Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess

The title of this documentary is very accurate, so it was my fault that I expected it to be entirely about Veit Harlan, the director of the repulsive anti-Semitic movie Jude Suss. In fact, most of it is constructed from interviews with his children and grandchildren, and shows how they deal with having Harlan as their grandfather. That's mildly interesting, perhaps moreso if you're interested in contemporary German studies and how modern Germans come to terms with the Nazi legacy.

If, like me, you didn't pay close enough attention to the title and expected this movie to tell you lots about the director of that one infamous movie - which I have, in fact, sat through - then you, too, might be somewhat disappointed. I would have liked to know a lot more about the movies he made before Jude Suss, why he was chosen to make that movie, and then how he dealt with the fallout of having done so, both during and after the war. Also, I would have liked to have known a lot more about the reception of the movie.

My real criticism, however, has nothing to do with the movie itself. I watched the American version, which comes with subtitles. They were white, with no cartouche around them, which meant that they were often illegible. Couldn't someone redo the subtitles, so that they can be read?