Movie: The Woman In Gold

The Woman In Gold tells the story of Maria Altmann, an Austrian Jew who fled her homeland shortly after the Anschluss, and her quest to restore to her family, the art stolen by the Nazi regime some sixty years earlier. 

The movie opens with a sort of prologue showing Gustav Klimt applying gold foil to a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. He notices she's pensive and Adele tells the artist that she is worried about the future.

The story jumps to 1998 Los Angeles where Maria Altmann is presiding over the grave of her sister Luise and acknowledges that they went through a lot. Afterwards, she asks Barbara Schoenberg if she can ask her son, Randy who is now a lawyer to pay her a visit. She has found letters in her sister's belongings and she needs advice. Randy has just recently taken a new job at the firm Bergen, Brown & Sherman.

Randy visits Maria, who asks him what he knows about art restitution. In a family photo of the Bloch-Bauers, Maria shows him herself and Luise, their parents Therese and Gustav, her Uncle Ferdinand who owned a sugar company and his beautiful wife, Aunt Adele who died young.  The letters, dated 1948, which Maria has translated are from their family lawyer in Vienna, Johann Rinesch. The letters are about their paintings that were stolen by the Nazis. Maria has learned that Austria is redrafting their art restitution laws and reviewing old cases.

Maria tells Randy that her Uncle Ferdinand commissioned Gustav Klimt to paint her aunt. Taken by the Nazis, the painting is hanging in the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna. When he asks why she doesn't just let the past be, Maria tells him it's to keep the memories of what happened alive, especially for the young, but also for justice to be done. She asks Randy to just read the letters to see if she has a case worth pursuing.

In the letters, the Austrian government claims that Adele's portrait plus four other Klimt paintings were bequeathed to the government in her will. The lawyer has not been allowed to view the will. Randy tells Maria that she needs to get someone in Vienna to try to see a copy of Adele's will. He attempts to encourage Maria to hire a restitution lawyer but she is insistent that he do the work, since they share the same grandparents. It is when Randy searches on Alta Vista for the value of the Woman In Gold painting and learns it is worth one hundred million dollars that he acts.

He is given one week to investigate by his law firm. When he suggests that they travel to Austria and that she attend an art restitution conference in Austria as a speaker, Maria tells him she has no plans to ever go back "to that place" as they destroyed her family, and killed her friends. However, she relents and they travel to Austria. 

In Vienna, Maria and Randy encounter Hubertus Czernin, and investigative reports who has tracked them down. He tells them that the art restitution began as  PR exercise and that the Austrian government doesn't really want to return the art. They will put many obstacles in their way and he may be able to help them. 

At a first meeting with the art restitution committee, they are told that their case is considered worthy of review but the archive in Vienna is not helpful regarding Adele's will. Czernin tells them that he might be able to help them by arranging for them to visit the archive when it is closed. In the archives, they find Adele's will. She died in 1925 at the age of forty-three from meningitis. Her will, written in 1923, bequeathed the paintings after her husband, Ferdinand's death, to the Belvedere Gallery. 

Czernin reveals that after her family fled Austria, their home was the site of a great theft: all of their possessions were divided among the Nazi elite. A Waldmuller portrait of Count Esterhazy ended up in the Berghof - Hilter's holiday home. Her aunt's diamond necklace was worn by Emmy Goering, Hermann Goering's wife. And the Klimt paintings? They caught the eye of Bruno Grimshitz who stole them for the Belvedere. The Nazis had to sanitize the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a Jew, so it came to be known as "The Woman In Gold".

The paintings came to the Belvedere in 1941, but Adele's husband died in 1945, at the end of the war. As Adele and Ferdinand did not have any children, Ferdinand wrote his own will, leaving everything that was left to Maria and her sister Luise. As Ferdinand paid for the paintings, he was the rightful owner, not Adele, so she couldn't bequeath them. Her will was not legally binding. In other words, the Belvedere cannot lay claim to the Klimt.

Czernin indicates they must get all of this information to Rudolf Wran, head of the restitution committee. But it isn't long before, Maria, Randy realize that, as Czernin predicted, the Austrian government has no intention of returning the family painting.

Discussion

Maria Victoria Bloch-Bauer who was born February 18, 1916 was the daughter of Gustav and Theresa Block-Bauer. She was the niece of Adele Bloch Bauer, a patron of the arts and culture of Vienna in the early 20th century. The Bloch-Bauer family moved within the artistic and cultural circles of what would later be known as Vienna's Golden Age. This meant they also knew the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, whose grandson, a half a century later, would help restore the stolen paintings to their family. Salons were often hosted by Adele Bloch-Bauer and Maria frequently visited the home of the Bloch-Bauer's and remembered it filled with paintings, tapestries and beautiful furniture. Adele's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer was a wealthy businessman who commissioned two paintings of his wife, Adele, when she was twenty-five years old. Klimt painted the first one, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, a magnificent painting done in oil and gold foil, in 1907. The painting soon came to represent Vienna's Golden Age.

