Speer Goes to Hollywood

Paramount Studios was sent to adapt Speer's book into a film, which was eventually not produced. Speer Goes To Hollywood is based on recordings of forty hours of conversation between the two, documenting the process of working on the script. Speer recalls the years of the Nazis' rise to power, to his role in World War II, to the Nuremberg trials. In the interviews, Speer whitewashes his involvement in Nazi atrocities such as extermination through labour and indifferently describes his alleged lack of awareness of The Holocaust.^[4][5]

Screendaily's Sarah Ward called the documentary "fascinating", adding "Lapa's documentary lays bare [Speer's] falsehoods in a dense, sober and compelling fashion".^[7] Jessica Kiang from Variety was more critical, writing that while the premise was a "potentially fascinating story", and that "a hazy picture of Speer's quite infuriating ability to obscure, evade or massage the truth... emerges", the film was "embellished" and "falls some way short".^[8]

value of human life was absent from his personality.^[5] Marlin Venig wrote in "Portfolio magazine" that she found the film unique in the way it reflects the gap between Berlin's modern showcase, and the past hidden between its bricks and pasting its pattern. She points out that unlike other Holocaust films of all kinds, Vanessa Lapa, the film's director, in precise cinematic and archival work, and one of the most beautiful made here, weaves a story from an unexpected vantage point, drawing the viewers' attention precisely to oblivion - the oblivion of the masses that can give glory to the murderers as well.^[11] Ofer Liebergel from the Israeli film blog "Srita" points out that Lapa's film is not just a film about a Nazi who tried and largely succeeded in clearing his name. It is also a film about the manipulative craft of storytelling. Precisely through a film that was not made and images that were not taken (against the background of archival material), the mechanism by which cinema can reshape consciousness was revealed. This is also reflected in the way in which Lapa, ostensibly without doing much, questions all of Speer's claims.^[12] The blog "HotJerusalem", which published an article about the recommended films for viewing at the Jerusalem Film Festival, wrote that Vanessa Lapa's new film, which follows the enigmatic character of Albert Speer, Hitler's secret man, is a fascinating and mesmerizing audio-visual document, created by an artist and archival material like recording conversations that was not intended for publication.^[13]