SYNOPSIS:

Concept: Casablanca set in the world of high-stakes art. Overview: Failed artist Adolf Hitler has two obsessions: to cleanse Germany of “degenerate” art, and to fill it with every Nordic masterpiece known to man. Thousands of German artists flee the country, many landing in Paris mere months before the German occupation. As the Wehrmacht sweeps across Europe, the Nazis loot thousands of art collections, public and private, and send the choicest booty to the Reich. Nowhere is the pillage as rapacious as in France. By war’s end, more than 100,000 priceless artworks will have been carried off. Story: The Degenerate Art Exhibition, intended to ridicule and, ultimately, to eradicate modern art, opens in Berlin to record crowds. Serge Salomon, a suave Paris art dealer of dubious character, and Helene Frank, an idealistic young artist and daughter of the notorious Hans Frank (sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials) have a brief but fateful encounter. When, soon after, Helene flees to Paris she looks the dealer up, becomes his protégé, and with the help of forged papers assumes a French identity. With war fast approaching, the German-Jewish actress Greta Hoch, with whom Serge has fathered—and abandoned—daughter Jacoba, shows up on his doorstep. Jacoba has gone missing. Determined to redeem himself and save his daughter, Serge enters into a Faustian bargain with Otto Abetz, a family friend of the Franks soon to become Special Ambassador to Paris. Learning of Serge’s dilemma, Helene strikes a bargain of her own with Abetz: her virginity for the life of Jacoba Hoch. As the German army advances on Paris, Serge and Helene flee to Marseilles. Hunted by the SS, Helene goes into hiding. Serge, now faced with two rescue missions, forges a series of temperas for Abetz, the last of which is intercepted by Hitler’s personal art adviser, Hans Posse, and requisitioned for the visionary Führermuseum in Linz. The faux Holbein fails muster and is declared a forgery. Serge escapes with Helene into the French Pyrenees, from where she will cross into Spain and continue on to a secure and prosperous life in America. Serge, however, Parisian to his core and bound by duty to his doomed daughter, doubles back and heads for the capital. He is never seen nor heard from again.