To Tell The Truth Is To Glow And Burn

Rating: 10/10 (24 April 2015)

Adele Bloch Bauer, "The Woman In Gold" and her niece Maria Altman are smiling in Heaven now.
Their fascinating lives of beauty, loss and remembrance reveals something deeper beneath the golden surface of the stolen art.
If it wasn't for Maria's crusading journalist friend the Austrian
Hubertus, Czernin, this raiders of the lost art story would have never happened.
Hubertus worked tirelessly on this case since the early fifties and stayed in contact with Maria.Sadly he passed away shortly after the resolution of this case. Maria gave him a couple of million from the sale.
Both Hubertus and Maria were well cast. However, Maria wished that Czernin would have gotten more credit than he did in the film. Maria only saw her attorney once a year.
The flashbacks of Maria's growing up years and exit interview from WWII Austria were astonishing!
Ann Marie O Connors rendition of the story unveils some grimmer realities.
Maria stood under a painting of pretty young nuns peering through the gates of the convent like MarIa of the Sound of Music." What are they doing? Don't they see the soldiers outside. What do the soldiers want? To rape them Brigitte said"P. 260
Maria might not think that the film's court room scene was realistic..
Maria revealed that it was a secret that American's were working with former Nazii's Dr Herbert Wagner after WWII.
Some of Wagner and his scientists had overseen and performed abominable experiments on Jewish victims at concentration camps (p258-9)
Dr Wagner and Werner von Braun another member of the SS were later used to jump start NASA (rocket technology) in the United States, though they had overseen slave labor operations where thousands have died.
Wagner had played a key role in the Nazi war machine, a serious charge at the Nuremberg trials. He and his two assistants were the first Nazi scientists to be secretly airlifted to the United States after the war" P. 258
Dr. Wagner's FBI handlers helpfully repeated his contention that he only joined the SS for professional reasons and never went to meetings.
Maria stated that Dr. Wagner lived in Thousand Oaks after the war? Why is another Nazi guard being tried for 300,000 counts of murder for overseeing many deaths in the prison camps?
Maria Altman also revealed that former Nazi governor Baldur von Schirarch (head of Nazii youth) had served only 20 years and lived long enough to be interviewed by David Frost. His concluding alibi with Frost was a quote from "Alice In Wonderland"? (degenerate art)
Also, Maria reflected that her gestapo minder Felix Landau was barely punished and lived for years in Bavaria as an interior designer. He loved fairy tales and had a Hungarian painter paint fairy tales on the walls of his sons personal nursery (degnerate art)
I would love to help these war criminals re story their favorite fairytale. I would ask them what was their favorite Bible story and why did they think it was important to them as a child. They seem to suffer from what Carl Jung referred to as the "inferior feeling function" such as Hitler crying when his pet parakeet died?
I would also love to hear what Klimt's favorite fairytale as a child and why he thought it was important to him as a child?
According to O Connor Klimt may have had a Mother Complex after the early death of his father. He instructed the young Klimt to financially support the family which included his mother. She soon after had a break down due to being a failed opera star. This may have contributed to Klimt becoming a womanizer dying of syphilis.
I have to agree with Adelle that art is an essential prism for understanding the world and to help people to see things differently.
Every time I look at the painting of Adelle and this reel therapy of a film, I see things differently and that is the power of art