Transatlantic (2023)

            “Transatlantic” is a Netflix seven-part limited series set in Marseilles, France in WWII.  It is based on the novel “The Flight Portfolio” by Julie Orringer.  The series has the qualifier that it is  “a work of fiction inspired by real people”.  The series has several famous people in it and some people who deserve to be famous.  It is the tale of the American Emergency Rescue Committee which helped anti-Nazis and Jewish refugees.

            The movie is set in Marseilles after the fall of France.  Marseilles was in Vichy France, so technically it was out of Nazi control.  However, the Vichy government collaborated with the Nazis so although many refugees fled there, they were not safe.  They needed help to get out of France.  Mary Jayne Gold (Gillian Jacobs from “Community”) is a wealthy heiress who uses her daddy’s money to back the Emergency Rescue Committee.  She is a do-gooder who finds the danger exhilarating.  Mary Jayne works with Varian Fry (Cory Michael Smith) who is a journalist that heads the committee.  They are based in a hotel. At first, they help refugees get on ships in the harbor, but that is soon shut down.  The Vichy authorities are cracking down on all “undesirables.”  The police chief is one of the villains.  Later, the obligatory Nazi baddie arrives.  Finishing the villainous trio is the American consul who is a slime ball.  He represents the anti-semitism of the U.S. government.  Plan B calls for smuggling them across the Pyrenees to Spain.  The intellectuals and artists that are saved include Max Ernst, Marc Chagall and his wife, Hannah Arendt, and several others who have Wikipedia pages.  Midway through the series, the plot has exhausted the get the refugees out escapades and moves on to a prison rescue and resistance activities. 

            “Transatlantic” is a series that should appeal to both male and female viewers.  The cast is not made up of A-listers, but they do a good job.  Obviously, Gillian Jacobs stands out and she anchors the series nicely.  Her character is intriguing.  She is the proverbial rich girl with a conscience and a desire to help others.  And the danger becomes addictive.  She has an able crew that is heterogeneous.  Varian is gay.  There is a British agent who is female.  A black hotel worker is a resistance leader.  And then we have the historical figures like Chagall.  Not all of the celebrity refugees escape.  The series has its lighter moments, but overall it is serious in depicting the plight of Holocaust escapees and anti-Nazi intellectuals

            After the first couple of episodes, I was wondering how the series was going to become suspenseful.  You can’t just make seven episodes centered on Gillian Jacobs and cute dog.  I would watch that, but I wouldn’t recommend it.  However, it nicely ramps up, albeit with plot developments that “enhanced” the history of the Emergency Rescue Committee.  There are soap opera elements, but the romances don’t bog it down.

            The main reason to watch “Transatlantic” is it brings to light some non-military heroes.  Most Americans today do not know that the U.S. before Pearl Harbor did little to help Jews and anti-Nazis whose lives were being threatened and taken.  The Vichy France government may have collaborated, but the Roosevelt administration ignored.  It was disgraceful.  But there were Americans who went against their governments policy and refused to let evil win without a fight.  People like Mary Jayne Gold and Varian Fry

GRADE  =  B

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:  The American Emergency Rescue Committee was formed in New York after the fall of France in 1940.  It was supported by Eleanor Roosevelt.  It was created by intellectuals to help refugee anti-Nazi writers and artists and Jews.  Varian Fry was one of the founders.  He graduated from Harvard a year late as he was held back because of a prank.   He became a journalist.  He was a foreign correspondent in Berlin in 1935.  There he witnessed the mistreatment of the Jews.  “I saw one man brutally kicked and spat upon as he lay on the sidewalk, a woman bleeding, a man whose head was covered with blood, hysterical women crying. . . . Nowhere did the police seem to make any effort whatever to save the victims from this brutality.”   He became an ardent anti-Nazi.  “I could not remain idle as long as I had any chances at all of saving even a few of its intended victims.”  He raised money for anti-Nazi movements before helping found the ERC.  Fry was 32 years old when he started.  He kept it up for 13 months until he was arrested by French police and exiled.  He returned to America.  He was the first of five Americans to be recognized by Israel as a “Righteous Among the Nations”.

            Fry was in Marseille when France fell.  The port was in Vichy France.  Officially, Vichy France was independent from occupied France, but in reality it was a puppet government that collaborated with the Nazis.  The government agreed to turn over anyone the Nazis demanded.  Many refugees fled to Marseille, thinking they could take a ship to a free nation.  Vichy police tried to prevent that, so Fry and his organization had to sneak people out.  They established headquarters in a hotel.  His cohorts included Mary Jane Gold.  Mary Jane was an heiress who had been spending her time flying her plane all over Europe to enjoy the life of the rich.  She was in Paris when the Germans invaded France.  She fled to France and joined Fry.  She was a do-gooder who was willing to spend enormous amounts to help refugees.  (I found no evidence that her father cut off her money.)  She was always seen with her little dog Dagobert. 

            The key to getting people out of Marseilles was providing them with visas.  Although the American consul Hugh Fullerton (Patterson is based on him and may be a bit more diabolical, but Fullerton was definitely an asshole) reflected the position of the Roosevelt Administration which was neutral and thus unwilling to give aid to refugees.  Gold did not seduce Fullerton.  Fullerton’s  Vice Consul Hiram Bingham IV secretly gave many visas to the ERC.  He was pulled back to America when the Vichy government put pressure on the U.S. State Department.  It did not take long for the authorities to shut down sneaking refugees onto ships.  An ex-French Foreign legionnaire and local gangster helped the ERC.   When the hotel was raided, the ERC switched to a chateau in the country. Fry was a closeted homosexual, but he did not have a relationship with the chateau owner.  The house was Bohemian, like many of its occupants.  Under one roof were celebrities like Marc Chagall (Modernist artist) and his wife, Marcel Duchamp (Cubist painter and sculptor), Max Ernst (Surrealist painter), Hannah Arendt (historian and political philosopher), and Peggy Guggenheim (art collector). 

             After operations from the hotel were shut down, the ERC needed another way to get the refugees out of France.  Albert Hirschman, a German economist who fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the republicans, mapped out a route over the Pyrenees.  The ERC shifted to helping relatives to get to neutral Spain.  Lisa Fittko, a resistance fighter, made 2-3 trips per week for seven months.  The series goes off the historical rails when it introduces the prisoner escape sequence.  None of that happened.

             It is estimated that the ERC saved over 2,000 refugees.  The Emergency Rescue Committee became part of the International Rescue Committee in 1942.  It still continues its humanitarian efforts today.