Transatlantic Review: The True Story of The Intellectuals Saved In Marseille During World War II
Cast: Gillian Jacobs, Lucas Englander, Cory Michael Smith, Ralph Amoussou, Deleila Piasko, Gregory Montel, Corey Stoll, Moritz Bleibtreu, Alexander Fehling, Jonas Nay, Lolita Chammah
Creator: Anna Winger, Daniel Hendler
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Based on true events in the South of France during the collaborationist regime of Vichy is available on Netflix from April 7 Transatlantic. This historical series is created by Anna Winger (co-creator of Unorthodox) together with Daniel Hendler and tells the true story of a group of young heroes who helped, in the early 1940s, many refugees escape from France and save themselves. These seven episodes are inspired by the mission story of New York journalist Varian Fry, American heiress Mary Jayne Gold and the Emergency Rescue Committee, but also by writer Julie Orringer’s novel, The Flight Portfolio.
It is a true story told in Transatlantic, the new series available on Netflix in seven episodes created by Anna Winger (former co-creator of Unorthodox) together with Daniel Hendler and based on the book The Flight Portfolio by writer Julie Orringer. A story that transports us to France in the 1940s, precisely to Marseilles, where Nazism is now spreading and the borders are closed to prevent the expatriation of Jewish refugees. So, let’s go and find out more about this series together in our Transatlantic review.
Transatlantic Review: The Story Plot
This series is an ensemble narrative set in Marseille, between 1940 and 1941, when France was being overrun by the Nazis. In those months the Americans, even if they declared themselves neutral, created the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) with the support of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and sent Varian Fry (Cory Michael Smith), an intellectual who was already during the Thirties, while a foreign correspondent for a newspaper in Berlin, wrote about German discrimination and violence against Jews. However, the journalist was not alone in this humanitarian mission but was financed by Mary Jayne Gold (Gillian Jacobs) also on the move there, who personally helped the refugees, paying for their passage on the Transatlantic liners that they docked at the port.
Transatlantic opens with the first episode in which Fry and Miss Gold can without problems round-up European artists or illustrious personalities or graduates, to make them escape so that they can take refuge in the United States. But the wind is also changing on the French coast of Vichy and Varian has to scramble to find new arrangements for refugees. With the help of Paul (Ralph Amoussou) the North African concierge at the Hotel Splendide, Albert (Lucas Englader) a German Jew, and the anti-fascist Lisa (Deleila Piasko) manage to move them all to the country residence of Villa Air-Bel which belongs to his friend, and lover, Thomas (Amit Rahav). In the series, there are also antagonists who, however, will never turn out to be real villains, not even the group of passing Nazi officers, during the fourth episode, who do nothing but strut the streets of Marseilles. The head of the French national police Philippe Frot (Grégory Montel) even when he discovers where the fugitives are hidden, does nothing to capture them. Consul Patterson (Corey Stoll) never denounces anyone to the regime and neither does Mademoiselle Letoret (Lolita Chammah) who never knows if she is on the side of the Americans or the Germans.
Fry’s efforts at the ERC included saving as many people as possible, obtaining false passports, arranging escorts to guide fugitives through the Pyrenees into Spain, a safe route found by Lisa, and securing passage on direct ships. in New York, Martinique, and Morocco. In the sixth and penultimate Varian, with the help of Mr. Bingham (Luke Thompson), an employee at the consulate who falsifies visas, manages to get 257 people on board Commander DuBois’ ship, including André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and the Russian revolutionary Victor Serge. The Transatlantic finale leaves a bitter taste where Paul, Albert, Lisa, and Thomas remain in France, to be part of the resistance against the common enemy, Varian goes to Spain with Marc and Bella Chagall and instead Mary Jayne in their company of her little dog Dagobert flies away with his private plane back to Chicago.
Transatlantic Review and Analysis
Transatlantic is a choral story that stages the stubborn heroism of a group of young people who changed the lives of hundreds of people, against the backdrop of a terrifying threat that takes shape before their eyes, day after day. However, the series chooses to immediately dampen the drama of the tragedy by focusing on a comedy nuance, exploiting the presence of Gillian Jacobs (protagonist of Love and Community), who with shots of clothes changes and seductive strategies builds a role in which the final objective is mixed with a kind of naive lightness that accompanies her in all her actions, making her a character poised between the passionate and the reckless. And in this, the choice of an almost glossy staging and photography that enhances the affectedness of luxurious and bright environments helps not to exaggerate the narrative tension, which is dampened by moments that wink at a certain type of comedy. There is drama, but it is filtered by optimism that does not lead to real despair. It is the audacity, wit, idealism, romance, and vigor of youth that are at the heart of this tale.
A large parterre of well-known characters who have made the history of art, philosophy, and culture alternates between the rooms of the villa occupied by the members of the Emergency Rescue Committee. Prominent personalities ranged from Walter Benjamin, a German Jewish philosopher who committed suicide from a morphine overdose (and who, by tragic irony of fate, would have obtained an expatriation visa the following day), passing through Breton and Chagall. But not only: also, the famous philosopher Hannah Arendt, author of the essay The Banality of Evil (reflection on the horrors and conditions that made possible the inhuman actions of the Nazi leaders), the Romanian painter Victor Brauner and Victor Serge, Russian writer, and revolutionary. We also know the patron and art collector Peggy Guggenheim, who thanks to her funds helped to save her protégés.
Among the many guests of Villa Bel-Air there have been many artists and the third episode is the one that explains the beauty of art. The occasion is the arrival of the art collector Peggy Guggenheim and the birthday party of the painter Max Ernst where the guests give vent to the cry for diversity and freedom. Everyone wears clothes like works of art and all this is also thanks to the creation of the artistic team directed by costume designer Justine Seymour. Impossible not to notice Miss Gold’s Haute Couture dress made up of gloves that refer to surrealist art and the designer Elsa Schiaparelli, one of the most influential fashion figures of that era. Although the influence of Surrealism is rarely felt within the series’ actual text, the end credits, shot in grainy black and white, capture an intersection of Surrealism and German Expressionism in a way as playful as an amateur motion picture.
This self-contained series is an excellent successful product both from the visual side and in the choice of shooting in Marseilles, but also for the more fictional part of the plot taken from the book Julie Orringer. To conclude, Transatlantic could have used more of that eccentricity and more evocation of art and the historical avant-gardes of the period in which the story is set. Anna Winger and Daniel Handler’s historic series runs for all seven episodes in its Hollywood-style romanticism, with evasions and escapes, which also refer to a classic like Casablanca, but with comedy nuances that reflect the sense of fun without ever taking yourself seriously.
Transatlantic Review: The Last Words
The Transatlantic series revolves around the true story of a group of young men who, in 1940s Nazi-occupied France, rescued hundreds of refugees wanted by the Germans. Focusing on a story that doesn’t linger too much in the drama while remaining on an entertainment tone, the series is enjoyable even if, unlike the exploits of its protagonists, not memorable. Transatlantic is a historical series that manages to talk about real events between 1940 and 1941 in Marseilles with a light tone and fluency. A way to discover the true story of the Emergency Rescue Committee and Varian Fry who with Mary Jayne Gold saved the lives of numerous Jewish refugees and many famous artists who had taken refuge in Villa Bel-Air.
