George Clooney's Open House
Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.
Log in

I forgot my password

Latest topics
» George's new project The Department - a series
Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow EmptyFri 22 Mar 2024, 09:42 by annemariew

» George Clooney e Amal Alamuddin in Francia, ecco il loro nido
Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow EmptySun 17 Mar 2024, 22:18 by party animal - not!

»  Back in the UK
Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow EmptyMon 11 Mar 2024, 16:38 by annemariew

» George Clooney makes the effort to show his fans that he appreciates them
Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow EmptySun 10 Mar 2024, 21:20 by carolhathaway

» What Happened?
Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow EmptyTue 27 Feb 2024, 10:51 by annemariew

» George and Amal in France with new St Bernard puppy
Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow EmptyMon 26 Feb 2024, 22:31 by Ida

» George on the Letterman Show
Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow EmptyWed 21 Feb 2024, 15:59 by LizzyNY

» George and Amal with a new puppy
Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow EmptyWed 14 Feb 2024, 19:14 by benex

» Amal new book on freedom of speech released
Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow EmptyTue 13 Feb 2024, 18:49 by party animal - not!

Our latest tweets
Free Webmaster ToolsSubmit Express

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

+3
silly girl
it's me
...
7 posters

Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by ... Sat 25 Jan 2014, 21:15


What they did was extraordinary. So why has it taken almost 70 years for Hollywood to make the movie?


STORY HIGHLIGHTS
They found and returned millions of artworks, then were mostly forgotten
Teams of art historians and curators helped save Europe's art in WWII
Now the movie-makers hope to get them Congressional Gold Medal


What took so long?

You would think, what with Hollywood's love for all things World War II, that George Clooney's amazing-but-true Monuments Men movie, opening this week, would have been made decades ago instead of last year.

After all, it seems to have all the elements of a blockbuster: a true story, heroic characters, tragic loss, historic monuments, a treasure hunt for world-famous art, American military grit, the saving of Western civilization as we know it.

Now add George Clooney as star, writer, director and co-producer, plus his Good Night and Good Luck-style blend of history as rollicking storytelling. And don't forget a cast that includes Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, Hugh Bonneville, and John Goodman. What's not to like?

The truth is hardly anyone, except the readers of two recent books, knew much about this story. Thanks to Hollywood and Clooney, millions are now going to learn more, even if some of the facts have been manipulated for the plot.


"Clooney has shown himself to be a decent storyteller when he has something to work with and he certainly does here," says Owen Pell, a specialist in Holocaust-related litigation who has handled multiple cases of art looted from Jews by the Nazis.

The movie is based on a 2009 book by the same name by Robert Edsel with Bret Witter. That in turn follows the first scholarly look at the story,The Rape of Europa:, by historian Lynn Nicholas, published in 1994, which documented the breathtaking, unprecedented scope of Nazi looting.

The movie has taken some liberties, as movies usually do. "The movie as far as I understand is really fictional — the (Monuments Men) never worked together in a group, they never went to Berlin and rescued something," Nicholas says. "But it will be a good movie, judging from the trailer. The sets are modeled after the photographs" of the period.

The Monuments Men were teams of artists, art historians and museum curators set up by the American and British armies during the war, first to help protect Europe's historic monuments from Allied bombing.

Then, after the war in Europe was won, their mission turned to "something truly unprecedented: to create collection points to retrieve and catalog private property that had been looted and to return it to their countries of origin," Pell says.

Clooney says he was attracted to their level of commitment. "To their country, to the great works of art of the world. It's pretty unbelievable that they put their lives at risk for a principle they felt that deeply," he said at a recent press panel on the movie.

And they largely succeeded, though many objects remain missing to this day. Of an estimated 20 million looted art and artifacts, much of it stolen by Hitler and his Nazi lieutenants for themselves and Germany, the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives teams within five years after the war managed to return about five million objects to their countries of origin, if not to their previous owners, many of them Jews who died in the Holocaust, says Edsel.

Edsel, a tennis-pro-turned-Texas-oilman-turned art-lover, has written other books about saving Europe's art treasures and made a documentary on The Rape of Europa. He was determined the Monuments Men be recognized by putting their story on screen.

"This movie is going to introduce these heroes of civilization to people all over the world, who do not know that during WWII there was the greatest theft in history," says Edsel.
"It was a high point in our civilization that we have not remotely approached again since (WWII), as we learned so painfully during the Iraq War."

Well, how come? And how come we don't know more about the Monuments Men? Blame new wars — the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam — when the West had bigger problems to cope with. Blame WWII itself and the Holocaust, when it felt wrong to sob over the loss of millions of artworks when millions of people were slaughtered in mechanized murder.

Or blame the Monuments Men, who returned home after the war to disappear into their museums, universities and galleries. Like many of their Army comrades, they didn't talk much about what they did in the war before they passed from the scene.

But now everybody is talking about it. For one thing, the issue of Nazi looting is still in the headlines.

By coincidence , European media have shouted recently about a trove of 1,400-plus artworks (some possibly Nazi-looted) discovered last year hidden in a Munich apartment during a tax-evasion investigation. Initial reports indicate at least some of these artworks may have passed through the hands of Monuments Men teams, demonstrating again the difficulties of finding the original owners of looted objects just after the war, let alone nearly 70 years later.

"This is not going to go away because (looted artworks) are worth a lot of money," says Nicholas.

Occasionally it peeps into popular culture. Thomas Kline, a Washington lawyer who's an expert on looted-art cases, says he always includes a slide from an episode of The Simpsons in his lectures, about when Homer Simpson's war veteran grandpa finds a Raphael in his attic, a well-known missing object from the war.

