Worthy but Wordy

Rating: 5/10 (17 May 2017)

The "Woman in Gold" of the title is a painting, Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I". (That Roman numeral was added to distinguish it from a second portrait of the same woman). Frau Bloch-Bauer was a beautiful young society lady from a wealthy Viennese Jewish family. She herself died in 1925, but the picture remained in the possession of her family until it was seized by the Nazis following the Anschluss of 1938. Klimt was not the Nazis' favourite artist- he was too modernistic for Hitler's ultra-conservative tastes- but he was not Jewish and was never officially condemned as "degenerate", so there was no ban on the public display of his art. In 1941 the painting was acquired by the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna where it hung for many years. (The Nazis were embarrassed by the fact that Klimt's sitter had been Jewish, so the name of the painting was changed to "Woman in Gold"). In 1998, however, Adele's last surviving relative, her niece Maria Altmann, now living in Los Angeles, began a legal fight to recover the stolen painting.
The Austrian government resisted the claim doggedly, basing their opposition on the fact that in her will Adele had expressed the wish that the painting should hang in the Belvedere. There were, however, two problems with their defence. The first was that Adele had wished that the picture should only go to the Belvedere after the death of her husband Ferdinand, who was still alive in 1941. The second, and more serious, objection was that the painting was not actually Adele's to dispose of- it was legally Ferdinand's property, not hers.
The film is based on the true story of this legal battle, concentrating on the relationship between Maria and her young lawyer, Randy Schoenberg. The two had a lot in common, both being descended from the cultured, intellectual Jewish haute bourgeoisie of Vienna. They shared a love of music; Randy was the grandson of the famous composer, Arnold Schoenberg, and Maria's late husband, Fritz, had been an opera singer. Intercut with the legal action are scenes showing Maria's early life and her flight from Vienna to escape from the Nazis in 1938.
I watched this film when it was recently shown in television, partly because I am an art lover and partly because of my respect for Helen Mirren, but in many way it proved a disappointment. Mirren as Maria Altmann was certainly good, as she normally is, but she was about the only good thing in this film. There have been many excellent films based upon court cases, but such courtroom dramas have nearly all been about criminal trials, focussing on conflicting evidence and dramatic scenes of cross-examination in the witness-box. Civil actions, which rely more on legal argument and precedents and which may not even involve any testimony from live witnesses, rarely make for such engrossing drama.
The case of Republic of Austria v. Altmann does not prove an exception to the rule. The lengthy scenes of discussions and legal arguments are worthy but wordy, and the flashbacks to the 1930s (for some reason shot in a very dull, muted colour) do not provide much relief from the tedium. (We know from the beginning that Maria will survive, so there is little tension). The story of the wholesale looting of European art by the Nazis, of the legal fight for restitution and of the various moral issues involved is a potentially fascinating one; it deserved a better cinematic treatment than this. 5/10