Interesting war drama of little known MFAA

Rating: 9/10 (7 March 2014)

"The Monuments Men" is based on real events of a special unit during World War II, and the men who served in the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) section. The characters are fictitious. But George Clooney and Grant Heslov did a fine job of making the characters composites from several of the real men who served in the MFAA. Two books by Robert M. Edsel served as the main source for the screenplay. The first was "Rescuing Da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe's Great Art – America and Her Allies Recovered It," in 2006. The second was a 2010 book, "The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History."
All aspects of this movie are excellent. Some reviewers don't think the humor fits. Others think the movie is slow or boring. But for most movie buffs who have broad interests and curiosity, this film is a winner. The casting was very good, and I think the humor fits nicely. It compliments the seriousness and dangers of the mission, the obvious respect and love for art of the main characters, their willingness to risk their lives to save precious art works, and their awe at finding specific pieces and caches of great works.
For a non-combat unit, the MFAA team has a good amount of action, suspense and intrigue. The reproductions of art pieces are excellent. Surely, some shots must have been of the actual works. Two of the 345 men of the MFAA were killed during the war – an Englishman and a Frenchman. In the film, two such fictitious characters are killed. The first MFAA unit broke down into pairs to scout various suspected or reported art caches. The movie also shows this. All told, the MFAA sought out and searched more than 1,000 treasure trove sites that contained more than 5 million pieces of stolen art.
One of the MFAA characters in the movie comes close to a real WW II member. James Granger, played by Matt Damon, closely resembles Capt. James Rorimer, a curator of the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the movie, he is recruited directly from his civilian position. In reality, Rorimer had signed up as an American infantryman in 1943, and was sought out and given a commission to be one of the original members of the MFAA. He met Rose Valland, whose character in the film resembles that of Claire Simone, played by Cate Blanchett. Rorimer later was promoted to chief of the MFAA section of the Seventh Army, and was in charge of seizing the art collections of both Herman Göring and Josef Goebbels. After the war, he returned to the Met where he later served as director for 11 years until his death in 1966.
On the official Web site of the Monuments Men (www.monumentsmen.com), I found several other members who identified in part with the characters in the film. One was Capt. Deane Keller, a 5th U.S. Army MFAA officer from 1944 to 1946 in Italy. He served for 40 years as a Yale art professor after the war. The bios of different members place them at some of the major treasure trove sites in the film.
The movie has a scene at Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, where more than 6,000 works of art were recovered. Another is at Berchtesgaden, Germany – site of Hitler's "Eagle's Nest." The 101st Airborne Division first reached there and found more than 1,000 paintings and sculptures stolen by Göring. Other scenes are in salt mines and caves where huge caches of art works were hidden. Merkers, Germany, and Altaussee, Austria, were among these. The latter had 6,500 paintings alone. It also had the two major works from Belgium that were covered at length in the movie. Michelangelo's sculpture, the Madonna of Bruges was found there, as was Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece that was stolen from Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent.
From the time the MFAA was established in 1944 under the Civil Affairs and Military Government section of the U.S. Army, a total of 345 men served in the section. They came from 13 nations. The U.S. had 216, England had 58, France had 23, 20 were from Austria, and 11 were from The Netherlands. The rest were from other countries including Belgium, Poland, New Zealand, Spain and Russia.
Not all who served in the MFAA were curators, museum staffers, artists, teachers or architects – as are the characters in the film. Many were men who were just interested in the assignment, and who were transferred from other positions of active duty in Europe at the time. This was in the waning months of the war and the year after the war's end. But, the earliest members – those who did much of the searching and recovery efforts during hostilities, included some men who were recruited from civilian life and who had art and cultural backgrounds.
The MFAA was disbanded in 1946, but a small group of about 60 art detectives continued to search for stolen art works for another six years. For all the great works and many millions of individual art pieces recovered by the MFAA, a sizable number of great works remains missing. Most are assumed to have been destroyed by the Germans. The movie has a scene with Germans burning a huge cache of paintings, including Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man. It was stolen by the Nazis from Poland, and is considered by many to be the most valuable of all art works yet lost from the war. A report in 2012 that it had resurfaced was a hoax.
The MFAA wasn't just a sudden brainchild of someone during the war. Its roots go back to two lay organizations before the war. Anyone interested in more of the fascinating history of this program will find it on various sites on the Web.