Film Forum

12:30 ONLY

Albert Speer (1905-1981) was Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany, but was better known simply as “Hitler’s architect.” One of two dozen major war criminals who sat in the docket at the Nuremberg Trials, he was convicted of “crimes against humanity” for using slave labor and narrowly avoided execution; Speer spent 20 years in Spandau prison where he smuggled out writings that became Inside the Third Reich, a phenomenal worldwide bestseller. Well-educated, handsome, charismatic, and unfailingly narcissistic, he remarked to an international scrum of reporters, upon leaving prison: “You can see after 20 years, I’m still good-looking.” Vanessa Lapa (whose documentary on Himmler, THE DECENT ONE, we opened in 2014) picks up the story in 1971 as British screenwriter Andrew Birkin records 40 hours of audio tapes, detailing Speer’s delusional retelling of his life, with the aim of selling the story to Paramount Pictures. SPEER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD is a case study in monstrous denial, an example of how intelligence and self-awareness need have nothing in common.

WINNER – 2021 OPHIR AWARD (“Israeli Oscar”)
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

2021     97 MINS.     ISRAEL     IN ENGLISH, FRENCH & GERMAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Presented with support from the Joan S. Constantiner Fund for Jewish and Holocaust Films

Reviews

“A horrifying yet bleakly fascinating picture of a man doing something that remains thoroughly relevant today: spinning fake news. Lapa’s documentary lays bare the falsehoods in a dense, sober and compelling fashion. Draws upon a treasure trove of rare archivage footage. British filmmaker Carol Reed becomes the documentary’s vocal counterpoint. His disbelief at Speer’s protestations of innocence and obliviousness bristles with clear-eyed fury.”
– Sarah Ward, Screen Daily

“Illuminating. (Speer’s) charming and debonair designer… (his) subtle charisma saw him through the Nuremberg Trials, convicted by bizarrely escaping the death sentence. A suave and sinister man. (A) sleek, compelling, compelling and utterly fascinating film. Flips between the mind-boggling discussions between Birkin, Speer and (Carol) Reed; the extraordinary recordings inside the courtrooms of the Nuremberg Trials; the archive footage on parade with the Nazis… (and) Speer at leisure with his wife in their soigne country villa.”
– Meredith Taylor, Filmuforia

“Speer went on to a post-release life of respectability and even celebrity as the living oxymoron that is a ‘Good Nazi’ is a retroactively jaw-dropping fact that has much to tell us about our own current moment of misinformation, manipulation and media-assisted mythmaking.  Speer’s quite infuriating ability to obscure, evade or massage the truth, the better to build a picture of duped regretful decency rather  than fully complicit opportunism does emerge. (An) utterly amoral self-mythologist (whose fabrications have been wholly debunked in the decades since his death).”
– Jessica Kiang, Variety

“A remarkable, even excellent film, calm and haunting.”
– Isabell Trommer, Zeitgeschichte