WOMAN IN GOLD CELEBRATES A VICTORY OVER WAR CRIMES
Article 46 of the Second Hague Convention of 1899, which requires military occupation authorities to respect private property, was not honored by the Nazis. Instead, they looted some 100,000 works of art, many of which were never returned to the owners after war. Some ended up in the Austrian national museum in Vienna, the Belvedere, including five paintings of Gustav Klimt to which octogenarian Maria Altmann (played by Helen Mirren) fell heir when her sister died in 1998. Woman in Gold is about how Ms. Altmann recovered those paintings, in particular a portrait of her aunt wearing a gown embroidered with gold patches that became known as the Mona Lisa of Austria after the war in an Austria governed by those who tried to forget its complicity with Hitler. Rather than a simple handover of the painting, worth more than $100 million, the Austrian government fought to keep the painting by every legal means possible, passing up so many of her pleas for compromise that she became determined to win her case. Filmviewers are able to observe that process from an Austrian restitution commission hearing to a federal court in Los Angeles, the Supreme Court of the United States (541 US 677), and finally to an arbitration court in Vienna, thanks to dogged legal assistance from E. Randol Shönberg (Ryan Reynolds), grandson of the composer, who quit his job in a high-paying Los Angeles legal firm to come to her aid over a period of eight years. Interspersed throughout the film are recreations of good times of the Viennese Jews, including the Altmanns and their relatives, and bad times after the Anschluss of 1938. Perhaps the most important revelation in the film is contained in Mrs. Altmann’s speech about two Austrias—one complacent about the past, the other eager to bring about democracy and justice. The latter is personified by crusading journalist Hubertus Czernin (Daniel Brühl), who suddenly pops up in Vienna during the film. (In actuality, he wrote Mrs. Altmann to encourage her to regain the paintings). The portrait now hangs at the Neue Gallery in New York, though the film does not mention that she sold all five paintings in 2006 after she gained possession. A title informs filmviewers that she died in 2012 at the age of 97. Directed by Simon Curtis, Woman in Gold has been nominated by the Political Film Society for best film exposé and best film on human rights of 2015. MH