Critic Reviews
70
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
10(77%)
mixed
2(15%)
negative
1(8%)
Showing 13 Critic Reviews
100
Its uniqueness lies in its juxtaposition of happy faces and unhappy realities, of fleeting expressions of art and culture undone by daily brutality.
88
Gripping documentary.
80
A fascinating and painful account of an entertainer trapped not only by his Jewishness but by his overwhelming need to make theater.
80
An important and smoothly mounted meditation on moral choices within the entertainment biz.
80
The contrast between Holm's pearly speech and the dark things that he tells us and that we see almost outlines twentieth-century civilization, elevation and brutality at opposite ends of the spectrum.
80
An extraordinary documentary about the German entertainer Kurt Gerron, has been timed to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Week, but the film would also fit snugly on a double bill with "My Architect."
75
Gerron's terrible film was never shown in the places it was meant for, but in Prisoner of Paradise it reveals a queasy corner of the Nazi mind that tried to imagine a concentration camp as it fantasized the inmates might have.
70
The excuse given here that Gerron couldn't resist one last opportunity to direct, even under the most grotesque circumstances, is really no excuse at all.
70
What distinguishes Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender's film from the many similarly themed efforts that have preceded it is that it tells a morality tale of a man whose hubris partially led to his downfall and whose willingness to work for his Nazi overseers resulted in one of the most notorious propaganda films of the era.
70
A strange story wrapped in a stranger one, an engrossing documentary about one of the least known and most unexpected aspects of the Nazi war against the Jews.
