The Rape of Europa

Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham’s riveting and surprising documentary, based on Lynn Nicholas’ book of the same name, elaborates how Nazi Germany’s confluence of avarice, homicidal hatred and bad taste nearly annihilated European culture in all directions. The movie’s strength comes from its amazing stories: The rampaging, anti-modernist madman Hitler’s hope for a hometown uber-museum (laughable if it weren’t so terrible); the citizen-volunteer army that packed up and evacuated the Louvre, or the starving, freezing St. Petersburg museum workers who paid for many Hermitage treasures with their lives; the collateral damage to art and architecture wrought by Allied invasions or thieving Soviet reprisals; the poignant recovery of one painting from a Utah museum; the victory, as one observer puts it, “of beauty over horror.” Maybe The Rape of Europa misses some natural cinematic opportunities for visual splendor and significance, but it does offer an essential accounting of what civilization really means, and what it requires.