Page "Monty Python's Life of Brian" Paragraph 51

The most controversial cuts were the scenes involving Otto, initially a recurring character, who had a thin Adolf Hitler-esque moustache and spoke with a German accent, shouting accusations of " racial impurity " at people whose conceptions were similar to Brian's ( Roman centurion rape of native Judean women ), and other Nazi-based phrases.

The logo of the Judean People's Front, designed by Terry Gilliam, was a Star of David with a small line added to each point so it resembled a swastika, most familiar in the West as the symbol of the anti-Semitic Nazi movement.

The rest of this faction also all had the same thin moustaches, and wore a spike on their helmets, similar to those on Imperial German helmets.

The official reason for the cutting was that Otto's dialogue slowed down the narrative.

However, Gilliam, writing in The Pythons Autobiography by The Pythons, said he thought it should have stayed, saying " Listen, we've alienated the Christians, let's get the Jews now ".

Idle himself was said to have been uncomfortable with the character ; " It's essentially a pretty savage attack on rabid Zionism, suggesting it's rather akin to Nazism, which is a bit strong to take, but certainly a point of view ".

Michael Palin's personal journal entries from the period when various edits of Brian were being test-screened consistently reference the Pythons ' and filmmakers ' concerns that the Otto scenes were slowing the story down and thus were top of the list to be chopped from the final cut of the film.

However, Oxford Brookes University historian David Nash says the removal of the scene represented " a form of self-censorship " and the Otto sequence " which involved a character representative of extreme forms of Zionism " was cut " in the interests of smoothing the way for the film's distribution in America.