Having fun is important to me. I also regularly wear glasses, so you’ll understand why this is a character trait that sometimes confuses people. But nevertheless I persist, bravely challenging stereotypes and breaking paradigms.
I only bring this up, the fact that I’m fun and funny,1 because honestly, the way the world’s been going, I’ve been starved for a good bit of comedy I can really sink my teeth into. You know, given the fascism and the genocide and the rising sea levels of it all, not to mention the fact that I’m rewatching The Americans, and no series in the last decade has even come close to generating Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys’s onscreen chemistry.2 It’s been rough.
So when I heard about this Louvre heist ... readers, I unclenched my jaw and dropped my shoulders for the first time in weeks. Who needs yoga or deep breathing exercises when we have French heists of Napoleonic jewels to read about. Not only a victimless crime, but one with positive externalities, because look at us now, brushing up on our French history and museum security protocols!
(If you are an employee of, say, Interpol, I just wanna say that yes, I do so totally believe that stealing is Bad™ and no, grand-scale thefts never hold any entertainment value for the general public. None whatsoever. In fact, if I had been at the Louvre, it wouldn’t have went down like it did. Alas, as it is, I have several alibis placing me not-in-France on Saturday.
Etc, etc.)
The thieves, who broke into the Louvre’s Apollon gallery at around 9.30 on Saturday morning (a classic case of the early bird getting the worm), reportedly took just four minutes to steal eight nineteenth-century pieces of historic and so-called “priceless“ (although: the Paris prosecution team handling the investigation noted they were worth an estimated €88 million … so … not that priceless, then) jewelry, including a tiara belonging to Napoleon III’s wife Empress Eugénie and an emerald necklace and earrings belonging to Empress Marie Louise (for the record: both ladies long deceased).3
Like, if you’re in a rush and don’t have that much room in your bag, I feel like these are good items to take with you. Squish them in there.
Classy thieves, is what I’m saying, even if they did manage to drop a couple of the stolen pieces (including the above crown) on their getaway. Bit disappointing, that. Arsène Lupin would never.
Considering the loneliness epidemic and the anti-intellectualism we find ourselves traversing as a society, it’s nice to see a group of friends get together and make museum plans for a Saturday morning. Gives a girl a bit of hope.
Like I suspect many other people, I guess I harbor a tiny bit of fascination with art heists—conceptually speaking, of course. It probably started at some time during my government-prescribed Audrey Hepburn era, when I went through her filmography like it was my job, ticking off each movie like I wasn’t a person perilously close to failing AP Calc.
The whimsical, quirky, and absolutely ridiculous film I’m talking about is, of course, How To Steal a Million (1966), starring the aforementioned Hepburn and Peter O’Toole at the height of his mischievousness (complimentary).4 These two have so much fun in this movie, which the Internet tells me received mixed reviews at the time of its release, that they succeed in charming the crime off of heisting (again, note to Interpol et al: theoretically).
If you haven’t seen the William Wyler flick, I do suggest you add it to your list. For consumption on a rainy weekend afternoon, perhaps, when the logistics of planning your own little heist are too cumbersome to ponder.
Maybe the fascination with this particular subject matter runs in the family, though, because for a period of time my brother, who (1) used to live in Boston and (2) is subscribed to this newsletter but reads it approximately 2.5 times a year, would regularly bring up the famous (as he insisted) and largest (id) art heist in history, which took place in Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990.
Now, I’ve checked, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a real place (as is Boston), and the bandits did make out with about $500 million worth of artwork. The case has never, as my brother repeatedly informed me, been solved. (Now that’s what I call professionalism.) If you’d like to know more, sources (my brother) tell me there’s a Netflix documentary.
And it was indeed my brother, I should add, who inspired this writing, by calling me the other day solely to wax poetic (and, I repeat, theoretic) about the nuances behind the Louvre heist (“on scooters, Clara! They got away on scooters!”). If whoever’s working on the forthcoming documentary wants to interview him as a heist expert, feel free to DM me.
This is what happens, I suppose, when you expose your impressionable children to Ocean’s Eleven (2001) too young. The perils of romanticization: instead of criminal activity, we see the intrinsic beauty of camaraderie.
P.S. All of this is made somewhat funnier, je suis terribly desolée to say it, by the fact that Emmanuel Macron is not currently a man anyone could accuse of being popular in France. Although honestly, this might just be the distraction he’s been looking for. Feel free to take that conspiracy theory and run with it, btw.
P.P.S. If you’re one of the dozen people who read my Slow Horses recaps, I do promise the next one is coming soon. Like, I do feel like Sisyphus working on those, but it is coming.
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“and humble,” I hear someone grumble from the back, but it’s like, ok, should I lie? It’s okay to lie now?
Personally, I think more co-stars should fall in love and ditch their respective spouses.
I originally had written a cattier parenthetical, back when I thought the jewels were insured, which made the “priceless” allegations even more drôle, but it turns out that as the Louvre is a national museum, the art within it is considered state property, and thus, unless it leaves the museum for a loan, etc., it legally cannot be privately insured. Cattiness averted.
The trick to watching any movie starring O’Toole, by the by, is to simply avert your gaze anytime he opens his eyes. They are too blue and resplendent to stare at directly, even on the screen. Medusa wishes.
Chef's kiss for both French art heists (or any art heists really) and your piece. I feel much less guilty about enjoying every detail of this story of jewels nicked (!) from The Louvre (!!) before croissant-o-clock. Honestly, delicieux.
I can’t look away the heist is just too chic and so French. Fencing jewels in the year 2025- I have been revived. (But yes Big Theft is “bad”)