There has long been a school of thought suggesting that Hitler’s failure as an artist led directly to the horrors that came later (see the oddball John Cusack film “Max” for more on the subject). An utterly fascinating documentary, “The Rape of Europa,” alludes to this theory, too, and details a strange chapter of World War II.
The film takes off from a same-titled historical book by Lynne H. Nicholas, and looks at the Third Reich’s obsession with art. Hitler and his cronies sought not only to plunder the great museums of Europe, but also to reshape the history of culture (which meant destroying art they found offensive, or art by Jewish and Slavic artists).
Directors Bonni Cohen, Richard Berge and Nicole Newham do a skillful job of linking this impulse to the bloodier business of genocide.
Hitler and Goering had laundry lists of great paintings they would pluck from collections in Paris, Leningrad, wherever art was on display. Hundreds of thousands of works were stolen, and the movie deals with the fact that some of these stolen works are still being discovered today (a delicate business for museums and collectors).
There are also marvelous stories about people frantically hiding art works in barns and caves during the war, to spare them from theft or destruction by the Nazis. Someone should make a movie about the Louvre employee who witnessed the Nazi seizure of artworks during the occupation of Paris and, memorizing the names of paintings and owners, wrote them down in a secret journal at the end of every day. This document proved vital in restoring pieces to their rightful owners after the war.
An equally inspiring story is the tale of the Monuments Men, a unit of the U.S. military assigned to protect and catalogue works of art. This effort to respect and preserve the culture of other countries is a truly remarkable episode in the history of war.
Coolly narrated by Joan Allen, “The Rape of Europa” has enough in it to fill a couple of other documentaries. The archival footage, much of it not widely seen before, is a feast, and new material adds sensitive context.
The film offers nothing eerier than the visit to the basement of a museum where a cache of paintings are kept and rarely seen. These are the tidy, traditional, creepy little landscapes painted by the young Adolf Hitler. They belong in a basement.
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