THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL: Blu-ray (ITC Entertainment, 1978) Shout! Factory
Film
financier, Lew Grade was not at all pleased after screening the first rough cut
assembly of Franklin L. Shaffner’s The
Boys from Brazil (1978). The film, by Grade’s own tastes, was too long; the
ending – a trio of Dobermans mauling to bloody death our antagonist – bordering
on the grotesqueness of grand guignol. And something too was remiss about
Gregory Peck’s take on Dr. Josef Mengele; Hitler’s exiled ‘doctor’ in name only, who had conducted some of
the most heinous experiments on Nazi prisoners of war at Auschwitz. An extremely anti-Semitic sadist, the real
Mengele used his position at the infamous concentration camp to conduct
perverse research on live human test subjects, most of them children. The
number of victims he eventually tallied from botched injections and monstrous surgeries
is unknown. But Mengele had the wherewithal to realize such tryouts would not
go unheeded after the war. So, in 1949, through the still very active S.S.
pipeline, Mengele effectively disappeared to the underground, eventually resurfacing
in Paraguay, then later, Brazil.
Viewing The Boys From Brazil today, one can
empathize with Lew Grade’s apprehensions and anxieties. The film is an odd – at
times, affectingly wicked – amalgam of the war movie, an espionage/thriller
and, of all things, a light comedic farce; particularly Sir Lawrence Olivier’s
take on Esra Lieberman, the bumbling pursuer of the truth (his character loosely
based on Nazi-hunter, Simon Wiesenthal – a holocaust survivor). We first meet
Lieberman, distracted from fielding a legitimate phone call, in his office with
a ceiling so full of holes drizzling in water from a ruptured main, it vaguely
resembles a sieve. Olivier is a talent beyond most. But his later movie career
was generally marred by performances prone to flamboyance. Here, for reasons only
known to him, he affects condescending amusement after learning from a
Nazi-hunting novice in Paraguay that there are, indeed, exiled Nazis living and
thriving in South America. A plot is afoot. But Lieberman couldn’t care less.
Olivier persists in toddling along with an air of effete reluctance for most of
the first third of this movie, growing less weary and more dire in increments
as we methodically move into the last act finale.
But for
starters, The Boys from Brazil plays
very much with the buffoonery of a screwball comedy; Esra, suffering the nagging
insolence of a doting sister, Esther (Lilli Palmer). I’ll just go on record
here and state that any review of The
Boys from Brazil ought to first acknowledge, with solemnity and hushed
reverence, the persistent pall of those actual
atrocities committed by Mengele at Auschwitz during the war. The film is only
superficially interested in the enormity of the not-so-good Herr doctor’s
deviant notions about science, further muddied by the casting of Gregory Peck
to portray this depraved and soulless demigod. The public’s perception of Peck
as an exemplar of moral integrity is decidedly at odds with the character.
George C. Scott had originally been hired for the part but bowed out after
reading the script. Scott might have lent credence to the part.
In lieu of this,
Peck gives it the ole Joe College try; his performance invariably teetering
toward amateur theatrics; evil by proxy or by way of the clichéd shifty-eyed
cohort with menacing hand gestures and gritted teeth. To even attempt to bring
Mengele and his debauched experiments to life in any sort of meaningful way as
cinema fiction seems to fly in the face of the overwhelming human tragedy that
actually unfolded behind those heavily fortified walls at Auschwitz; the
extermination of 10,000 a day at the height of its ‘productivity’, to say
nothing of the tortures endured at Mengele’s passionate persistence to plumb
the depths of human degradation and suffrage, merely to satisfy his own twisted
fascination with genocide on an epic scale.
Perhaps to
offset the intensity that systematically builds throughout the last act, The Boys from Brazil has a queerly
lighthearted atmosphere permeating its first act, even more weirdly equipoised by
Peck’s potent mixture of faux benevolence and stern authority. Playing against
his Teflon-coated image as a man of integrity, Peck’s Mengele becomes an
outlandish angel of death. He gingerly coddles Ismael (Raul Faustino
Saldanha); a terrified Paraguayan boy whom he has discovered, helped junior
Nazi-hunter, Barry Kohler (ineffectually played by Steve Guttenberg) plant a
primitive listening device inside the embassy he is staying at, before casually
ordering one of his henchmen to kill the child. Later, Peck’s Mengele snaps like a twig at a
lavish ball, assaulting – and nearly strangling – one of his most trusted
assassins, Mundt (the inimitable Walter Gotell, more famously recognizable for
his reoccurring role as KGB Gen. Gogol in the James Bond pictures), merely
because he suspects him of betraying a directive to murder another unsuspecting
civil servant living in Pennsylvania. In fact, Mundt’s orders have already been
rescinded by a higher authority in this diabolical chain of command.
Ira Levin’s 5th
novel was a mostly straightforward thriller. Regrettably, Schaffner’s movie
takes time to hit its stride and get to the meatier part of Levin’s scenario;
namely, Mengele’s genetic cloning of 94 offspring spawned from Adolf Hitler’s DNA;
the children given to good middle-class homes scattered throughout the world.
At least in theory, any one of these carbon copies has the potential to grow up
and become the next megalomaniac. But of course, genetic compositing is only
part of the experiment. These children must also grow up under similar
lifestyle conditions to ferment their mistrust and hatred of humanity at large.
Thus, Mengele has inaugurated a dastardly plan; to assassinate every one of the
children’s adopted fathers, thus replicating the loss of Hitler’s own pater at
the tender age of thirteen. It’s a monstrous endeavor to say the least;
accepted without fail by Mundt, Fassler (Joachim Hansen), Hessen (Guy Dumont),
Trausteiner (Carl Duering), Farnbach (Günter Meisner), Kleist (Jürgen Andersen)
and Schwimmer (Wolf Kahler).
Heywood Gould does a fairly impressive job of condensing Levin’s novel into a
manageable screenplay; the production bolstered by some spectacular set pieces;
perhaps the most startling of all, Mundt’s assassination of an old colleague
atop a snowy Swedish dam (actually photographed at Kölnbrein Dam in Austria).
Another set piece takes place in a typical London flat; the smarmy Hessen seducing
a tart, Nancy (Linda Hayden), merely to gain access to her landlord, Mr.
Harrington (Michael Gough). In short order, Nancy is found by Harrington, naked
and strangled to death in her bed. In turn, Harrington is forcibly hanged by
Hessen, the pairs’ horrifically displayed remains discovered by Harrington’s
wife (Prunella Scales). The Boys from
Brazil is, of course, a product of its time; the 1970’s prone to grittier
action, while simultaneously dispensing with the glamour and subtleties of golden
age Hollywood storytelling. Viewed today, some of this bludgeoning of the old
and time-honored edicts seems woefully deliberate and over the top. As a time
capsule, however, the movie holds up remarkably well.
Immediately
following Nino Rota’s lush and fracture waltz to underscore the main titles, we
begin in Paraguay with Barry Kohler’s discovery of a plot involving dyed in the
wool Nazi exiles from the defunct Third Reich. Barry tails Mundt to a secluded
embassy, bribing the gatehouse boy, Ismael, into learning where the Mercedes is
bound. He then follows Mundt to the airport, sent to collect wily puppet
master, Eduard Seibert (James Mason). Under the cover of night, Mengele arrives
by biplane. He is immediately taken to the embassy and reunited with his cohorts,
initiating his plan against 94 unsuspecting victims scattered across the world.
In the meantime, Barry has convinced Ismael to plant a homemade listening
device in the embassy’s main room. Alas, while eavesdropping in on Mengele’s
conversation from the outskirts of the embassy grounds, the signal is
intercepted not only by Barry’s primitive recording device, but also a radio he
gave to Ismael for helping him in his plan.
Ismael is
taken to Mengele who weasels Barry’s whereabouts out of the child with the
false promise his life will be spared. Instead, upon learning the location of
Barry’s hotel, Mengele order the boy put to death. Arriving unnoticed back at
his hotel, Barry does manage to play a portion of the recorded conversation
over the telephone to Lieberman, who is more perturbed than fascinated at first.
But his concern is peaked when he hears Mengele and his henchmen burst into
Barry’s room, powerless to stop another murder. Prodded by the memory of Barry’s
untimely death, Lieberman takes up the case, determined to track down the
various civil servants who have suddenly and mysterious died under spurious
circumstances. Lieberman’s first interview is Mrs. Dorning (Rosemary Harris),
whose late husband (Richard Marner) was crushed to death in an automobile ‘accident’.
Lieberman is marginally impressed with their thirteen year old son, Erich (Jeremy
Black), who will later bear an uncanny resemblance to other children whose
fathers have similarly met with shocking demises. Erich is terse and
disrespectful toward Lieberman, encouraged by his mother to go and practice his
music lessons while she becomes more transparent in her flirtations, informing
Lieberman that her late husband was an abusive bastard.
