The Boys from Brazil

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The Boys from Brazil
Original title The Boys from Brazil
Country of production UK
USA
original language English
Publishing year 1978
length 125 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Franklin J. Schaffner
script Heywood Gould
production Stanley O'Toole ,
Martin Richards
music Jerry Goldsmith
camera Henri Decaë
cut Robert Swink
occupation

The Boys from Brazil is a 1978 thriller whose plot, despite some historical characters, is fictional. The literary model - the novel The Boys from Brazil (original title: The Boys from Brazil ) - comes from Ira Levin .

action

The young Jewish journalist Barry Kohler contacts the old Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, who lives in Austria . In Paraguay, he tracked down a group of Nazis in exile, including the former concentration camp doctor Dr. Josef Mengele belongs. Kohler overhears the group and learns that Mengele wants to have 94 people murdered in Western countries. Barry Kohler can just call Lieberman and play him a tape with Mengele's voice before he is tracked down and murdered by Mengele and his henchmen.

Lieberman, who initially did not believe Kohler's revelations, began collecting newspaper clippings reporting the deaths of older men and visiting their widows. Lieberman soon realizes that all those killed have identical-looking sons, and makes the connections. Little by little he learns of Mengele's plan: In the South American jungle, he cloned 94 boys from Adolf Hitler's genes . The duplicates were offered for adoption through agencies. The couples who finally adopted the offspring were previously selected by Mengele's henchmen so that their background should be as identical as possible to that of Klara and Alois Hitler (age, age difference, occupation, style of upbringing).

In the meantime the Nazi organization decides to stop the operation and destroy all certificates because of the investigations that have become known. Mengele does not want to accept the impending failure of his work and henceforth sets out to continue the series of murders himself.

Mengele has just murdered an elderly American man when he meets Lieberman in his farmhouse. Lieberman is almost killed by Mengele. When the victim's son enters the house, Mengele recognizes the young Hitler in him and is enthusiastic. The son realizes that Mengele murdered his father and sets his hot Dobermans on him, who tear him apart. He only calls the ambulance for the seriously injured Lieberman when he promises to lie to the police. Lieberman comes to the hospital and survives.

A representative of a young Zionist association asked Lieberman to hand over the list of the names of the "test tube guides." They want to murder the "Hitler clones". Lieberman refuses to have innocent children killed and burns the list.

The final scene shows Hitler's young clone: ​​he photographed Mengele's corpse, developed the photos and smiled evil.

background

  • In 1978, when the film was screened, the real Josef Mengele was still hiding in São Paulo . Nobody knew the whereabouts of the man who had selected people into the gas chambers and murdered around 1,500 children through his pseudoscientific twin research . That is why the name Mengele became a mystery , which Ira Levin took on in his novel and this horror fiction of a future "Fourth Reich" speculated.
  • Today we know that Mengele died in Bertioga shortly after the film was released on February 7, 1979 .
  • The character of Ezra Lieberman is based on the person of Simon Wiesenthal . The corresponding - but also different - scenes were filmed in Vienna (including in Neutorgasse, the same district in which Wiesenthal ran his office at the time).
  • The shooting took place in England, Austria, Portugal and the USA.
  • A remake was planned for 2009.
  • The song "We're Home Again" was composed by Jerry Goldsmith and sung by Elaine Paige .
  • Laurence Olivier, who portrays a Nazi hunter in this film, played the concentration camp dentist in the 1976 film " The Marathon Man ". In the film "Wild Geese 2 - They Fly Again", he played Rudolf Hess, who was still alive at the time.
  • Sky du Mont is featured in the credits as Guy Dumont and Steve Guttenberg as Steven Guttenberg.

Premieres

  • USA 5th October 1978
  • Austria in July 1985
  • Germany September 12th 1985

Awards

The film received the following three Oscar nominations in 1979 , but none of the coveted film awards:

  • Best Actor: Laurence Olivier
  • Best film editing: Robert Swink
  • Best music: Jerry Goldsmith

Gregory Peck also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in Drama.

Laurence Olivier won the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor (he shared the award with Jon Voight, who received it for Coming Home ).

criticism

  • prisma-online : This is a very absurd story that Franklin J. Schaffner presented in 1978, but it is still an extremely exciting thriller with great actors and some horror and science fiction elements.
  • The film's large dictionary of people wrote: With The Boys from Brazil, Schaffner made “one of the most idiotic (and, in its mixture of historical facts and crude set pieces from Nazi ideology, most tasteless) films of the 20th century”.

annotation

  1. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 7: R - T. Robert Ryan - Lily Tomlin. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 75.

literature

Web links