Jakob The Liar, is a DEFA film from the early 70’s set in 1944 in a Jewish ghetto, where an ex- café owner overhears a radio broadcast announcing the Soviet Army is making slow but steady progress towards central Europe.  He tells a few people, with the word quickly spreading- he sees the news gives some hope, so he decides to pretend he has a radio himself. The picture blends grim drama with moments of levity/ hope, humour, and fantasy, making for an impactful, at times moving ride. Here from Eureka is a Blu-ray release of the film, featuring a 4k scan and a mix of new/ archive extras.

Jakob The Liar ( aka Jakob der Lügner) is from the year 1974. It was directed/co-written  Nobitz, Thuringia, Germany-born Frank Beyer. Between the late 50’s and 70’s he had thirteen feature lengths- Zwei Mütter (1957) war drama regarding a French and a German woman fighting over a baby.  Romantic comedy drama Das Versteck (1978),  and Bockshorn (1984) a teen drama regarding the possibility of guardian angels.

The one-hour and forty-minute film opens with credits giving snapshots from around the rundown ghetto with picking & grimly jaunting single-stringed instrumentation. We are then introduced to our lead Jakob Heym(Vlastimil Brodský), a tried/washed-out looking man with stubble and touches of grey in his hair. We see him check on the health of the bed-bound Lina (Manuela Simon), a ten-year-old girl whose parents are no longer around, and he looks after.

He exits his building, been warned not to miss curfew by another man, but neither have watches, as they have been confiscated by the Nazi. All of a sudden, the darkness sets in, and Jakob is picked out by a watchtower light. He is told to report to the nearby police station, while inside he hears reports that the Russian troops are advancing- getting nearer their ghetto, so finally there is some hope.

The next morning, while loading up trains for their nazi rulers, one of Jakob’s younger colleagues focuses on stealing potatoes from one of the train carriages. To stop him from getting gunned down, Jakob grabs his leg, pulling him back. He tells him about the radio broadcast, and to make it sound more believable, he says he has the radio, which is completely forbidden in the ghetto.

As the film unfolds, news of Jakob’s radio spread throughout the ghetto- giving people real hope, with the previous number of suicides dropping to none. Lina fully recovers and pushes  Jakob to show her the radio, and in a wonderfully spell-binding/ charming scene, he mimics the sound and voices of the radio from behind a wall.

As you’d imagine, the film is decidedly bleak- but there are moments of levity and humour here and there, as well as flashbacks to the more positive past, and fairy tale fantasy as told to Lina by Jakob.

Brodský is very believable as the tired/washed-out Ghetto dweller. Other notable mentions go to Erwin Geschonneck as former barber Kowalski, who is always keen to hear news updates. Though all of the cast is well chosen/ well placed.

Jakob The Liar, is a powerful, at times moving and dryly funny picture. In our constantly updated news updating/ multi-media lives, the idea of been unknowing to what’s going on in the world is truly unthinkable, but that gives the film more impact. And of course it shows how cruel/ unpleasant the nazi's where to Jewish people, who were treated more like human animals instead of real people.

The region B Blu-ray takes in a 4k scan- this looks well defined in both picture depth & quality- really deepening the largely, grim and bleak visual tone of the film & the ghetto.

On the extras side, we get two new things- Lessons of the Past (16.19), which finds Jewish studies scholar Sue Vice discussing the history of the Holocaust cinema genre, mentioning key films in the genre. Before moving on to discuss the film at hand, and how it sits in the wider genre. Jurek and Jakob (24.31) a video essay by film and literature scholar Mary Going on the writer of the novel the film is based on, Jurek Becker and DEFA’s adaptation of Jakob the Liar. On the archive side of things, we have A Diary for Anne Frank (19.00) – a  1958 DEFA documentary on the story of Anne Frank

This first edition of the film comes with an O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Carly A-F. And a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Sebastian Heiduschke, author of East German Cinema: DEFA and Film History.

Jakob The Liar, truly puts you in the grim and troubled streets of the 1940’s Jewish ghetto, for a tale of a man who is just trying to bring hope into people's lives. This new Eureka takes in a well-defined 4k scan, and a small but worthy collection of extras.