The Einstein of sex.

This is a biopic of Dr Magnus Hirschfeld, a pioneer of the study of sexuality who was a German Jew living in Berlin during the late nineteenth century. The label 'The Einstein of Sex' came from the American press later in his career. It is described as a 'lush' historical drama and it certainly contains many eye-brow raising scenes of Hirschfeld's personal and professional experiences of sex (both real and imagined). Hirschfeld set up a clinic in Berlin for nervous diseases and ended up specialising in same gender love/sex in a new field of medicine; ''sexual science'. Archive footage contextualises the passing of time. After WWI Hirschfeld was giving contraceptive and marriage advice as well as running a clinic and researching gay men and women. The film suggests that the sexual institute was funded by the fees received from operating on a hermaphrodite from a wealthy family. In the late 1920s, Hirshfeld embarks on a World tour, but by 1932 he still hadn't returned. He stays away from Germany when he is on the list of Jewish 'criminals' wanted by the Nazis. Hirschfeld watches the rise of the Nazis from the safety of newsreels in Paris - in a fictionalised (and melodramatic) scenario staged for the film - the sex institute Hirschfeld founded is raided, the books collected and papers burnt in the Nazi book burning in Berlin in 1933. He died in 1935. DVD extras include a 31 minute documentary 'Magnus & Rosa'.