This book provides in-depth analysis of six films of Jewish experience made between 1899 and 1947, exploring their relation to what the author calls the "era of catastrophe," which is defined as 1914–45 – a time that witnessed the two World Wars, a burgeoning of stateless peoples, wide-spread political polarization, the rise of fascist and totalitarian regimes; radical antisemitism and other ethnic hatreds; mass slaughter of peoples, classes, and political enemies; and often cutthroat battles for control of mass media, popular culture, and, however battered, the public sphere.

The author analyzes the film depiction of Jewish experience to assess the public mood in certain civil societies that witnessed the rise and fall of Nazism and the advent of the Holocaust. The films analyzed are: The Dreyfus Affair (1899); The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920); The Dybbuk (1937); To Be or Not To Be (1942); and Gentleman's Agreement (1947) – the last read in tandem with its film-noir alter-ego of the same year, Crossfire. The author explores the films in the reverse historical order pursued in the present study: (1) early postwar America; (2) America upon its entry into World War II; (3) inter-War Polish Jewry; (4) the World War I era and the early Weimar period in Germany; and (5) the rise of political antisemitism in fin de siècle France. By looking at how Jewish experience was comprehended in key films at those junctures, one can learn a great deal about a period of profound historical crisis, whose turmoil expressed the larger crises of modernity itself.