09 April 2015, The Tablet

Restitution drama


 
Take an intriguing history that embraces art and politics, add to that trauma, injustice, courtroom wrangling over restitution and a redoubtable Dame of screen and stage. Season the mix with travel across the Atlantic and the decades to demonstrate how they do things differently there. And you could well have a distinctive hit.So why is Woman in Gold not more involving? It is a dramatisation of the story of Maria Altmann who in 2000, at the age of 84, brought a case against the Austrian Government in the United States courts. Maria had escaped Vienna as a young bride in the 1930s; her quest was to recover works taken by the Nazis from the family apartment during the Anschluss. Among those was Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, the shimmering image of her aunt, executed by Gustav Klimt in 19
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