What do Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst have in common? They were all smuggled out of Vichy France by a secret Emergency Rescue Committee, which was run by American journalist Varian Fry and backed by wealthy benefactors including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
It’s a story that’s barely believable, but completely true: Fry and his friends hid people who were in danger (many of whom were Jewish) in a villa, before smuggling them out of the country, often over the border to Spain. When they could, the committee would also use contacts at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the American Vice Consul in Marseille to issue (both legal and illegal) visas to help political dissidents, artists and intellectuals get out.
In the end, Fry’s efforts saved between 2,000 and 4,000 people and he was one of the first five Americans honoured as a ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ (an honour given to gentiles who risked their lives in the Seond World War to save Jewish people) by Israel.
This incredible story (which is itself based on Julie Orringer’s novel The Flight Portfolio) is now being retold in a new Netflix seven-parter, Transatlantic. But despite the series being entirely watchable, so much of this astounding plot gets lost along the way.
It means that a two-part approach is best for assessing the show: for those interested in the plot above, frustratingly, Transatlantic does not deliver on its thrilling premise. Everyone in the series is too good looking, everything is a little too glossy, and the series has a somewhat kind of breezy, screwball-esque quality which not only zaps any real momentum out of its pacing, but also seems at odds with the seriousness of its actual storyline, which loosely follows the real-life account of Fry’s efforts to shift people out of France.
Then there’s an issue with the number of characters in the show. Transatlantic focuses on journalist Fry, who is played by a cartoonishly handsome Cory Michael Smith, and his relationship with collaborator heiress Mary Jayne Gold (Gillian Jacobs) and her friend, Jewish refugee Albert Hirschmann (Lucas Englander). But there are at least half a dozen secondary characters such as hotel workers, artists, refugees, secretaries, diplomats, co-conspirators, lovers and plenty more after that, in the very packed cast.
Writers Anna Winger and Daniel Hendler, who worked together on the Emmy-winning Jewish drama Unorthodox, could have done a much better job of sewing these multiple lives together, and of fleshing out the different roles.
As it stands, it’s difficult to feel invested in so many people, and then those characters that we do see more of such as Fry, Gold and Hirschmann, come across as rather vapid and their relationships less than believable.
That said, for those looking for a laid back, Sunday night period drama, Transatlantic could fill that hole. The show is totally watchable. Plus, the series, which has been directed by Mia Meyer, Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond, is set in the south of France – so it’s full of glorious sunshine, cobbled streets, blue ocean and gorgeous buildings. The cast is bedecked in lovely Forties outfits that look great inside the stunning villas and hotels.
But it’s a crying shame that Transatlantic’s real story of extraordinary bravery somehow gets lost among all the pizzazz and the frivolity and isn’t a more thought-provoking take on Varian Fry’s remarkable efforts.
