Yahoo News Transatlantic's comedic take on WWII makes it stand out
Transatlantic spoilers follow.
As American diplomat Graham (Corey Stoll) and heiress Mary Jayne (Gillian Jacobs) sip champagne from coupe glasses overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, you could briefly forget the summer-goals setting is against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied France.
This is a fine balance that Netflix's war drama Transatlantic treads throughout its seven-episode run, between the moments of screwball comedy in its opulent southern France setting and the danger lurking within each uniformed official.
A humorous war drama under the shadow of Nazi Germany is undoubtedly a delicate proposition. Yet Transatlantic largely succeeds as a show rooted in tragedy but lifted by comedy, because this dynamic reflects the depiction of the refugees who Mary Jayne Gold and Varian Fry (Cory Michael Smith) are trying to evacuate.
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The committee's safe house Villa Air-Bel in Marseilles, where the show was filmed on location, becomes home to a who's who of artistic legends. We're treated to turns from Max Ernst, Hannah Arendt and Marcel Duchamp among others.
These cultural luminaries are what drive the rip-roaring spin on the true story of the Emergency Rescue Committee's (ERC) efforts to help refugees escape Vichy France. They host parties galore, gather in the villa gardens for morning yoga and pose for portraits and sculptures of one another.
When Albert Hirschman (Lucas Englander) tells Hannah about his blossoming love affair with Mary Jayne, he says that one day their German homeland "may recover". Hannah smiles and tells him: "One day, maybe. But we live now," in a nod to their attempts to find some joy under unbelievable circumstances.
The drama's sumptuous scenes are infused with a whimsical Old Hollywood feel. Show creator Anna Winger, of previous Unorthodox success on Netflix, sought inspiration from 1940s romances and screwball comedies like The Great Dictator and Casablanca, where some working on the film's production were recent German emigres.
Winger singled out these films as they were being made contemporaneously to the tragedy unfolding in World War II. "I thought it was so incredible how they were able to process it in real-time or channel it into humour and romance," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "In all these genre films, they were using all the tools of what we do to process their own trauma."
She added: "The approach was the approach. We never thought of a different way to do it. I never wanted to make a different kind of World War II drama."
There are tell-tale moments where Transatlantic has its tongue firmly in its cheek. Gillian Jacobs's exquisite wardrobe as heiress Mary Jayne alone can be enough to elicit a coy smile.
At one point she inexplicably dons an upturned shoe as a hat, paired with a dress made of literal gloves, which would not have been amiss on Lady Gaga in her meat-dress era. A bashful Graham even tells her: "That dress fits you like a glove."
Elsewhere, wanted musician Walter Mehring rivals Gene Kelly as he performs a jaunty send up of Hitler and Goebbels, complete with improvised props.
That's not to say the humour doesn't occasionally fall into tonal flip-flopping. A gentle elderly man's sudden drowning trying to flee France meets a muted reception. The interminable line of refugees waiting outside Varian's office door each morning start to feel like more of a punchline than an anguished fact.
Most jarring of all is the treatment of writer Walter Benjamin's death, which is very much grounded in real events after his party had crossed the Pyrenees on foot. While his escape from France on the show is initially celebrated by members of the ERC, his death over the border is then blown over with little real acknowledgement of the tragedy.
Instead, the group hold a raucous party at the Villa Air-Bel for Max Ernst's birthday. It's on a knife edge whether this is truly in poor taste or an attempt to hammer down what the ERC and the refugees they are trying to evacuate repeatedly try to do: cope with their grief by clinging on to the good times.
Winger has described the "uncanny" experience of filming Walter Benjamin's escape scenes from France while Russia's invasion of Ukraine unfolded, creating the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II as millions were forced to flee. While she stressed the major differences of the conflicts, she noted: "People having to leave their homes and escape – that's similar."
Through this, Winger described herself as an optimist and even a "possible-ist", which she was told the real Albert Hirschman referred to himself as. This confidence that the situation is going to improve is what is baked into Transatlantic and its double-barrelled tone.
While it may be clunky and even naive at points, the show's ability to balance unassailably silly moments with an acknowledgment of real-life horrors is what makes this story of cloak-and-dagger resistance stand out.
Transatlantic is available to stream on Netflix.
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