Adele passed away in 1925 at the age of 44 from meningitis. In 1937, Maria married Frederick "Fritz" Altmann, an opera singer. With the forced annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, known as the Anschluss, the Bloch-Bauers, like most Jews in Europe, were soon to see their lives destroyed. The Nazis immediately began plundering the art and jewelry collections of wealthy Jewish citizens and the Bloch-Bauers were not spared. The Nazis used the Bloch-Bauer's castle as their base of operations and looted Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's art and jewelry; among the haul, six Klimt paintings and jewelry including an elaborate diamond choker given to Maria on her wedding day. 

Ferdinand had already fled first to Prague then to Switzerland. Although Adele had indicated her wish that the paintings be displayed in the Galerie Belvedere in Vienna, this did not happen directly as the paintings were stolen by the Nazi's. Ferdinand passed away in 1945, after unsuccessfully attempting to get his property back from the Austrian government. He willed his estate to Maria Altmann and several other nieces and nephews.

Maria's parents also had their possessions looted. Her father lost his beloved Stradivarius cello, a loss that broke his heart and probably contributed to his death just weeks later. Realizing the threat the Nazi's presented to Jews, Maria's brother-in-law, Bernhard Altmann and his family had already fled to London, England. When the Nazis overran Austria, in order to force him to sign over his very productive textile factory, Bernhard's brother Fredrick was imprisoned in Dachau but was released when Bernhard complied. With the family under house arrest, their possessions looted and hatred against the Jewish population mounting, Maria and Fredrick knew they had to escape. With the help of a friend they were able to fly to Cologne and then cross into the Netherlands, eventually emigrating to America. They left behind her parents, her extended family and a life of wealth and culture in Vienna.

As the years passed Maria and Fritz lived their life in Los Angeles, raising a family but never forgetting what was taken from them. They held little hope that they would live long enough to see restitution, despite many countries signing agreements to restore stolen property.

In 1998, Austrian investigative journalist, Hubertus Czernin published a piece about the Klimt paintings belonging to Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. His research showed that Adele did not bequeath the paintings to the Galerie Belvedere, something Maria had always been led to believe. 

Czernin's research resulted in Austria enacting the Art Restitution Law allowing families to file claims for the restitution of art stolen by the Nazi regime in Austria.  Maria learned about the new law and the situation involving her family's painting from a friend in Austria. Determined to recover her family's paintings, Maria engaged E. Randol Schoenberg, grandson of the Austrian composers, Arnold Schoenberg and Eric Ziesl. It is Maria Altmann and Randol Schoenberg's struggle to get the Austrian government to return Altmann's family's property - in this case, five Klimt paintings that is portrayed in the historical drama, The Woman In Gold.

The Woman In Gold was directed by Simon Curtis. The movie tells the remarkable story of a beautiful painting stolen from a family and almost lost to them forever. The events surrounding the restitution of the Klimt painting to the closest living relatives of the Bloch-Bauers are fairly accurately portrayed in with some minor differences. Maria Altmann is portrayed by Oscar, Tony and Emmy Award winner, Helen Mirren. Mirren's performance in The Woman in God is quite endearing, a mixture of German forwardness and Old World charm. Randol Schoenberg is played by Ryan Reynolds. In the movie, Schoenberg is shown to have little knowledge of the Holocaust, but in real life, Schoenberg grew up listening to Maria's stories about life under Nazi rule and her flight to freedom. 

He first saw the Klimt painting when he visited Vienna as a boy and his mother told him the shimmering lady in gold belonged to Maria Altmann's family. When Schoenberg represented Maria, he was unapologetic in talking about what Austrians did to his grandmother's generation. After winning the right to sue the Austrian government, Schoenberg decided to trust an arbitration panel in Austria. He learned of the Austrian Arbitration Court's order to return the Klimt paintings to Maria Altmann on January 16, 2006 via a text message on his Blackberry. Journalist Hubertus Czernin, who died only months after Maria's victory was well portrayed by Daniel Bruhl who captured Czernin's quiet intensity and determination to force his fellow Austrians to confront their collaboration with the Nazis.

To connect the present efforts of Maria Altmann to recover the stolen Klimt paintings with her tragic past, Curtis uses flashbacks to fill in the back story of Maria's life in Austria when the Nazis came to power. The scenes involving the Nazi plunder of works of art and jewelry are extremely well done, evoke a sense of outrage and leave viewers thirsting for the justice that Maria seeks. The refinement and politeness of the terrified Jewish Bloch-Bauer family is in contrast to the bold rudeness and cruelty of the Nazi officers. They also allow viewers to understand how life changed so suddenly in Vienna, a city the rival of Paris in art and culture. There are scenes of Jews being forced to scrub the sidewalks, forced into trucks and of Orthodox Jews having their beards cut and their heads shaved. The fear and confusion of the Jewish citizens is effectively captured in these scenes and Maria and Fritz's harrowing escape is intense.

Following the decision through binding arbitration, Maria Altmann was able to bring all five Klimt paintings that her family owned to America. The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was purchased for one hundred thirty-five million dollars by Neue Galerie President and Co-Founder Ronald S. Lauder and remains on display in this gallery. Maria Altmann passed away in 2011.

The Woman In Gold is highly recommended for those interested in period pieces and historical films.

For those interested in learning more about the Holocaust restitution, the Jewish Virtual Library website has pages on Recovering Stolen Art; https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/recovering-stolen-art-from-the-holocaust