This movie, which deals with racism, is about a hiring manager who only discovers he is myopic when his boss berates him for hiring a foreigner going by the name of "Pan" who was really "Paninsky". He is told to shape up and get some glasses, which he does, small horn-rimmed frames that make him look like a ringer for Karl Liebknecht (the leader of the German Social Democratic Party during the first World War). The amazing thing is that even after he loses his job, and realizes that he doesn't exactly make the same impression he used to, he never once thinks of taking off the new pair of glasses. He even wears them to a fascist meeting that he attends at the recommendation of his Jewish wife (who swears she's not Jewish) where he is quickly beaten up. At the end he is forced by circumstances to admit that there is no difference between him and the others who share his situation (the Jews). Ultimately, in seeking police protection from the fascists for himself, his wife, and his Jewish neighbors, he identifies himself with the Jews, a turnabout from his previous denials that he is not Jewish. Definitely an original movie with good acting, but one which asks us to suspend belief just a little too often, and yet seems strangely relevant to the times we are living in.