"In an episode of The Simpsons!" Kline says. "The issue has already entered the popular culture, just not in a huge way. People have bits of information but not a context to tie it all together, and that's what this movie is going to do."

The museum world has long known of the Monuments Men but the movie is spurring new attention even there. The National WWII Museum in New Orleans has announced its first permanent exhibit on the Monuments Men.

They have been the subject of recent scholarly panels, and the National Gallery of Art is hosting another in Washington in March to highlight its role in lobbying to set up the monuments teams, which included men who worked at the museum before and after the war.

"We're pretty proud of it," says Maygene Daniels, chief of Gallery archives, who has researched the history. She thinks the Monuments Men were too modest to brag after the war. "They might have thought they weren't heroic, the heroes were the guys who were fighting in the trenches."

As part of the marketing of the movie, Edsel and the movie-makers have set up an online petition supporting a bill in Congress to grant the Congressional Gold Medal to the Monuments Men in recognition of their wartime heroics.

And what about the future of the concept within the U.S. military? The widespread looting of museums and archaeological sites in Iraq that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003, despite early warnings from archaeologists, was not a good sign. In 1942 it was easier to find experts on Western art in the ranks of the drafted than to find experts on Iraq archaeology in today's all-volunteer military.

"It's hard to recruit art historians and curators into the military begin with," says Corine Wegener, a retired Army major who worked as a "monuments woman" in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. A former museum curator, her expertise was in American decorative art.

"Even before the movie there have been increasing efforts to improve military training with regard to (protecting) cultural property," says Wegener, now a preservation specialist for the Smithsonian. "The movie can help raise public awareness and give it that touch of Hollywood glamour that makes it not just a job we have to do but makes us very proud of doing it."

Contributing: Scott Bowles

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

...
Ooh, Mr Clooney!

Posts : 804
Join date : 2013-06-10

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by it's me Sun 26 Jan 2014, 01:45

The museum world has long known of the Monuments Men but the movie is spurring new attention even there. The National WWII Museum in New Orleans has announced its first permanent exhibit on the Monuments Men.

 cheers cheers cheers 
it's me
it's me
George Clooney fan forever!

Posts : 18398
Join date : 2011-01-03

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by silly girl Sun 26 Jan 2014, 01:47

Thanks for posting...lots of articles coming out about the MM and the work they did. No matter how the film does at the box office it least it has done something good.

silly girl
Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Clooney I go!

Posts : 3299
Join date : 2011-02-28

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by Katiedot Sun 26 Jan 2014, 04:30

This is so amazing! I wonder if George knew what he's stir up when he started on this project? I feels like museums and historians were just waiting for this to come to the world's attention.
Katiedot
Katiedot
Admin

Posts : 13223
Join date : 2010-12-05

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by it's me Sun 26 Jan 2014, 10:30

cheers cheers cheers 

and Italy absolutely needs that attention to art
because it's our bigger richness
and no one cares to preserve and promote it in the right way  Crying or Very sad No
it's me
it's me
George Clooney fan forever!

Posts : 18398
Join date : 2011-01-03

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by party animal - not! Tue 28 Jan 2014, 18:29

Now this isn't bad, ladies

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

party animal - not!
George Clooney fan forever!

Posts : 12376
Join date : 2012-02-16

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by party animal - not! Tue 28 Jan 2014, 18:51

Here's another something - a premiere in a cathedral!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

party animal - not!
George Clooney fan forever!

Posts : 12376
Join date : 2012-02-16

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by Mazy Tue 28 Jan 2014, 19:29

PAN's tweeter link
Mazy
Mazy
Achieving total Clooney-dom

Posts : 2883
Join date : 2012-11-03

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by Mazy Tue 28 Jan 2014, 19:37

PAN's next link I will put in new thread.
Mazy
Mazy
Achieving total Clooney-dom

Posts : 2883
Join date : 2012-11-03

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by party animal - not! Tue 28 Jan 2014, 19:38

Thank you, Mazy. Brill!

party animal - not!
George Clooney fan forever!

Posts : 12376
Join date : 2012-02-16

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by ... Tue 28 Jan 2014, 19:50

I agree that this film may prompt a lot more interest & participation in preservation of cultural artefacts. Like Robert Edsel said in his interview with Grant Heslov, "what greater medium to bring this to mass public awareness than film."

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

...
Ooh, Mr Clooney!

Posts : 804
Join date : 2013-06-10

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by Mazy Tue 28 Jan 2014, 21:22

party animal - not! wrote:Thank you, Mazy. Brill!

No problem great links thanks.
Mazy
Mazy
Achieving total Clooney-dom

Posts : 2883
Join date : 2012-11-03

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by party animal - not! Fri 31 Jan 2014, 14:49

Does anyone have any idea what this is all about?

party animal - not!
George Clooney fan forever!

Posts : 12376
Join date : 2012-02-16

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by party animal - not! Fri 31 Jan 2014, 14:50

(see above!)

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

party animal - not!
George Clooney fan forever!

Posts : 12376
Join date : 2012-02-16

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by Joanna Fri 31 Jan 2014, 17:30

Judging by the full list of credits, nearly every A Lister has appeared or appearing !

Maybe someones Drunken Wish List.  lol! 


[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Joanna
Joanna
George Clooney fan forever!

Posts : 19431
Join date : 2011-11-17
Location : UK

Back to top Go down

Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow Empty Re: Clooney's 'Monuments Men' heroes finally take a bow

Post by Sponsored content


Sponsored content


Back to top Go down

Back to top

- Similar topics

 
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum