The Boys from Brazil (film)

''The Boys from Brazil'' is a 1978 science fiction thriller film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. It stars Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier, and features James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen, Anne Meara, Denholm Elliott, and Steve Guttenberg in supporting roles. The film is a British-American co-production and is based on the 1976 novel of the same title by Ira Levin. It was nominated for three Academy Awards.

Plot

Ezra Lieberman, an aging Nazi hunter, learns of a secret organization of Third Reich war criminals and neo-Nazis holding clandestine meetings in Paraguay. Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Auschwitz doctor, is part of the organization. He leads a mysterious project to assassinate ninety-four aging, low-level, male civil servants in different countries throughout the world.

Upon investigating several suspicious deaths of civil servants, Lieberman is amazed to find that the adopted sons of the dead men, now teenagers, share an uncanny resemblance, including blue eyes and black hair. It transpires that, using samples of Adolf Hitler's DNA, Mengele has sent ninety-four cloned babies to different parts of the world for adoption, in the hopes that one or more will turn out like the original Hitler and initiate a Fourth Reich. With each baby, Mengele has attempted to recreate Hitler's personality by choosing adoptive parents similar to Hitler's own abusive father and doting mother. The deaths of the fathers were engineered to mimic Hitler's childhood.

Sensing imminent discovery, Mengele's superiors terminate the project; Mengele angrily vows to continue alone. He travels to rural Pennsylvania, where one of the Hitler clones, teenager Bobby Wheelock, lives on a farm with his parents. Mengele murders the boy's father, just prior to Lieberman's arrival. The two men struggle and Lieberman is shot and badly wounded, but manages to release the vicious family Doberman Pinscher as Dr. Josef Mengele
* Laurence Olivier as Ezra Lieberman
* James Mason as Col. Eduard Seibert
* Lilli Palmer as Esther Lieberman
* Uta Hagen as Frieda Maloney
* Steve Guttenberg as Barry Kohler
* Denholm Elliott as Sidney Beynon
* Rosemary Harris as Frau Doring
* John Dehner as Henry Wheelock
* John Rubinstein as David Bennett
* Anne Meara as Mrs Curry
* Jeremy Black as Jack Curry, Jr. / Simon Harrington / Erich Doring / Bobby Wheelock
* Bruno Ganz as Dr. Bruckner
* Walter Gotell as Capt. Gerhardt Mundt
* David Hurst as Strasser
* Wolfgang Preiss as Lofquist
* Michael Gough as Mr Harrington
* Joachim Hansen as Fassler
* Sky du Mont as Friedrich Hessen
* Carl Duering as Maj. Ludwig Trausteiner
* Linda Hayden as Nancy
* Richard Marner as Emil Doring
* Georg Marischka as Gunther
* Günter Meisner as Farnbach
* Prunella Scales as Mrs Harrington
* Raúl Faustino Saldanha as Ismael
* Wolf Kahler as Otto Schwimmer

Production

Development

The book came out in 1976 and was a best seller. In August 1976 it was announced the Producers Group (Robert Fryer, Martin Richards, Mary Lee Johnson and James Cresson) had optioned the film rights to the novel and would make the movie in association with Lew Grade. Fyer had just made ''Voyage of the Damned'' for Grade. According to producer Martin Richards, Robert Mulligan was originally offered to direct the film.

In May 1977, it was announced Laurence Olivier would star. By this stage Franklin Schaffner was attached to direct. Gregory Peck joined the film in July. Olivier had recently been ill and was taking as many well-paying movie jobs as he could get in order to provide for his wife and children after his death. Peck agreed to portray Mengele only because he had wanted to work with Olivier. Mason initially expressed interest in playing either Mengele or Lieberman. Lilli Palmer also accepted a small role just to work with Olivier. To prepare for the roles of the European clones, Jeremy Black was sent to a speech studio in New York City by 20th Century Fox to learn how to speak with both an English and a German accent.

"The emphasis of the film is not on Nazis," said producer Fryer. "It is really about cloning, a logical extension of existing facts. And it's about the hatred that two men have for each other."

Filming

Although the bulk of the film is set in South America, Fryer says actually filming in that continent was "logistically impossible" so the decision was made to shoot it in Lisbon, Portugal.FILM CLIPS: Once Around Producer Circle
Kilday, Gregg. Los Angeles Times 19 Nov 1977: b9. Filming started in Portugal in October 1977, with additional filming in London, Vienna, the Kölnbrein Dam in Austria, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The scenes that were set in Massachusetts were shot in London.

The altercation between Lieberman and Mengele took about three or four days to film due to Olivier's ailing health at the time. Peck recalled that he and Olivier "were lying around on the floor" laughing at the absurdity of having to film such a fight scene at their advanced ages.

