[MSN] Filmmaker returns to scene of Gardner crime. 'Stolen' examines 1990 theft with personal touch

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Filmmaker returns to scene of Gardner crime
'Stolen' examines 1990 theft with personal touch
By Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff  |  May 14, 2006

Rebecca Dreyfus recalls being drawn to Vermeer's ''The Concert" when she
visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as a young adult on a trip from
her home in New York City. ''In a museum that was filled with masterpieces
and works of beauty, it was one of my favorites," she said in a recent
interview.

So it was natural that, as an established filmmaker, she would be drawn to
making a documentary, ''Stolen," about the unsolved 1990 theft of the
painting and 12 other valuable pieces from the museum.

Dreyfus weaves several broad themes into the film, which opened Friday: an
appreciation of Vermeer's 1665-1666 masterpiece, a profile of Gardner, and
an investigation into who might have pulled off the heist.

''Everyone we interviewed, from the FBI agents on the case to past museum
employees, say they feel this loss personally, and it's why they are so
hopeful even 16 years later to getting the paintings back," Dreyfus said,
speaking by telephone from New York. ''I think the same could be said for
the city collectively."

The details of the robbery, which is the largest art theft in world history,
remain vivid. At 1:24 a.m. on March 18, 1990, as Boston settled down
following a night of St. Patrick's celebrations, two men disguised as police
officers rang the bell at the museum's side door. They said they'd been
called to investigate a disturbance; the guard, believing that revelers had
gained access to the museum's gated grounds, let them in.

Once inside, the thieves tied up the guard at the desk and another who was
on his rounds, and over the next 90 minutes stole 11 paintings, including
three Rembrandts as well as the Vermeer, a Chinese vase, and an eagle-shaped
fineal that stood atop a framed Napoleonic banner. In all, the value of the
stolen artwork has been set at $300 million.

While the FBI has chased tips throughout the world, privately the
investigators say they have never received a single credible lead.

In the film, Dreyfus follows the investigative pursuit of Harold Smith, a
renowned detective who acknowledges that he has long been obsessed with
recovering the artwork. The problem is that Smith for most of his career
represented insurance companies willing to pay thieves to regain stolen art,
but none of the Gardner masterpieces were insured. So Smith, who died last
year at age 75, is relegated to trying to cajole leads out of individuals,
such ex-convicts William Youngworth and Myles Connor, who have long been
dismissed as lost causes by police investigators.

Dreyfus, who spent three years making ''Stolen," said she had learned from
her first feature documentary -- ''Bye-Bye Babushka" in 1998 -- that with a
nonfiction film one must be willing to endure unexpected twists and achingly
long delays. With ''Babushka," a portrait of three women born before the
Russian Revolution who had lived to see the fall of Communism, she had to
put off editing the movie to scramble to record the funeral of one of the
three women.

''There's an intensity to making a documentary that can be both exhausting
and exhilarating, not unlike [a reporter] chasing a big story, I'd imagine,"
Dreyfus said.

''Bye-Bye Babushka" was named best documentary at the Chicago International
Film Festival and ''Stolen" has received its share of acclaim on the
festival circuit. The film has won several awards for Dreyfus, a New York
native who majored in filmmaking at SUNY in Purchase, where she graduated in
1990.

Dreyfus is now working on a romantic comedy -- ''a comedy with an edge," she
called it -- and it will give her the welcome relief of being able to work
and complete a film with a set schedule.

Beyond the madcap pace that she and Smith had to maintain during the
production of ''Stolen," Dreyfus said, she shared his frustration that there
was no breakthrough on the case. She believes their shared discouragement
underscores the enormous sense of loss that is left from the paintings still
not being recovered.

At the Gardner, the loss is reflected in the masterpieces' empty frames.
Anne Hawley, who has served as director of the museum since 1989, has spoken
eloquently about the toll that the theft of the paintings has had on the
museum and the public. She declined a request for an on-camera interview,
Dreyfus said. Cathy Deely, museum spokeswoman, said several Gardner
officials have seen the documentary and the only response she could offer is
that the museum appreciated the ''respectful portrait" it provided of
Gardner.