The Maori Merchant of Venice in which the Jew (Shylock) has a long memory of oppression, but revenge is not so sweet." Valerie Wayne, in "The Contemporary Pacific", underlined the apparent parallel drawn by the film between the oppression suffered by Shylock because of his Judaism and the sometimes violent subjugation of Māori by the colonial authorities in nineteenth century New Zealand. Reviewing "The Maori Merchant of Venice" for "Te Kete Ipurangi", Lana Simmons-Donaldson described it as "an educational, even motivational tool" for Māori language learners, and provided glowing praise: The film won the audience award for best feature at the Hawaii International Film Festival
The Merchant of Venice (1923 film) German retained Shakespeare’s nomenclature, but in the American they were given new names sourced from the Italian work "Il Pecorone", a 14th-century short story collection attributed to Giovanni Fiorentino, from which Shakespeare is believed to have drawn his idea. The film purports to be a return to the original, as an excuse for its differences from the play. The characters are renamed in the extant English script. The script varies significantly from Shakespeare's original. Mordecai, The Jew of Mestri, has a young daughter, Rachela, whom he has betrothed against her will to Elias, the son of his merchant friend Tubal.