Part
of the drama of the film is that all of the Monuments Men are so unsuited to
serving as soldiers in wartime. “Wars
are fought by 18-year-olds,” says Clooney.
“Once you get to the John Goodmans and the Bob Balabans and the George
Clooneys, you know – these guys are not getting drafted.” Producing and writing
partner Grant Heslov adds: “They did it because it was clear that they were the
only people who could do it.”
The
answer was the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives group, which would go to the
front lines and, for the first time, try to save the treasures that could be
saved. “Culture was at risk,” says Clooney.
“You see it time and time again.
You saw it in Iraq – the museums weren’t protected, and you saw how much
of their culture was lost because of that.”
“Even
today, people are still trying to get back the art that was looted from their
families by the Nazis,”Heslov says, noting that just recently, a treasure trove
of looted art was discovered in a Munich apartment – 1,500 works worth $1.5
billion, paintings by Matisse, Picasso, Dix, and other artists that had been
thought to be lost.
Clooney
and Heslov note that while the film is based on the true story of the Monuments
Men, they did take some liberties with the characters for dramatic
purposes. Though many of the characters
are inspired by real Monuments Men, Clooney and Heslov have invented characters
for the film. More importantly, even if the characters are invented, their
story is real. “We invented a few
mundane scenes, just to help the story along, but the things in the movie that
you’d think are so ridiculous and strange, ‘well, there’s no way that those
actually happened’ – those are the things that actually happened,” says
Clooney.
Meet
“The Monuments Men,” for the film, Clooney and Heslov were able to attract a
top tier of actors, including Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean
Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett.
George
Clooney heads the cast in the role of Frank Stokes, a leading art historian.
The inspiration for Clooney’s character was art historian George Stout.“In real
life, he was a very scrappy guy. He
could do anything – like fix cars and radios.”
The head of the conservation department at the Fogg, and later the
director of the Worcester Art Museum and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in
Boston, Stout was on the front lines during the war, helping to rescue cultural
treasures in Caen, Maastricht, and Aachen, as well as Nazi art repositories in
Siegen, Heilbronn, Cologne, Merkers, and Altaussee.
Matt
Damon takes on the role of James Granger and marks his sixth collaboration with
George Clooney. The James Granger
character is inspired by James Rorimer, who later became director of New York’s
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Granger’s relationship with Claire Simone (Cate
Blanchett) was inspired by Rorimer’s interaction with Rose Valland, an employee
of the Jeu de Paume gallery in Paris.
Bill
Murray was excited to join The Monuments Men from the minute George Clooney
first told him about the project. Murray’s
role, Richard Campbell, is an architect.
Murray’s character is inspired by several real Monuments Men, including
architect Robert Posey. While embedded
with Patton’s Third Army during the war, Posey discovered the salt mine at
Altaussee, where the Nazis had stashed the Ghent Altarpiece, the Bruges
Madonna, Vermeer’s The Astronomer, and thousands of other works of art. For his
contributions, Posey was awarded the Legion of Honor from France and the Order
of Leopold from Belgium.
John
Goodman says that his character, Walter Garfield, represents the people, men
and women, who were stuck on the home front but eager to help the war effort in
any way they could. Goodman’s character
is inspired by the real-life Monuments Man Walker Hancock, a renowned sculptor.
Hancock was a native of St. Louis, as is Goodman. “Oddly enough, when my mother and I would
take the bus to downtown St. Louis to go shopping, we’d pass one of his
sculptures, the Soldiers’ Memorial,” Goodman says. “It just put me in touch
with the character. It’s a small connection, but a happy coincidence.”
Goodman’s
character, Walter Garfield, is paired with Jean Claude Clermont, portrayed by
Oscar®-winning actor Jean Dujardin, a re-teaming of Goodman and Dujardin from “The
Artist.” “Jean’s role as Claude Clermont
is a French Jew who is an art dealer in Marseilles,” Dujardin explains. “He
escapes and takes refuge in London with his family. He is recruited by the
American army for his artistic knowledge. He’s not a soldier, but it’s really
important for him to take part in the war. He’s really proud to be a member of
the Monuments Men.”
“Downton
Abbey’s”Hugh Bonneville plays Donald Jeffries, a flawed man seeking a second
chance. “When the characters are
introduced, you see them in their natural habitats, so to speak,” Bonneville
explains. “Donald’s happens to be a pub. We come to learn that he has made
mistakes in life, has been unreliable and George’s character gives him a second
chance to re-embrace his first love, which is art.”
Bob
Balaban takes on the role of Preston Savitz.
“Savitz is an intellectual, an art historian and a theatrical
impresario,” Balaban says. Preston
Savitz is inspired by Monuments Man Lincoln Kirstein, an American impresario,
art connoisseur, author, and a major cultural figure in New York who co-founded
the New York City Ballet.
The
final Monuments Man in the film is Sam Epstein, played by Dimitri Leonidas. Not yet 19, Epstein is the only real soldier
in the group, recruited for his ability to drive and to speak German. “My
character grew up in Germany – but Germany rejected him, because he’s Jewish,”
Leonidas says. The inspiration for
Leonidas’s character is Harry Ettlinger.
“I was born in Germany under the Jewish faith,” says Ettlinger. “Hitler was on his way to get rid of all Jews
in all the world. My father lost his
business, and my parents realized that economic life for a Jew was no longer
possible in Germany.”
Cate
Blanchett rounds out the cast as Claire Simone, a Frenchwoman in a unique position
in Occupied France. “Claire Simone is a curator at the Jeu de Paume – once an
art museum but became a kind of depot for art looted by the Nazis,” Blanchett
explains. “But her real work goes on at
night, when she records the provenance of the works and where they were being
taken in an obsessively detailed way. She’s the catalyst for the third act of
the movie – the Monuments Men know the works are disappearing but they don’t
know where they are going, and they need her information.” Blanchett’s character is inspired by Rose
Valland, a French woman who bravely and secretly kept track of the Nazis’
systematic tracking, risking her life in the process.
“The
Monuments Men” opens February 12 in cinemas from 20th Century Fox to
be distributed by Warner Bros.
