The Rape of Europa tells the epic story of the systematic theft,
deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe's art
treasures during the Third Reich and World War II. Joan Allen
narrates this breathtaking chronicle about the battle over the
very survival of centuries of Western culture.
Review
------
Bringing a radically new perspective to World War II and the
Holocaust, this fast-paced docu, based on Lynn Nicholas'
bestseller about the e of European art both under the Nazis
and afterward, casts the Third Reich in a wholly different light.
Curiously, by narrowing focus, filmmakers widen the absurdity and
horror of a war waged, at least in part, for a mon-strously
inflated private agenda. This mesmerizing morality play, rich in
rare archival footage and complete with heroic Allied saviors,
merits a full-fledged arthouse run before reaching larger PBS and
cable auds. Like Menno Meyjes' semi-conjectural biopic "Max,"
docu perceives Hitler's failure as an artist as central to the
Fuhrer's gestalt. Relying on actual documents rather than
fictionalized epiphanies, film-makers Richard Berge, Nicole
Newn-ham and Bonni Cohen make a com-pelling case for the theory,
reframing WWII in terms of objets d'art "selected" for Nazi
acquisi-tion or extinction. Under Hitler's reign, art-collecting
measured personal worth. Extensive footage of Hermann Goering's
swag-gering aesthetic oneupmanship, culminating in
before-and-after s of the hunting lodge he converted into a
palatial art gallery provides a bleakly comic mirror to Hitler's
blueprint for a colossal Greco-German Fuhrermuseum. Hitler, it
seems, set about conquer-ing the world armed with a cultural
wishlist, his obsession with art often dictating his
itinerary. His "final solution" for so-called inferior or
degenerate artwork was nearly as far-ranging as his program for
human genocide (the shadow of the death camps implicitly looming
large throughout the film). In this context, real or projected
atrocities that other docus highlight are here enumerated by
narrator Joan Allen with a wry matter-of-factness that renders
them more shocking. German newsreel clips recount Hitler's
confiscation of various masterpieces (including Da Vinci's "Lady
With an Ermine") from Kra-kow museums and simultaneous blitzing
of "inferior" indigenous art and massive shelling of monuments.
His plan to exterminate the entire Polish people and colonize
their land, on the other hand, is presented almost
parenthetically. Similarly, s of vast warehouses of Jewish
possessions seem a mere extension of the wholesale pillaging --
until men carrying worn mattresses and dented teapots remind
viewers that Hitler not only collected the valuables of Jews he
slaughtered, but sought to wipe out the slightest vestiges of
their existence. To the German campaign of arro-gance, greed and
bloodlust, the filmmakers counterpose the Allies' dedicated art
preservers. Extraordi-nary footage details the evacuation of the
Louvre (a crated Winged Victory descending the great staircase
miracu-lously unharmed), the artwork spir-ited away in carts just
ahead of exploding bombs. The Hermitage is likewise emptied out,
its curators hiding in freezing underground passages below while,
above, remain-ing Russian artwork is tossed into the snow in
disdain for all things Slavic. Pic pays particular homage to the
Allies' Monuments Men (several of whom appear on camera), whose
job was to minimize the damage done by advancing armies and track
down stolen works of art. Moving seamlessly from past to present,
Cohen, Berge and Newnham document the aftershocks some 50 years
later, tracing stolen art pieces still in litigation, foremost
among them Klimt's gold-flecked portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.
The painting's eventual sale for $135 million adds yet another
layer to film's myriad disconnects between the es of millions
and the whims of a few. --Variety Staff, Ronnie Scheib
When people think about World War II, wondering what it meant for
the e of museum-quality art is probably not the first thing
that comes to mind. Yet as the documentary "The Rape of Europa"
demonstrates, this is a surprisingly vast and involving topic.
Written, produced and directed by Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and
Nicole Newnham and based on the authoritative book of the same
name by Lynn H. Nicholas, "Europa" covers a lot of territory and
is packed with information. It also tells a series of wonderful
stories, many of which are fascinating enough to inspire movies
of their own. That art was on the World War II agenda at all is
because of the unexpected makeup of German leader Adolf Hitler.
As a young man he was eager to be an artist, but being turned
down by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna left him with a fierce
hatred of modern art. That led, once he took power, to an
"unrelenting war of purification" against what he considered
degenerate art, a wholesale removal of 16,000 works from museum
walls. But Hitler didn't just purge all he hated, he also stole
what he coveted, which was a lot. And his passion for art
mandated a parallel passion in his subordinates; Hermann Goering,
for instance, had 1,700 paintings, more than most museums, at his
country estate. This led to industrial-strength looting of
occupied countries, a plundering so systematic that German
bureaucrats made up lists of desired artworks as part of their
invasion plans. Some of the most interesting stories in "Europa"
have to do with how Paris' Louvre reacted to the impending
invasion of France. Almost everything that could be moved,
including the large and fragile Winged Victory of Samothrace, was
carted up and sent out of town in a convoy of some 300 trucks.
Specific curators were assigned specific works of art to look
after, and the daughter of the couple assigned the Mona Lisa
tells of how it was transported in a specially sealed ambulance.
