Sins of Omisson

When writing about historical figures, is there a limit to poetic license?

There’s a scene late in the new Broadway musical, Lempicka, in which fascist thugs in occupied Paris enter “The Monocle,” a lesbian bar, as the Italian Futurist artist, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti harangues its owner, Suzy Solidor, warning her of impending doom. If not friends exactly, Suzy and Marinetti are at least friendly acquaintances, and he shrilly suggests that she abandon her bar and her patrons because he can’t protect her from what is about to transpire. Fascist thugs, who look pretty chic in their black outfits (they would fit in just fine at a gallery event), wait menacingly for their orders to attack while the women in the bar mill about nervously. Suzy nobly refuses to flee and Marinetti absolves himself of the consequences. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Marinetti sneers, leaning over a balcony as the thugs proceed in slow motion to demolish the bar and pummel Suzy’s staff, customers, and Suzy herself. 

Not only did this never happen, but when the fascists came to town, the scene in Suzy’s bar was quite the opposite. Suzy Solidor, a historical figure who was depicted more or less accurately otherwise in the musical, welcomed the Nazis into her establishment. I’m all for poetic license and I understand that Hollywood and Broadway take many liberties when tackling historical subjects, but I’m still perplexed about this artistic decision. Suzy Solidor was tried and convicted as a Nazi collaborator after the war for the very reason that she gave comfort to the enemy. In the musical, she has been rehabilitated completely, and is presented as a defiant resister to the fascists.

A little background:

Lempicka tells the story of Tamara de Lempicka, a Polish artist who fled revolutionary Russia for Paris where she became a celebrated Art Deco painter. The musical traces her rise to fame in Paris and her tumultuous relationships with both her husband and her “muse,” Rafaela, a sex worker who became her model and her lover. Marinetti, the Italian Futurist, serves as a kind of hectoring mentor to Lempicka, telling her she should stop painting nudes and that representation in art is boring and won’t get her anywhere. The future is in machines, not people. A painting is merely pigment, line, and canvas. You can’t control life, he tells her. All you can control is your little square of canvas.

The real Marinetti was indeed wild for machines, whether automobiles or bombers. If you haven’t read Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, you should. I love it because it’s so wacky. Published in 1909, it reads like slapstick comedy written by someone who has snorted a mountain of cocaine, and it ends with Marinetti joyously crashing his car into a factory ditch. And this wasn’t his only manifesto. He followed up the Futurist Manifesto with the Fascist Manifesto. He even wrote a manifesto, “The Manifesto of Futurist Cooking,” in which he exhorted Italians to give up pasta (which he claimed caused laziness and lack of passion) in favor of risotto. The man was nothing if not sure of his convictions.

I loved every scene in which the musical version of Marinetti appeared, with the exception of the scene in which the fascists raid Suzy Soldor’s bar. There’s one number in which he sings in a frenzy about the future and machines that I would pay to watch again – it’s oddly mesmerizing observing faux fascists in chic black garb dance as though at Studio 54 while Marinetti preaches to Lempicka of a streamlined future in which speed (not the drug) and geometry are exalted and machines and art marry.

It's true that she and Marinetti were friends, and her paintings do embrace a vision of stylized people thrumming with the same energy as the cars and motorcycles they drive. One of her most famous paintings is a self-portrait in a Bugati (though she actually drove a less fancy Renault). Marinetti once gave a famous speech in which he proposed burning down the Louvre. Lempicka liked the idea and drove them both to the museum, but her car was towed for parking illegally and that understandably put a damper on their plan. When your car gets towed, a Futurist’s pulsating desire for innovation and subversion sputters.

Suzy Solidor was as fascinating as Marinetti and Lempicka. Loud and proud about her sexuality, she did, in fact, own a nightclub, La Vie Parisienne, which was one of the most popular spots in Paris. One of her claims to fame was her intention to be the most painted woman in the world, and she achieved this. She was painted by almost all the important artists of her time, including Picasso and Lempicka, who painted her nude. She kept all two hundred or so portraits and displayed many in the club. Well-known as a singer and as an actor, she moved in the same circles as Edith Piaf and Josephine Baker. But she was unlike Josephine Baker, who risked her life during the war working for the French Resistance. Edith Piaf, too, hid Jews during the occupation, and did whatever else she could to take a stand against the Nazis, including singing banned songs. By contrast, Solidor sang the popular song Lili Marlene, translated from the original German into French, for the benefit of her Nazi officer patrons. Far from beating up the other customers and the staff of La Vie Parisienne, in slow motion or at regular speed, the Nazis dug Suzy’s place.

