March 3, 2010

“In the history of the cinema, the German director Veit Harlan occupies an especially ignominious position,” writes Larry Rother in the New York Times. “It is his name that is attached to ‘Jew Süss,’ perhaps the most notoriously anti-Semitic movie ever made, a box office success in Nazi Germany in 1940 that was so effective that it was made required viewing for all members of the SS. But what motivated Harlan to write and direct such a film?” Felix Moeller’s “Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss,” which examines the man behind the film, attempts to answer that question. It begins a two week run at New York City’s Film Forum today.\n