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.

The documentary 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 dealer fleeing Vienna for her life, to the post-war confusion and subterfuge that evoke THE THIRD MAN, to the surprise resurfacing of “Wally” on loan to the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan in 1997.

In 1997, when the heirs of art dealer Lea Bondi asked MoMA to hold the painting in New York, MoMA and the Leopold Museum dug in their heels and refused. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau issued a subpoena and launched a criminal investigation. A 13-year battle in court followed, tracking the course of a Holocaust property crime and reopening the wounds of one of the century’s worst tragedies – all at a time when the prices of Egon Schiele’s works rose faster than those of any painter on the art market.

Schiele collector Ronald Lauder found himself caught between several loyalties – he was chairman of MoMA and the founder of the Commission for Art Recovery, an organization committed to returning looted art to the Jews who lost it to the Nazis. Lauder sided with the Museum, and against the Jewish family. So did all the museums in New York – even the Jewish Museum. The “Wally” case brought the story of Nazi art loot into the open, eventually forcing museums in Europe and the U.S. to search their own collections for suspect objects. Many museums ended up returning art to Jewish families who had abandoned hope until “Wally” showed that institutions could be held accountable for holding property stolen during the Holocaust. The case was resolved in dramatic fashion in the summer of 2010, but only after the history of Schiele’s extraordinary painting was unearthed to revisit the crimes of the Holocaust and to witness the reluctance of major institutions in Europe and New York to send the “last prisoners of war” back to their families. PORTRAIT OF WALLY the documentary takes you on that journey. The 13-year war over “Wally” was more than a dispute over property stolen from Jews during the Holocaust. It was a battle over history and memory. This time, the truth won.

See PORTRAIT OF WALLY this Friday & Saturday at 5:30pm as part of New Jewish Cinema, cosponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City

Also screening Thursday and Sunday LA RAFLE And THE MATCHMAKER, Winner of the Audience Choice Award at 25th Israel Film Festival NY.

For more on PORTRAIT OF WALLY see Huffington Post

This statewide film series creatively pairs feature films with presentations by scientific experts to advance public understanding of science and technology. Co-presented by the Circle Cinema, Tulsa, and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art Film Program with support from the Coolidge Corner Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

• Screens Thursday, April 26, 7:30pm

Will Rodman (James Franco) is a scientist working within a large pharmaceutical corporation, conducting genetic research to develop a benign virus that restores damaged human brain tissue. He is committed to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s, a disease that afflicts his father, Charles (John Lithgow). Just prior to starting human trials on a promising and potentially lucrative new drug, Will’s simian test subjects suddenly display aggressive behavior. Management deems the research a failure and Will must shut down his program. Amidst the confusion of the study’s termination, Will finds himself charged with an overlooked newborn infant chimpanzee – a male, newly orphaned offspring of his most promising test subject. The young chimp, destined for greatness, is named Caesar (Andy Serkis).

Director: Rupert Wyatt 2011 USA 105min. PG-13

Jordan Tang, PhD, Member and Program Chair, Protein Studies Research Program, J.G. Puterbaugh Chair in Medical Research, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation; Adjunct Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

Janet Leigh and Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil

Guest Blog by Phil Bacharach, Editor-in-Chief, Oklahoma Gazette

Orson Welles didn’t merely make movies, he conjured them up with the panache of a circus ringmaster. He wasn’t interested in subtley and nuance. Welles never wanted you to forget that there was a brilliant lunatic at work calling the shots, and rarely is that more evident than in his 1958 film noir masterpiece, Touch of Evil.

As a corrupt police captain on the American side of a town on the U.S.-Mexico border, Welles portrays a guy bigger than life on several levels. A far cry from the dashing young man who wowed Hollywood in Citizen Kane, the Orson Welles of Touch of Evil had developed a sizable girth. And Welles wasn’t bashful about capitalizing on that heft, having himself shot at extreme low angles and munching a seemingly endless supply of candy bars. Quinlan is also that familiar noir archetype: a fallen hero. Once a tenacious lawman, he has gone to seed physically and spiritually, his speciality being the framing of evidence.

The real star of Touch of Evil is Welles’ camera. The opening tracking shot is a jaw-dropper of showmanship. In a single take that lasts more than three minutes, we begin with the closeup of a car bomb, follow the car on which it has been concealed, and wind up many blocks away with the introduction of two key characters. And that look-at-me shot — which Universal Pictures executives stupidly tarnished by slapping on credits over it – isn’t even necessarily the showpiece of the flick. Welles, a master of elaborately choreographed action and overlapping dialogue, stages two other scenes in which a great deal of action and information is imparted in long, single takes. Through it all, we have oblique angles and the dazzling cinematography of Russell Metty.

But this is cinema geek stuff. With its wickedly dark humor and boozy jazz score by Henry Mancini, Touch of Evil is also splendid fun — and trashy fun at that. A murder on the American side of the border town (that aforementioned car bomb) puts Quinlan, the investigator, at odds with Mexican narcotics officer Mike Vargas, played by a miscast (but somehow it works) Charlton Heston. As the quasi-David and Goliath encircle one another, the movie ratchets up the stakes — and the perversity. Vargas’ bride, a sexy Janet Leigh, is drugged, kidnapped and squirreled away at a motel owned by a preening drug trafficker. There is marijuana, leather-clad lesbians and Dennis Weaver as the most skittish motel clerk this side of Norman Bates. And speaking of the future McCloud, wonderful character actors abound in Touch of Evil, from Akim Tamiroff as that drug kingpin to Joseph Calleia in the film’s most soulful performance, as Quinlan’s increasingly disillusioned right-hand man.

For guest blogging inquiries, email lspears@okcmoa.com