Extended ending

A brief end segment with Bobby Wheelock in a darkroom was restored to some versions in later years. In this alternative ending, after Lieberman burns the list in his hospital bed, the scene transitions to Bobby in a darkroom developing photographs of Lieberman and Mengele, with a piercing glare coming from his steely-blue eyes as he focuses on Mengele's jaguar claw bracelet before fading to the end credits.

Release

The film had 25 minutes cut when released in West Germany, theatrical as well as all subsequent TV, video and some DVD releases. In 1999, by Artisan Entertainment, and 2009 by Lionsgate Home Entertainment, the film was released uncut on DVD in the U.S. and uncut in Germany on its DVDs.

Lew Grade, who partly financed the film, was not happy with the final result, feeling that the ending was too gory. He says he protested but Franklin J. Schaffner, who had final cut rights, overruled him.Lew Grade, ''Still Dancing: My Story'', William Collins & Sons 1987 p 248

In 2015, Shout! Factory released the film on Blu-ray.

Reception

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 69% based on 32 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site's consensus states: "Its story takes some dubious turns, but a high-caliber cast and a gripping pace fashion ''The Boys from Brazil'' into an effective thriller." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 40 out of 100 based on reviews from 7 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews.

''Variety'' wrote "With two excellent antagonists in Gregory Peck and Lord Laurence Olivier, ''The Boys from Brazil'' presents a gripping, suspenseful drama for nearly all of its two hours — then lets go at the end and falls into a heap." Gene Siskel of the ''Chicago Tribune'' gave the film one-and-a-half out of four stars and called it "old-fashioned filmmaking at its worst," with "one of the phoniest stories you can imagine." Charles Champlin of the ''Los Angeles Times'' wrote "It is penny-dreadful stuff, sumptuously executed but still as shallow as a Saturday serial. One exasperation of ''The Boys From Brazil'' is that, even accepting the biological possibility of the premise, the script by Heywood Gould never confronts any of the interesting questions raised." Gary Arnold of ''The Washington Post'' called it "admirably crafted and surprisingly effective," and "a snazzy pop entertainment synthesis of accumulating suspense, detective work, pseudoscientific speculation and historical wish fulfillment." Pauline Kael of ''The New Yorker'' wrote "If the film wants to be taken as a cautionary fable—another one!—about the ever-present dangers of Nazism, then it should leave viewers with a sense of menace that Mengele's 'boys from Brazil' constitute. Instead, we get Lieberman's fuddy-duddy humanism and vague assurances that the boys are not really dangerous. And this is supposed to be a movie." Jack Kroll of ''Newsweek'' wrote that "the thoughts aren't quite deep enough even for a thriller...Heywood Gould's reasonably suspenseful screenplay blows it by suddenly turning Lieberman into a kindly old Jewish uncle instead of a man who is willing to face the tough paradoxes of good and evil."

Some scholars have used the film's idea of controlling an individual's genetics and upbringing to illustrate the difficulties of reconciling traditional views of free will with modern neuroscience.

Accolades

;Academy Awards Nominations
* Academy Award for Best Actor – Laurence Olivier
* Academy Award for Film Editing – Robert Swink
* Academy Award for Original Music Score – Jerry Goldsmith

;Golden Globe Awards Nomination
* Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actor – Drama – Gregory Peck

;Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films Saturn Award Nominations
* Best Science Fiction Film
* Best Actor – Laurence Olivier
* Best Director – Franklin J. Schaffner
* Best Music – Jerry Goldsmith
* Best Supporting Actress – Uta Hagen
* Best Writing – Heywood Gould

;Other honors

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
* 2001: AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – Nominated
* 2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains:
** Dr. Josef Mengele – Nominated Villain

See also

* '' They Saved Hitler's Brain''
* '' River of Death''
* "Anschluss '77"

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Boys From Brazil (film), The
1978 films
1970s science fiction thriller films
American science fiction thriller films
British science fiction thriller films
Political thriller films
Films directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
Mad scientist films
Films about cloning
Films about Nazi hunters
Films about Latin American military dictatorships
Films based on works by Ira Levin
Films based on science fiction novels
Films set in Sweden
Films set in West Germany
Films set in Paraguay
Films set in Pennsylvania
ITC Entertainment films
20th Century Fox films
Films scored by Jerry Goldsmith
Films set in 1978
Films set in 1979
Films shot in Austria
Films shot in Pennsylvania
Films shot in Vienna
Films shot in Lisbon
Films shot in London
Cultural depictions of Josef Mengele
Cultural depictions of Adolf Hitler
Films about Nazi fugitives in South America
1970s English-language films
1970s American films
1970s British films