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Harlan, Veit

German screenwriter, director and theatrical and film actor, born in Berlin on September 22, 1899 and died in Capri on April 13, 1964. Taking advantage of a solid theatrical background and a long apprenticeship in cinema as an actor, H. became, as director, a of the key figures of the German cinema of the Third Reich: his are some of the most important works in support of Nazism, such as Jud Süss (1940; Süss the Jew), Der grosse König (1942; The great king), for which he won the Mussolini Cup for the best foreign film at the Venice Film Festival, and the colossal Kolberg (1945; The citadel of heroes). After the Second World War, tried and acquitted by the accusations of collaboration with the regime, he resumed his activity with works that, although without significant innovations, retain a certain narrative and photographic taste.

Son of the writer Walter Harlan, he studied acting with M. Reihnardt, making his theater debut in Berlin in 1915 as an actor and the following year as assistant director. After participating in the First World War, he also began working in the cinema, making his first appearance in Die Hose. Hans Behrendt's Skandal in einer kleinen Residenz (1927). He then participated in numerous films, proving himself a good character in works of historical reconstruction with a war theme such as Der Choral von Leuthen (1933) by Carl Froelich, Arzen von Czerépy and Walter Supper, or in detective films such as Taifun, also known as Polizeiakte 909 (1934) by Robert Wiene, and playing the part of the protagonist in Stradivari (1935) by Géza von Bolváry. It was the introduction of sound, and therefore the possibility of spoken dialogue, to favor his late debut in film direction which happened not accidentally with the adaptation of a comedy, Krach im Hinterhaus (1935), which had been directed by him at the theater. Thus began a prolific career as an author, and often also a screenwriter, of films based above all on great actor performances: the adaptation of LN Tolstoj by Kreutzersonate (1937; La sonata a Kreutzer), starring the diva Lil Dagover; Der Herrscher (1937; Ingratitude), in which the star of the silent Emil Jannings stands out; and the long series of films starring actress Kristina Söderbaum (often paired with Frits van Dongen): the historical-dramatic thriller Verwehte Spuren (1938; La peste di Parigi); the melodrama Die Reise nach Tilsit (1939; Towards love), based on Sunrise - A song of two humans (1926; Aurora) by Friedrich W. Murnau; Das unsterbliche Herz (1939; The accused of Nuremberg), taken from a text by his father, melodramatic costume story of the inventor Peter Henlein (played by a suggestive Paul Wegener). H. then directed the infamously famous Jud Süss, an explicit instrument of anti-Semitic propaganda that overturns the original meaning of the homonymous novel by the Jewish writer L. Feuchtwanger, and Der grosse König, a portrait celebrating Frederick II in the Seven Years' War with explicit allusions to the glory of the Hitler Reich. During the Second World War he alternated melodramatic production with that of supporting the regime with great staging skills, passing from the love triangle Opfergang (1944; The prisoner of fate) to a blockbuster of historical reconstruction like Kolberg: made in two years of shooting with tens of thousands of extras, the film tells the popular revolt of a Prussian port city on the Baltic in front of the invasion of the Napoleonic armies in 1806 , almost an appeal to resistance against Nazism surrounded by allied troops. H.'s activity resumed in the post-war period with Unsterbliche Geliebte (1954; The indomitable dynasty), eighteenth-century costume melodrama, and continued with works of various inspiration: from the adventure film Die Gefangene des Mahradscha (1954; The prisoner of the Maharajah) to the well-made espionage one Verrat an Deutschland. Der Fall Dr. Sorge (1955; Berlin-Tokyo - Espionage Operation), up to the scandalous drama of homosexual prostitution Anders als du und ich. § 175, also known as Das dritte Geschlecht (1957; closed-door trial). H. spent the last years of his life in Italy and wrote an autobiography, Im, Schatten meiner Filme, which appeared posthumously in 1966 (edited by HC Opfermann).BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Zielinski, Veit Harlan: Analysis and Materials in the Auseinandersetzung mit einem Film-Regisseur des deutschen Faschismus , Frankfurt 1981; F. Noak, Veit Harlan: 'des Teufels Regisseur' , München 2000.

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