They fucking did it, the bastards. They murdered them all.

The Philadelphia Story (1940, USA) – Katharine Hepburn juggles her fiancee, her ex-husband and a gossip journalist before her second wedding. This is a perfect movie, even though, having now seen this version once and the 1956 remake twice, I am still not sure what’s actually going on here. Watched it all.

Gaslight (1940, UK) – A Suspicious Foreigner moves into his murdered aunt’s house in London, where he sets out to drive his wife to madness. It’s the darker sort of English mystery, with an atmosphere that would fit well to a Poe movie. Watched it all.