arts & culture
New Film Brings to Life
‘Largest Single Work of Art
Created by a Jew During the Holocaust’
does neither artist justice, distinguish-
ing between the youthful directness
of Frank’s writing as an adolescent in
hiding with the more mature, sophis-
ticated representations made by
Salomon as a young artist.

Sarah Rosen | New York Jewish Week via JTA
W hile hiding from the Nazis, the
German Jewish artist Charlotte
Salomon began a series of autobi-
ographical paintings and texts with
a painfully simple description of her
aunt, and namesake’s, suicide: “Scene
1: 1913. One November day, a young
girl named Charlotte Knarre leaves
her parents’ home and jumps into the
water.” Intense and memorable, that image
is the launching point for “Life? or
Theatre?” — a series of hundreds of
gouaches Salomon made between
1940 and 1942. Best described as
an “autobiographical play,” it features
personal stories illustrated with vibrant
paintings and cues for music. Salomon,
in her 20s when she made the body of
work, called it a “singspiel” — a play
with music.

And now, a new fi lm directed by
French sisters Delphine and Muriel
Coulin delivers a cinematic representa-
tion of her best-known work. “Charlotte
Salomon: Life and the Maiden” made
its world premiere at Lincoln Center on
Jan. 18 as the centerpiece of the New
York Jewish Film Festival.

The fi lm lies somewhere between
cinema and art installation: Aside
from a brief opening and conclusion,
‘This is my whole life’
Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) and her grandparents prior to 1940
Salomon’s expressive paintings take
up most of the screen time. Sound
design brings the paintings to life, as
does the music Salomon indicated in
her original script, along with text read
by the actress Vicky Krieps (“Phantom
Thread,” “Corsage”), who plays protag-
onist Charlotte.

“We didn’t want to make a pure
documentary of her,” said co-direc-
tor Delphine Coulin. “What had never
been done was to make a true fi lm
with the painting, the music and the
text, and to imagine what Charlotte
was visualizing when she was painting
… Because the neighbors said they
could hear her singing while she was
painting.” Salomon, who died at Auschwitz
at age 26 in 1943, is something of a
modern-day cult favorite among art
lovers and Jewish historians. In a 2017
New Yorker article, writer Toni Bentley
notes that “Life? or Theatre?” is “the
largest single work of art created by a
Jew during the Holocaust.” She is also
sometimes compared to Anne Frank.

Critics have noted this comparison
Born in Berlin in 1917, Salomon grew
up in a cultured German Jewish family.

Her mother died when she was 8 or
9. She studied at the German capital’s
prestigious Academy of Arts until the
Nazis’ rise to power made it impossible
for her to continue. In 1938, her father,
a surgeon, spent a brief period in an
internment camp; after his release,
he sent his daughter to stay with her
grandparents in the south of France,
where he hoped she’d be safe.

After Salomon’s
arrival at
Villefranche-sur-Mer in 1939, her grand-
mother attempted suicide and eventu-
ally died. Only then did Salomon learn
that her mother had died by suicide as
well, and that the women in her family
had a history of depression (though it
isn’t covered in the fi lm, there is some
evidence that her grandfather may
have been abusive).

In “Life? or Theatre?” Salomon writes:
“My life began when my grandmother
See Film, page 23
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