MOVIE REVIEW

"The Rape of Europa"

Grade: B+

Documentary. Narrated by Joan Allen. Directed by Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham. Not rated. Now playing at Lefont Sandy Springs. 1 hour, 57 minutes.

Bottom line: Smart chronicle of picking up the pieces after the Nazis.

With impressive clarity and sweep, "The Rape of Europa" recounts the Nazi theft and destruction of European art and architecture. The calamity began soon after Adolf Hitler's assumption of power in 1933, and its repercussions still make themselves felt in litigation over the rightful ownership of recovered artifacts.

The filmmakers take as a representative case the most expensive painting yet sold —- Gustav Klimt's magnificent "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (1907). Bloch-Bauer's elderly niece, a Los Angeles resident, sued the Austrian government for return of the stolen work and several others.

She won and later sold the portrait to New York collector Ronald Lauder for $135 million. The filmmakers use this case to underline the tremendous financial stakes in the loss and recovery of cultural property and as a point of departure to tell the story of Hitler's monstrous ambitions as a collector on his own behalf and as part of his vision of the supreme Nazi state.

Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), Egon Schiele (1890-1918) and Hitler all applied to the Vienna art academy, and only Hitler was rejected. The filmmakers hint that rejection as an artist may have sparked the demonic resentment that drove Hitler to attempt the conquest of Europe.

Fortunately, historical facts far outweigh psychological speculation in "The Rape of Europa," as in the excellent 1994 book by Lynn Nicholas that inspired it. Unlike the book, the filmmakers give priority to the confiscation of the artifacts over the colossal effort of sequestering them. This emphasis invites the use of archival film footage and photographs that still shock in the extent of destruction they show. The viewer can hardly believe that Europe has recovered in a mere 60-odd years.

Behind the whole project pulses the question of whether a work of art can ever have more value than a life. War survivors the filmmakers interview incline to say no. But the film ends on an affirmative note, following to New York a young German who specializes in repatriating Nazi-confiscated Judaica. As he celebrates with congregants at a Westchester County temple, he resolves the overarching question, saying that a recovered artifact's true value shows "in the life that's created from it again."