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Reviews
Harlan - Im Schatten von Jud Süß (2008)
Information Held Back
This eagerly anticipated 2008 documentary is a disappointment. Although offering information about a dedicated craftsman, it fails to give a comprehensive overview of Veit Harlan's life or a clear outline of his relationship with the studio bosses.
A series of interviews with his wife, children and grandchildren elicits confusing details which this viewer struggled to put into chronological order. The director, or editors, seemed to enjoy withholding details about the different members of Harlan's extended family, the way William Faulkner holds back information about his anguished Southern families.
The Harlans comprise diverse and complex personalities - architect, actors, investigative journalist, painters - and, as highly intelligent and well-educated personalities, they presented diverse interpretations of their father's or grandfather's character and career. These figures provided more substance to the narrative than the intermittent story of Veit Harlan himself.
His allegedly infamous film "Jud Suss" seems very tame when judged by the sequences shown. Although the work of a craftsman, its melodrama is antiquated; and it might be time to remove it from the historical spotlight and consign it to "strictly film school". Clips from his other films make Harlan appear more interesting and innovative.
Gone to Earth (1950)
A young woman attuned to her own instincts is hunted down (gone to earth) by conventional male behaviors.
In making GONE TO EARTH Powell built on his childhood memories of rural England. The finished film owes a lot to Christopher Challis' superb photography and Brian Easedale's music.
But it owes even more to Jennifer Jones' portrayal of an adolescent girl in tune with the prechristian countryside: her love for a tamed fox symbolizes this special relationship with the pagan past.
She was 30 years old when she romped over the Shropshire hills and the Shepperton studio but she has the energy and bodily rhythms of a 16-year-old as she plays her pagan princess. This doomed princess has the ironic fate of being forced into relationships with two contemporary masters of the present-day Christian landscape: one is a mother-haunted cleric, the other a bodice-ripping squire.
Playing these stereotypes is not easy and the two actors, Cyril Cusack and David Farrar, make an ill-balanced pair.
Like Powell's earlier BLACK NARCISSUS, this film works on a symbolic and psychological level; but both story and dialogue have painful weaknesses made worse by censorship and the dreadful U.S.commercial cut.
Avoid older versions of GONE TO EARTH: they usually contain censorship cuts which change the rhythm of several scenes and mutilate the climax. See the whole film - now available on DVD - on the largest screen you can obtain. Then you will appreciate Powell's skill in capturing the colours of the English countryside and projecting Jennifer Jones' energy as the pagan princess.