The Rape of Europa.

"Impressive in scope if unremarkable in style, The Rape of Europa provides a chronology of World War II as it was experienced by David, Mona Lisa, and other artistic treasures the Nazis plundered," writes Michelle Orange in the Voice.

"The Nazis' taste in 20th century art ran to Aryan kitsch, or at most to the attenuated Modernist stylings of an Arno Breker, but they knew a Vermeer when they saw one and they knew how to snatch and grab on a scale that Napoleon, an art thief of the first magnitude, could only dream about," writes Time's Richard Lacayo.

Updated through 9/20.

And, as Rachel Saltz reminds us in the New York Times, "This story is still playing out, contentiously and emotionally, as art is recovered and heirs sue for restitution."

"[A]s the directors cogently and captivatingly illustrate, the Americans' acts of preservation and the Nazis' destructiveness and inquisitiveness both, ultimately, confirm art's status as an intrinsic, defining facet of national identity," writes Nick Schager at Slant.

Online listening tip. Director Richard Berge on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Updates, 9/16: The Los Angeles Times talks with Robert M Edsel, whose book, "Rescuing da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe's Great Art - America and Her Allies Recovered It, "focuses on the Monuments Men, a mostly volunteer cadre of about 350 men - and women - who worked for the Allied Forces' Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section." Could make for a companion piece to the book the film is based on, Lynn H Nicholas's The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War.

"[W]hile it's well known that the führer hated modern art and had examples of so-called 'degenerate art' destroyed, he also systematically set out to decimate the Slavic cultures he deemed inferior - that of Poland and Russia - by ordering the destruction of art, architecture, monuments and libraries that his armies found in their path," writes Cathleen McGuigan in Newsweek. "Much of the documentary shows in gripping detail the efforts to save Europe's treasures from Hitler's clutches and the ravages of war. The Louvre in Paris and the Hermitage in Leningrad were practically emptied before the Germans arrived, as eerie photographs of the galleries attest, with barren gilt frames scattered about."

Update, 9/20: "Maybe the best way to convince you to check out the enthralling documentary The Rape of Europa is to say that I, too, had no desire to see another damn film about the terrible things that happened in World War II," confesses Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "And at first glance, this film's subject seems trivial: Who cares what happened to the art and cultural artifacts of Europe when umpteen million people were slaughtered? Well, what Bonni Cohen, Richard Berge and Nicole Newnham's film (based on the award-winning book by art historian Lynn Nicholas) convinces you is that there's really no separating those things."

Posted by dwhudson at September 15, 2007 1:16 PM