Opening this week: The back story behind an infamous Nazi propaganda epic

Premiering in Los Angeles on Friday, June 11 at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 in West Hollywood and Town Center 5 in Encino, a new German documentary Harlan: In the Shadow of Jud Süß, pulls back the curtain on the story behind one of the most notorious Nazi propaganda epics produced under the Third Reich, the 1940 film Jew Süss.

Replete with anti-Semitic stereotypes of predatory Jews victimizing noble Aryans, Jew Süss was commissioned by Joseph Goebbels at the outset of WWII and shown successfully to millions of Germans at showings sometimes accompanied by riots and violence. Heinrich Himmler screened it for his Nazi concentration camp guards to better “motivate” them in their daily duties of torture and extermination.

After the war, its director, Veit Harlan, was the only Nazi artist to be prosecuted for war crimes, a distinction not even Hitler’s favorite director Leni Reifenstahl could claim.

Harlan, who was acquitted twice at war crimes trials and went to make other movies, mounted a simple defense: they made me do it. But the reality is far more complex, as German filmmaker Felix Moeller explains. His documentary examines Harlan’s career through rare film clips, historic footage, and extensive interviews with his descendants – several of whom married Jews and embraced Judaism, renouncing their infamous relative and his Nazi collaboration. Among those interviewed is Veit Harlan’s niece, Christiane Kubrick, widow of the legendary Jewish director Stanley Kubrick – a former actress who professionally shunned her family surname.

Even today, Jew Süss remains banned in Germany, Austria, Italy and France. This week, find out why.

Posted 6/11/10