Richard Oswald – Anders als die Andern AKA Different from the Others (1919)

Paul Korner is a homosexual musician who falls in love with his protégé Kurt. Unfortunately, the two are seen walking hand in hand by the blackmailer Franz. Though Paul agrees to Franz’s demands at first, it gets out of hand and he ends up refusing to pay which has dire consequences for the lovers.

Quote:
Many thousands of homosexual men in Germany were sentenced to prison terms of up to five years under Paragraph 175 of the Penal Code. Enacted in 1871, with the creation of the modern German nation, this law against “unnatural vice between men” was toughened in the Nazi era and later liberalized in East and West Germany, but not fully repealed until 1994.

The law was challenged as early as 1897 by the German homosexual emancipation movement, the first such initiative worldwide. Its leader, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), held that homosexuals constituted a biological “third sex,” a social minority unjustly subjected to discrimination.

Hirschfeld argued that Paragraph 175 did far less to prevent the victimless crime of homosexuality than to promote the crime of extortion. For each homosexual prosecuted under the law, another 100 were victimized by blackmailers.

During World War I, director Richard Oswald (1880-1963) began collaborating with Hirschfield and other sexologists to produce a series of widely hailed “enlightenment films” aiming at sexual education. They dealt with such issues as venereal disease, prostitution, and abortion, embedded in a storyline that included counseling by a sage physician.

Following the war, censorship was temporarily lifted in all German media, opening a window of opportunity for filmmakers. Early in 1919, Hirschfeld and Oswald collaborated on Different from the Others (Paragraph 175), the world’s first film to deal explicitly with homosexuality.

Within a year, German studios had released some 150 feature films with sexual themes. Many of these “enlightenment films” were lurid and exploitative, but also commercially successful. The outcry they provoked led to the reintroduction of film censorship. At the center of controversy was Different from the Others, which was banned in 1920 and survives today only as a fragment.

Different.from.the.Others.1919.WEB-DL.x264.AAC.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	48mn 15s
Size:	689 MiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Not met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	1280x720
Aspect ratio:	16:9
Frame rate:	29.970 fps
Bit rate:	1 739 Kbps
Audio
2.0ch AAC @ 253 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/5572CAF42BEA88C/Different.from.the.Others.1919.WEB-DL.x264.AAC.mkv

Language(s):English Intertitles
Subtitles:None