Conrad Veidt - My Life
Mark Rappaport | US, 2019 | English | Documentary | 61m | Festivals sales: Mark Rappaport | Festival marketing sample: TJFF 2020
Description: Conrad Veidt is known to many film buffs for his regular roles in his later American films as a suave and sinister Nazi, most notably Major Heinrich Strasser, in Casablanca. In reality, his career dates back to 1917 and the silent era where he played in a number of German impressionistic films, most famously The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. In Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels’ questionnaire, where he was asked to declare his “race”, Veidt claimed he was a Jew. He wasn’t, but his third (and last) wife whom he married in 1933, Ilona Prager was. That year the two emigrated to Britain, where he continued to appear in films, including the original (pro-semitic) 1934 Jew Süss (remade by the Nazis in 1940). In 1941, the two emigrated to the United States, where he continued his acting career.
Rappaport’s film features an imagined first person narration by the ‘Veidt’ persona about his life and career against a rich backdrop of clips and stills. There are frequent digressions about related and incidental film professionals that crossed his life.
Merits: Rappaport, a talented and prolific editor and filmmaker, attempted something similar in Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, a similarly imagined testimonial by Rock Hudson. This time, though he wisely dispensed with the actor (played in that film by Eric Farr) and left us only with the narrator’s (Rappaport’s?) own voice. The visual superimposition of parenthesis on the interjections make the film feel a bit like an essay or an illustrated lecture. In this case it is not a bad thing. Lovers of cinema history will find it a rich and fascinating experience.
Rating: Suitable for all audiences
Programming considerations: The film’s presentation at the TJFF 2020 was supported by Goethe Institut, a German government funded cultural organisation.