Hermitage Revealed (2014)
To celebrate its 250th anniversary, this documentary tells the story of one of the world’s greatest museums, from its foundation by Catherine the Great, though to its status today as a breathtakingly beautiful complex which includes the Winter Palace. Showcasing a vast collection of the world’s greatest artworks together with contemporary art galleries and exhibitions, it holds over 3 million treasures and world class masterpieces in stunning architectural settings. This is its journey from Imperial Palace to State Museum, encompassing a sometimes troubled past, surviving both the Revolution in 1916 and the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis in 1941-44.
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Good start, but then it gets ruined
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
The Hermitage Museum, founded about 250 years ago, occupies such a huge physical space and has a collection so vast that this documentary can only provide a small sampling of the art and of the spaces it inhabits. Sweeping camera shots whisk us around inside and outside the museum, stopping here and there to pick up an interesting visual detail. There's no chance that our tour will take in all that's worth seeing, of course. But the film persuades us that we're seeing a well-chosen sample. We get to spend a fair amount of time with the museum's director, a charming and credible tour guide.Special attention goes to the work of preserving the art in the collection and to the museum's history, including the extraordinary measures taken in times of upheaval to protect the art, in one case packing up everything (a few million pieces) and moving it to hiding places in the Urals.While it's too bad we don't see more, no doubt a personal visit would also leave us with the feeling that there's only so much one can cover in one visit. Given that limitation, the film does a really good job.