Different from the Others () is a silent German melodramatic film produced during the Weimar Republic. It was first released in 1919 and stars Conrad Veidt and Reinhold Schünzel. It was directed by Richard Oswald, and the story co-written by Oswald and Magnus Hirschfeld, It was one of the first sympathetic portrayals of gay men in cinema.

Censorship laws were enacted in reaction to films like Different from the Others and by October 1920 only doctors and medical researchers could view it. Prints of the film were among the many "decadent" works burned by the Nazis after they came to power in 1933.

The cinematography was by Max Fassbender, who two years previously had worked on , one of the earliest cinematic treatments of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Director Richard Oswald later became a director of more mainstream films, as did his son Gerd. Veidt became a major film star the year after Different from the Others was released, in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

The film's basic plot was used again in the 1961 UK film Victim, starring Dirk Bogarde. It was classified as an , or "sexual enlightenment film", in Germany. This film was also the first film that openly portrayed homosexuality.

Magnus Hirschfeld also filmed a documentary film entitled Laws of Love () in 1927, which used a shortened version of the film Different from the Others to discuss the subject of homosexuality. Shortly after it was released, Laws of Love also fell to censorship laws, but not before a copy made its way to Ukraine, where it was subtitled in the local language. This version of Laws of Love was discovered by the city museum of Munich in the 1970s.

A new censorship program was created in response to the film in May 1920, and the film was banned except for private educational showings in August 1920.

The original version of the film is no longer preserved, as the film copies were banned and destroyed. Because of this, large parts of the film were lost beyond recall. The current versions of the film were reconstructed from the shortened version of the film in Laws of Love. The Munich Film Museum has a restored version of the film, which was first released on VHS as a silent film with German intertitles. Since October 2006, a DVD edition from the Munich Film Museum has been available in both German and English. This DVD version also includes a short documentary about the history of censorship and a section of Laws of Love.

Reception

This film, along with other moral and sexual enlightenment films, incited a cultural debate in Germany. Conservative and reactionary sides called for a reintroduction of censorship policy, claiming that they wanted to protect young people. Some people also reacted to the film with antisemitism, which was seen in a range of publications including strict conservative pages and the gay journals of Friedrich Radszuweit-Verlag. It was claimed that Hirschfeld and Oswald, who were both Jews, were promoting the Jewish vice of homosexuality. Many copies of the film were destroyed after the film was banned and performances were restricted, only being allowed to be shown to preapproved groups such as doctors and other medical professionals in educational and scientific institutions.

Curt Moreck, in his book, Moral Stories of Cinema (), commented against the film in 1926. Looking back on the banned film, this criticism was on the grounds that the manufacturer of the film had sensed the deal: "Even within the circles of the cinema industry itself, protests were loud, and public opinion arose in a chorus of many voices against the danger of making perverse forms of sexual behaviour to be the content of films about sexual enlightenment." ()

The Encyclopedia of International Films () saw Oswald's work completely positively: "This exemplary intimate play, the first German film about homosexuality, avoids every cliché and shimmers with outstanding performances" ()

Other information

The film, which co-starred and was co-written by sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, refers to Hirschfeld's theory of "sexual intermediacy". The theory places homosexuality within a broad spectrum comprising heterosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, and transvestism (a word invented by Hirschfeld). The film's protagonist first meets his blackmailer at a costume party, and the blackmailer also frequents a drag club; these scenes are the earliest film footage of gay men and lesbians dancing. The film was initially shipped in 40 copies throughout Germany and the Netherlands by Oswald, and it was shown for nearly a year before the authorities stepped in and banned public screenings, allowing it to be shown only to doctors and lawyers. The Nazis destroyed the majority of the prints and only one copy of the film is known to exist. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Teddy Awards, the film was selected for the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016. The New York LGBT film festival NewFest screened Different from the Others in October 2016. A special event screening at Jerusalem Cinematheque followed in June 2017.

See also

  • List of films made in Weimar Germany
  • List of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender-related films
  • List of partially lost films

References

  • Transgender-Net:Anders als die Andern (Deutsch)
  • Peculiarities of the Reich Moving Picture Law (RLG)
  • Sexuality Archive Humboldt University Berlin - Films
  • Dossier on Different from the Others by Shoshana Schwebel and Ervin Malakaj on Weimar Cinema.org