the audience applauded

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is one of those documentaries where a bunch of talking heads yak about the central subject, and there's a lot of cutting back and forth. In this case, the subject is the guy who directed what is easily the most vile and anti-semitic movie ever filmed, and the talking heads are his children and grandchildren, who offer up various excuses or condemnations. The problem is, there's not much to say. The subject of the film, Veit Harlan, is quickly revealed as an opportunistic slimebag, who was more interested in his career than in the millions of lives his film helped end. Once that little detail is out of the way, what's left to talk about? The documentary offers up plenty of padding — scenes from Harlan's overblown, mostly forgotten films, stock footage of Nazis, etc. — but there's not enough to sustain interest. After 15 or 20 minutes of repetition, you've got as much of the picture as you'll ever want.

The , always, unfortunate marriage of art and propaganda, can be quite dangerous. Veit Harlan, pet director of notorious Goebels, played with the devil and seemingly survived. He escaped the prosecution and continued to make his overblown kitschy movies and got to expel his last breath in the Isle of Capri in Italy. This excellent documentary is focused on the impact that person like that have on his descdendants. They all seem to be deeply affected with it, even the one son who refuses to say anything bad about him. There is a French granddaughter, and the Italian grandson, a niece married to Stanley Kubrick. And all, even almost 50 years after his death still paying the price for his misdeeds. The sins of fathers and so forth... Movie well worth seeing.

I fully agree with the statement of another commentator of this film. It is confusing and does not give any new information. In fact, if you have not heard much about Veit Harlan before, you will be rather lost. I would like to see how he grew up, what background he came from, what his friends thought of him and so on. Instead we get a lot of interviews with his children and grand children and nieces and nephews. But many of them don't really have much to say and time is running… At the end of the movie you wonder that so little info could be given in so much time! It would have been great for example to have a closer look at his earlier films, which he did before he got the full attention of Goebbels, as well as the films he did after the war. Since he claimed that the Nazis had a huge influence on how his most notorious films of that time look, I would like to know how they differ from the uninfluenced ones. But they are hardly mentioned here. One can only dream about the idea of what for example Marcel Ophuls would have found out about Veit Harlan

Had this documentary only been about Veit Harland and his infamous film "Jud Süß", it would have been well worth seeing. However, the film goes one step further--and that makes it such a memorable film."Jud Süß" was a virulent anti-Jewish propaganda sponsored by the Nazis and shown throughout Germany and occupied Europe. Its aim was to galvanize the populace against the Jews and thereby make it easier to exterminate them. This film shows a few clips from this film and the first part is a biography about the director, Veit Harlan. It talks about his life and career before making this film as well as after--and especially about the repercussions in his life following the war because of his pro-Nazi work.All this is very interesting. However, what makes the film much more interesting is that the people who made the documentary were able to assemble so many family members to talk about Veit and his work. His surviving children and grandchildren are interviewed and their reactions are varied and extremely interesting. Some, such as one of his sons, were very close-mouthed--refusing to say anything against their father. However, this was the exception to the rule. Most seemed open to talk and what really fascinated me were the lengths to which several of them went to change their lives in an attempt to undo or make recompense for Veit's actions. Two daughters married Jewish men, a son married a Jewish woman. This same son went from the far-right fascism to an ardent anti-fascist--even ultimately embracing communism! And his grandkids weren't exempt from the impact of Veit's life upon them--with one granddaughter now living in France and dealing with strong feelings of guilt and shame. Many more interesting interviews and personalities are in this film--and it's filled with wonderful psychological portraits that would merit re-watching. Exceptional and truly fascinating.