File:1948 Alessandrini (film).jpg

{it} L'ebreo errante [1] / {en} The Wandering Jew (Italy, 1948), directed by Goffredo Alessandrini, starring Vittorio Gassman. Music by Enzo Masetti. (sound, B&W, 97m)

The classical concept of the Wandering Jew is given a contemporary twist. Matathias was a rich Jewish patriot, who considered Jesus an obstacle in the insurrection of his people against the Roman yoke. He urged the population of Jerusalem to condemn him before Pontius Pilate and forbade his wife, a Christian at heart, to give Jesus a drink in his way to Calvary. After being cursed by Jesus for his selfishness and after twenty centuries of wandering, Mathieu Blumenthal is now a banker in Paris in 1940, emigrated from Berlin in 1935. Refusing to leave France invaded by Hitler, he shares the fate of his co-religionists in a concentration camp but manages to escape. He returns to surrender to the Nazi however when he learns that all his other companions in misfortune will pay for his act. He finds forgiveness and redemption by having compassion for the oppressed and voluntarily sharing the destiny of persecution and fight of his people during the Holocaust and the War of Liberation against Nazism, to the ultimate sacrifice of his own life. He dies in the hands of the SS and Christ raises the curse of his wandering.

This interesting (if not artistically completed) reinterpretation of the legend after the Holocaust was written by Giovanni Battista Angioletti, who modernizes Sue's old-fashioned novel. The young Vittorio Gassman played under the direction of Goffredo Alessandrini. Alessandrini had been one of the quasi-official filmmakers of the fascist regime and his career was interrupted between 1943 and 1946. The film, shot in the studios Titanus Farnesina and Grottarossa and awarded by the Italian National Union of Film Journalists, marked his "rehabilitation" in post-Fascist democratic Italy.

Cast

• Vittorio Gassman = Matathias / Matthieu (Wandering Jew)

Editions

Produced and released in Italy (1948).

External links

• Wikipedia.it
• The Internet Movie Database