When one thinks of the Nazis and film, the name Leni Riefenstahl might come to mind. But the now largely unknown Veit Harlan was the most popular director in Germany during the Third Reich.
In a fascinating new documentary, Harlan: In the Shadow of “Jew Süss,” director Felix Moeller looks at Harlan’s career and plumbs the controversies about the notorious director — who enjoyed a privileged lifestyle while making films for Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels — in interviews with Harlan’s children, nieces and nephews, and grandchildren.
Harlan’s niece, Christiane Kubrick, was married to the late director Stanley Kubrick, who was Jewish; she tells a story about Kubrick’s apprehension about meeting Veit Harlan and other family members in Germany. Also, she reveals that Kubrick explored making a film about Harlan and how he worked within the Nazi bureaucracy, but the project never came to fruition.
In another twist of interest to film fans, reviews of the documentary have noted that Harlan’s 1945 epic Kolberg was the basis for the film-within-a-film, Stolz Der Nation, in Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-nominated Inglourious Basterds.
The documentary’s title refer’s to Harlan’s diabolically anti-Semitic film, Jud Süß (1940), or Jew Süss, which film critics, and Harlan’s descendants, view as a cinematic tool of murder. Goebbels ordered that Nazi SS officers and concentration camp guards be made to view the film, a melodrama about a powerful and wicked Jewish character in 18th century Germany.
Harlan was twice tried for war crimes, but was acquitted both times. He continued to make movies — which were dated and mediocre — in the 1950s.
Here is more about the documentary:
Veit Harlan died in 1964, on the island of Capri, Italy.
Harlan: In the Shadow of “Jew Süss” will have its local premiere next month at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. The American Jewish World will publish a story about the film and director Felix Moeller prior to its festival screening. — Mordecai Specktor
