Portrait of Wally (2012)
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Reviews Counted: 30
Fresh: 27 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Critic Reviews: 12
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 96
Movie Info
Portrait of Wally, Egon Schiele's tender picture of his mistress, Walburga ("Wally") Neuzil, is the pride of the Leopold Museum in Vienna. But for 13 years the painting was locked up in New York, caught in a legal battle between the Austrian museum and the Jewish family from whom the Nazis seized the painting in 1939. Portrait of Wally traces the history of this iconic image - from Schiele's gesture of affection toward his young lover, to the theft of the painting from Lea Bondi, a Jewish art
May 11, 2012 Limited
Seventh Art Releasing
- Official Site
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All Critics (31) | Top Critics (12) | Fresh (27) | Rotten (3)
An account of greed, betrayal, culpability and self-serving moral relativism.
Top CriticAlthough the film at times moves through the evidence at an impossibly fast clip, the response of MoMa will doubtlessly resonate.
It's a fascinating story, even as Shea's film sometimes tells it in a slightly convoluted way.
By showing how difficult and problematic righting a wrong can turn out to be, "Portrait of Wally" does itself proud.
The material's not so rich and complex that the documentary doesn't feel padded at 90 minutes.
A painting's provenance matters, and so does this portrait of Portrait of Wally.
The story is compelling, and the fallout of the 13-year legal battle over Portrait of Wally not only established important legal precedence regarding art looted from Holocaust victims, but also caused some soul-searching in the museum world.
The journey of the painting, and the Bondi family's efforts to reclaim it, are the meaty subject of Andrew Shea's engrossing documentary.
The film's troubling take on the moral flexibilities of the art world may also have viewers wondering about the provenance of what they see on museum walls.
For such a winding, research-heavy piece, Portrait of Wally moves at a brisk clip, with Gary Lionelli's agitated score lending the film the breathless quality of a police procedural.
Portrait of Wally reminds us that nearly 70 years after the war, some lessons of the Holocaust have yet to sink in.
Wally sputters to an unremarkable conclusion.
...the journey of just one of many, many thousands of Nazi plundered art works and its rightful return to its owner.
...would make a great double bill with "The Art of the Steal," another documentary which exposes the ruthless greed and obsessions which power the world of public art exhibition.
A complex legal controversy is made enthralling and not infrequently shocking.
Intricate documentary about stolen art is presented as if it were a thriller.
In chronicling the law case, the film also provides a fascinating profile of the lives of Schiele, Wally and Lea Bondi, and of Vienna's cultural ambiance pre-World War II.
Whatever might happen in future, however, the film underlines that the Wally case made this much very clear: rich people look out for themselves and bully others.
As Shea's film approaches its conclusion, a wonderful and unexpected sense of empathy suddenly materializes.
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The Portrait was owned, and lived complacently, comfortably in the home of gallerist Lea Bondi, pre- WWII , Vienna. There is irrefutable evidence supporting the painting's provenance. The Nazi regime closed her gallery in 1938 and gobbled greedily all her works; then Nazi art lover Friedrich Welz invaded her home, rapaciously stealing her precious"Wally". Lea and her husband fled to London and survived. She tenaciously and diligently quested for its return; always stymied by the belligerent and entitled; she died in 1969, unrequited.
Hence, the saga of the ethereal "Wally" commences; obsessive collector, Rudolph Leopold acquired, under vague circumstances ,the piece from the Belvedere Museum; in 1997 it traveled as part of a Schiele retrospective to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Here is where the proverbial"painting and its provenance" hit the fan; artistic bureaucracy, mayhem became the fodder for the press, courts, NPR correspondent David D'Arcy (lost his job because his reporting supposedly maligned MOMA; he rises from the ashes by being the prime instigator and co-writer of this documentary); a myriad of interviews between Bondi's heirs, government officials, historians, museum directors and curators, interspersed with scenes of Jewish persecution; an especially prescient one of the Viennese welcoming Hitler (Austria, always claimed to be a victim of Germany ) into their frenzied, cherished midst.
"Wally" vaulted, and held prisoner for over twelve years in a federal storage facility in Queens, New York; until her fate was equably determined by all sides.
Watching this valuable history lesson I kept pondering Lea Bondi, a lovely, brilliant, avant- garde art collector, who happened to be Jewish, and the millions of others, throughout millenniums who were shunned, scattered, savaged because of their faith; so many of these civilizations, perpetrators of heinous villainy, wasted with time, consumed by war, greed and myopia are gone, gone with the ages. But Jews and their inimitable, intransigent stubbornness thrive and strive to survive; a mystery unlikely solved, as to how or why; probably, maybe possibly they are"chosen" to bear witness until the end of time and mankind. This is an election year, I would not bet against it.
FOUR STARS!!!!
For Now.....Peneflix