After the war, Solidor was convicted of collaboration, and forbidden from any kind of public life for five years. In some ways, La Vie Parisienne was very much like Rick’s in Casablanca, a place where the resistance might sit in the audience alongside those Nazi officers. While La Vie Parisienne seems a likely spot for such a combustible mix of clientele, was Solidor secretly helping the resistance, as some have suggested? There’s nothing to back up that theory unfortunately, and certainly it would have come out at her trial. She seems, in fact, to have been very much like Rick, an ambivalent person who wants to stay out of the fray.

That’s not to say I feel unsympathetic towards her. I don’t. I’ll go so far as to say that I can imagine myself being more of a Solidor than a Baker or Piaf in a similar situation. Being openly gay meant that the Nazis might have on a whim sent her to a death camp. Still, the writers and producers of Lempicka missed an opportunity to depict her in a more nuanced light. What an interesting and complex choice it might have been if Suzy had welcomed the fascists and they had taken a seat and watched the show (as they do, if memory serves, at the end of the film Cabaret, though admittedly, there’s more than a whiff of menace in that scene). The idea of doing what you need to do to survive is at the heart of this play, after all, as well as the notion that you can only control the small bit of canvas in front of your eyes.

Of course, the musical is not about Suzy Solidor. And I can understand the allure for the creators of including such a scene. Despite its brevity, it does a lot of narrative work. Better get out of Europe before you share the same fate, Lempicka! It’s dramatic and convenient to have a bunch of Nazi thugs move your story along. Let’s set aside the ethics of presenting the audience with a patently false portrayal of someone who cozied up to Nazis in real life. Let’s say, Oh come on, it’s not that big a deal. Nazis Shmazis. This is art! No, sorry. I don’t think that’s something that should be conveniently set aside, even for artistic reasons.

I’m left wondering if the musical’s creators represented Suzy Solidor as the noble martyr because they didn’t want to be seen as critical of an otherwise sympathetic gay character. It’s possible — I would love to have heard their discussions about Solidor if they (hopefully) had any. Whatever the case, the real history has been whitewashed, despite an article by the New York Theatre Guide which promises, “The Real History Behind ‘Lempicka’ on Broadway,” but delivers precious little. Here’s a thought: perhaps people would rather not know the real history because real history is so often really complicated. On the other hand, perhaps such attitudes are ultimately patronizing of audiences and of the real people represented by the actors on the stage. I’m not saying that a play, a novel or a story needs to be a history lesson, but that there are certain events and actions that shouldn’t be elided. I believe that in this case the audience would have understood Suzy’s choice to save her much-painted skin and cozy up to the Fascists. Such a scene might have been more powerful and disturbing than calling in faux Nazi brawlers to create a simple binary of good versus evil. Did I mention that Lempicka’s mother was Jewish? If a friend of mine made such a choice as Solidor made, I would go home and pack my bags and head elsewhere. With the world as it is right now, someday I might have to do so. Or my children will.

Let’s say this is my manifesto. As creators, we should not require or be required to create likeable characters. We should not require the audience to like and approve of all our characters’ actions. We should not need to be liked by people who want us to portray idealized but false characterizations of otherwise oppressed people. We should instead create characters with whom the audience can imaginatively sympathize. And by “sympathize,” I mean, “understand.” You don’t need to overlook such an important detail as  . . . ding ding, NAZI COLLABORATOR, for us to do so. At the very least, spare us the slow motion fight scenes. 

Anyway, I’ve got tickets next month for the new Broadway production of Cabaret. See you at the Kit Kat Club.

If you care to imagine Suzy Solidor serenading Nazi officers in her club, this is your best bet:

If you’re interested in reading The Futurist Manifesto, you can do so here. https://www.societyforasianart.org/sites/default/files/manifesto_futurista.pdf

If you’re interested in Lempicka’s paintings, here they are.

https://en.wahooart.com/@/Tamara-De-Lempicka?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw2uiwBhCXARIsACMvIU3vNSaO7rdeg9i3Jh1baQb8O-4AvbkQNj_ns7xT6_THBEM7OEjYulkaAq1CEALw_wcB