Once the Germans occupied Paris, things got more complex. Rather
than go after what the French had hid, the Germans looted art
from Jewish apartments. Before being shipped back to Germany, the
paintings were stored in the Jeu de Paume, where a woman named
Rose Valland kept clandestine records of each painting, records
that were essential in recovering the art after the war. Aside
from art, the Germans also confiscated furniture, and the story
is told of a prisoner in Auschwitz, detailed to help ship the
furniture to Germany, who was shocked to come across his own
family's household goods, including personal photographs, among
the prizes of war. For the invading American troops, how to treat
historically and artistically significant buildings during
attacks became such a major issue that a presidential commission
was appointed to look into it and ruled that these structures
should be saved whenever possible. A famous test case where this
was not done was the 1944 battle around Italy's Monte Cassino
monastery, an ancient site destroyed by American bombers because
of fears that Germans were dug in inside. After the deed was
done, German newsreels showed footage of the damage and accused
the Americans of being "desecraters of European culture." "The
Rape of Europa" details all these absorbing stories and more,
even going into the postwar fights about who owns what painting
that culminated in the sale of Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele
Bloch-Bauer I for a record $135 million. The picture painted by
this film is not pretty, but it is a difficult one to turn away
from. --Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Austria, the joke goes, convinced the world that Beethoven was
Austrian and Hitler German when, in fact, it's the reverse. A
quip of similar vintage came from modernist painter Oskar
Kokoschka, who was admitted to Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts in
1907, the same year Hitler's application was spurned. "If it had
been the other way around, I would have run the world quite
differently," Kokoschka cracked. Would that it had been. Did the
academy's rejection of the future Führer inspire his plunder of
Europe's cultural masterpieces and his wholesale destruction of
work he deemed unworthy? The Rape of Europa is equal parts
history, thriller and inspirational. It's a provocative account
of the theft, recovery and repatriation of these artworks that
considers the Hitler question. It's an epic about the battle to
define Western culture that was a subtext of World War II. And
it's a jaw-dropping suspenser introducing those unsung heroes
who, in the words of one Florentine, scored a "victory of beauty
over horror." Hitler, whose aesthetic war aligned with his
political one, waged a two-front culture war. He greedily annexed
the works of those he deemed superior (French, Italian) and
systematically destroyed those he considered "degenerate" (i.e.,
Jewish, Slavic). While he professed that Jews were racially
inferior, this didn't stop him from "shopping" in the collections
of Jews interned in concentration camps as though they were art
galleries. Inspired by Lynn Nicholas' award-winning book of the
same title, Europa cuts a swath from Vienna to Paris, from Pisa
to Leningrad. This epic saga of lost and sometimes found is
powerfully illustrated through case histories and glorious works
of art. Consider the case of Jacques Altman, a Parisian Jew taken
into Nazi custody and ordered to sort through a ain of art
and artifacts seized from the apartments of Jews deported to
death camps. His grief over the death of his parents and brothers
was compounded by finding the effects from his family home,
including photos he had to leave behind when he was sent to a
concentration camp. Or consider the plight of Maria Altmann, the
Vienna-born heir of the Bloch-Bauer family, Jewish sugar
merchants. Her family's home was commandeered by the Nazis, who
seized Gustav Klimt's shimmering portraits of her aunt, Adele
Bloch-Bauer, and hung them in the Austrian National Gallery.
After a protracted legal fight, Altmann was awarded the Klimt
paintings. (In 2006, she sold one to cosmetics mogul Ronald
Lauder for $135 million, the most ever paid for a painting.
Today, it is the centerpiece of the collection at New York's Neue
Galerie.) The film by Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole
Newnham celebrates the underknown heroes of the French Resistance
who safeguarded masterworks such as the Mona Lisa and Winged
Victory. It also glorifies the little-known "Monuments Men" of
the U.S. , charged with protecting works of art and
architecture from Axis annexation and Allied bombs. The Monuments
Men literally mined for lost artworks, finding missing treasures
in a salt mine at Alt Aussee in Austria and Florentine
masterpieces in an Alpine prison. The return of their art - their
patrimony and pride - occasioned a jubilant victory parade in
Florence in 1945. Throughout the film its makers pose the
question of whether saving a work of art is as important as
saving a human life. The question is not answered, and perhaps
ultimately unanswerable. Yet Europa movingly shows how for many,
art and artifacts are living things. The film's final scenes
focus on a German man dedicated to reuniting confiscated sterling
silver Torah ornaments to the descendents their original owners.
When he returns the rimonim, the bell-festooned "hats" that
bedeck the holy scrolls, to a congregation, their music rings dow
--Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer Movie Critic
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About the Director
------------------
Richard Berge is a San Francisco-based filmmaker who has produced
documentaries for PBS, Showtime, A&E, and others, including
Yesterday s Tomorrows with director Barry Levinson and Sing
Faster: The Stagehands Ring Cycle with director Jon Else. He has
a Masters degree in Documentary Film from Stanford University.
Bonni Cohen is a founder of Actual Films in San Francisco and
filmmaker for PBS, BBC, and Arte. She is currently producing
Wonders are Many, a documentary about the making of the Peter
Sellars and John Adams opera, Doctor Atomic. She has a Masters
degree in Documentary Film from Stanford University. Nicole
Newnham is a documentary filmmaker for PBS, National Geographic,
Discovery, and BBC. She directed Sentenced Home, the
award-winning film about three Cambodian refugees deported back
to Cambodia after 9/11, which will have its television premiere
on PBS s Independent Lens. She has a Masters degree in
Documentary Film from Stanford University.
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