I think it's a very ironic thing that the most overtly positive and obvious portrayal of Jews comes from Twentieth Century Fox--the only major American studio that was NOT controlled by an ethnic Jewish man at the time! So, as folks like Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner chose to de-emphasize their Jewish roots and make films which almost never even mentioned Judaism, Daryl Zanuck dove head first into the topic and brought us this very unusual biopic.The story is about the Rothschild family and only concerns a snippet in the history of the family--from the 18th century through the fall of Napoleon. When it begins, the family patriarch (George Arliss) instructs his sons to divide up the banking business among five major European capitals. Then, following his death, the story jumps decades later and the new head of the banking family is ALSO played by Arliss--albeit without the wig and makeup he donned at the beginning of the film. The theme is how honorable the family was and how they stood behind freedom and right...and that mistreatment of them and other Jews is just morally repugnant. Interestingly, the biggest anti-Semite of this portion of the film is a German guy (Boris Karloff)...and was perhaps the studio's way to address the rising tide of Naziism at the time.Regardless of its intent, the film is a well acted and interesting costume drama. How close this all actually is to the real life Rothschilds, I have no idea but it was entertaining. Plus, I'd watch Arliss in just about anything!

Nunnally Johnson had just written comedies when Darryl Zanuck came to him and asked him to write a movie about the Rothschild family. Apparently actor George Arliss had been begging Zanuck for years to make a film out of the play "House of the Rothschild." Johnson wasn't sure at all that he was the man to write a serious drama about a Jewish banking family. He told Zanuck, ""All my characters are liable to fall in flour barrels"It turns out that Johnson was just the right man to do the movie. Nobody falls into any flour barrels, but Johnson added a great deal of humor to the story in nearly every scene. He doesn't hesitate to show the Rothschild patriarchs outwitting vicious anti-Semitic government officials and aristocrats and taking pleasure in it.Johnson claimed that he didn't use the play as a basis for his movie, but used a popular biography of the time. Not being Jewish (and neither were Zanuck or Arliss) he was able to make the film more openly pro-Jewish than a Jewish writer probably would have done at the time. The movie is also unabashedly pro-capitalist, but only in a liberal flavor. Capitalism is good because it gives people dignity and allows them to work for peace and equality.The film seems squarely aimed at countering Nazi propaganda that Jews were evil international conspirators responsible for the twin evils of socialism and capitalism. It shows Jews as smart people working both for the benefit of their countries and their families. One could say that Hitler got the last laugh as he used footage from this film to make the ugly Nazi propaganda film "the Eternal Jew." However, "House of Rothschild" was a great box office success (number one for 1934) and steeled a great number of people against Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda.Arliss is witty, endearing and excellent as two Rothschild patriarchs. Boris Karloff is sharp as a merely vicious, but not monstrous antagonist. Loretta Young and Robert Young add charm as a pair of lovers kept apart by their families because Loretta is Jewish and Robert is Christian. They bring a nice balance of personal love and sweetness to the drama that is mostly concerned with war, high finance and international power. I kept thinking that if Loretta Young had actually fallen in love with Robert Young and they had married, she would have become Loretta Young Young. Then I could have said a young Loretta Young Young played the young child of a Rothschild.Doubtless, this is an idealized version of the Rothschild family, but it was exactly what was needed to counter the vicious ideology of the Nazis in 1934. Don't miss and enjoy.

... which is appropriate since he had the talent of at least two actors of any era. In this case Arliss plays both Mayer Rothschild and son Nathan after the house of Rothschild has begun to flourish into a huge banking enterprise. What makes these precode biopics of Arliss fun to watch is his mischief, the precocious energy of a five year old and the wisdom of a sage observer of human nature all packed into one lean unimposing frame. The precode era also allowed Arliss to make a comment here and there that likely would be censored in the production code era.The time is that of the Napoleanic Wars and the Rothschilds, after funding the British in the first defeat of Napolean, find the British aristocracy develops a not so startling case of amnesia and begins treating Nathan Rothschild as an outsider - a Jew - and excludes him from their most lucrative deals. When Nathan Rothschild initially outsmarts them in business, the vindictive Count Ledrantz (Boris Karloff) incites riots against the Jews throughout Europe, even putting Nathan's own mother at risk back at the ancestral home in Germany. However, what nobody knows at the time is that Napolean will escape and a second campaign against him will be necessary. Will the Rothschilds go after their own best interests and back Napolean or will they again side with those that have discarded them - the British. Watch and find out.Also watch George Arliss' other biopics of the early sound era - Disraeli, Voltaire, and Alexander Hamilton are the ones I've actually been able to see so far. All of these are very much worth your time.

This is quite a rousing film for a biopic, and sports one of Arliss's best performances. Made two years after Hitler's rise to power, the whole subtext of the film is anti-Semitism and the then-current events in Europe. Napoleon is the stand-in for Hitler--the man all peace-loving men must join together to wage war against to secure peace. There are scenes of violence in the Jewish ghetto--stirred up by anti-Semite Karloff. Everything Rothschild does he does to end anti-Semitism; many speeches on this theme. Rothschild's father is shown as a Shylock-type, making money with money, fooling the tax collector, but with reluctance and great bitterness, doing so only because other professions are denied him, and because the tax collector overcharges Jews. C. Aubrey Smith gives a really delightful performance as Wellington. The final scene is one of the first live-action sequences to be made in three-color Technicolor, before BECKY SHARP. The topicality gives the film an immediacy that is often lacking in period films.