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STOLEN
Directed by: Rebecca Dreyfus.
Produced by: Susannah Ludwig.
Written by: Sharon Guskin.
Director of Photography: Albert Maysles & Rebecca Dreyfus.
Edited by: Markus A. Peters & Liz Ludden.
Music by: Peter Golub.
Released by: International Film Circuit.
Country of Origin: USA. 84 min. Not Rated.
With: Blythe Danner, Campbell Scott, Tracy Chevalier & Harold Smith.

Technically, Stolen’s focus is on the as-yet-unresolved theft of 13 masterworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 – or at least it is in the beginning. A small Boston gallery created by the quirky socialite in the late 1890’s and populated with a select handful of works by Degas, Rembrandt and other masters, it seems that, to its devotees, the only thing more loved than the odd museum is the museum’s odd robbery. Rebecca Dreyfus opens her documentary with a phone call from Harold Smith, a 75-year-old art detective with an eye patch and a face ravaged by a lifelong battle with skin cancer, who sees her film as the perfect opportunity to reopen the investigation that had become his personal quest. Smith’s interest is understandable – and apparently shared by many – since not a single painting has been recovered in over a decade and a half, unusual for a heist with such a bevy of famous paintings (including one, The Concert, only one of 35 works known to still exist by Vermeer).

From there, we listen to forlorn art critics, Scotland Yard detectives, two renowned art thieves and a host of other obsessives. Amid heaving sobs, one middle-aged museum attendant claims he came to the museum as a small orphan when a long-deceased Gardner said to him, “You’re mine now,” as vocalized through her John Singer Sergeant portrait. A journalist who says, wistfully, that he “lost a year of [his] life to the Gardner case” likens the heist to rape.

But these otherwise fascinating interviews are poorly integrated. Letters between Gardner and her acquisition agent, read with distracting affectation by Blythe Danner and Campbell Scott, are sprinkled throughout, paralleling Gardner’s own involvement in art smuggling and the art world’s unseemly underbelly with the 1990 burglary. But the comparison is unspoken. Dreyfus seems satisfied to make allusions and then move on to her next segment, when her film could vastly benefit from outright discussions.

Smith, who died during post-production, spent his last weeks still working on the case, meaning the search that Dreyfus spends the bulk of her film documening only results in false leads and questionable links to the alleged culprits. With that in mind, the decision to include so much of it in such a short film seems unproductive. It doesn’t help matters that this main focus is splintered by interviews and clustered segments that bare no relation to whatever action Smith is taking, leading to a continuous “Meanwhile, back at Gardner HQ…” feeling. Brimming with stock footage that even MTV’s Real World editors would find irrelevant and so many simplistic post-production effects that make it seem like Dreyfus has never heard of iMovie (much less noise reduction software), Stolen wastes its pool of excellent material on uneven filmmaking. Zachary Jones
April 21, 2006