The Case of the Stolen Paintings

François Margolin's new film, L'Antiquaire (which might be called 'The Art Dealer' if and when it is released in the English-speaking world), is fiction. But it is also a meditation on one of the great French scandals of the last 65 years: the dispossession of Jewish art collectors during the Second World War and the failure, after the war, to make more than token restitution for the stolen art works. Margolin, like George Clooney in last year's Monuments Men, bases his tale on a true story--in...