Sometime
later, Lieberman flies to Pennsylvania where he meets the infinitely more
grief-stricken Mrs. Curry and her son, Jack (again, played with ineffectual resolve
by Jeremy Black). Lieberman is immediately struck by the child’s physical
similarities to Erich. He also begins to piece together the facts: all the dead
civil servants were 65 and were cold and domineering parents. Lieberman’s
investigation reaches a stalemate when he meets Frieda Maloney (Uta Hagen), an
incarcerated former guard at Auschwitz who also worked for an adoption agency.
Promised clemency for her testimony now, Maloney turns on Lieberman instead;
still the embittered harridan who would relish the opportunity to see him
incinerated inside one of Auschwitz’s ovens than betray her brainwashed loyalties
to the hellish past. “You're not a
guard now, madam!” Lieberman frustratingly informs her, “You are a prisoner! I may leave here today
empty-handed. But you are not going anywhere!”
A short while
later Lieberman attends the human geneticist, Professor Bruckner (Bruno Ganz)
in his office. Bruckner explains the mechanics of cloning; the removal of eggs
from a potential donor; the destruction of their original genetic matter, using
ultraviolent light. The barren tissue is then replaced by newly-injected blood cells,
the eggs reinserted into the uterus where they incubate and become embryos. It
now becomes clear to Lieberman what Mengele has been up to; the perpetuation of
a single man’s DNA to create 94 perfect clones of Adolf Hitler. In the meantime, Mengele entertains Eduard
Seibert at his isolated and heavily fortified Brazilian jungle laboratory where,
it seems, he has continued to probe the human condition through various
experiments conducted on the impoverished natives living close by. Eduard warns
that the trail is becoming much too hot to sustain Mengele’s prospects or, in
fact, preserve his autonomy. But Mengele, consumed by the terrifying art he has
wrought, plies Eduard for more time to carry out his diabolical plan.
Not long
thereafter, Eduard hosts a lavish ball for the exiled Nazis and their
sympathizers. Mengele is delighted to attend, but becomes enraged to find Mundt
amongst the revelers. Mundt ought to be plotting his next assassination. Unable
to contain his anger, Mengele violently attacks and nearly strangles Mundt as
the alarmed party goers look on. When Mundt’s frantic date, Gertrud (Monica
Gearson) pleads for a doctor, Mengele informs her of his medical credentials
before telling her, “Shut up, you ugly
bitch!” Led into a private room away from the other guests, Mengele is calmly
told by Eduard his itinerary of assassinations has been canceled. Moreover,
Eduard has seen to it that Mengele’s experiments at the remote plantation have
been indefinitely and immediately suspended. Mengele’s victims have been
disposed of and the laboratory leveled to the ground in an inferno set by mercenaries.
Refusing to surrender his crusade, Mengele now departs for the United States,
to Lancaster Pennsylvania, to murder his next victim; Henry Wheelock (John
Dehner) a reclusive dog breeder specializing in Dobermans. It won’t be easy.
Wheelock is surrounded by his adoring pets who positively ooze menace towards
any outsider in their midst. Mengele convinces Wheelock to place the animals in
an adjacent room, but then murders him in cold blood to await his son, Bobby’s
return from school.
Alas, the
conditions are rife for a showdown as Lieberman gets to the remote farmhouse ahead
of Bobby and is confronted by Mengele at the point of a pistol. He is wounded
by Mengele but narrowly escapes his own assassination after freeing the
Dobermans, who attack and badly mangle Mengele as Lieberman defenselessly looks
on. Mengele is momentarily spared his gruesome fate by Bobby, who doesn’t know
what to make of the situation of these two strangers, badly battered and lying
on the floor inside his living room. Mengele speaks with pride, attempting to sway
the boy’s empathy, “You have it within
you to fulfill ambitions one thousand times greater than those at which you
presently dream, and you shall fulfill them, Bobby. You shall. You are the
living duplicate of the greatest man in history – Adolf Hitler!” Bobby,
however, remains unconvinced. Moreover,
he thinks Mengele just plain ‘weird’. Sensing all is not lost, Lieberman
informs Bobby of Henry’s murder. The child discovers his remains tossed down
the cellar steps and sets the dogs on Mengele as retribution. The pack mauls
him to death, one animal immediately going for the jugular.
A short time
later, Lieberman, who is recuperating inside a hospital, is implored by another
Nazi hunter, David Bennett (John Rubinstein) to expose Mengele’s cloning scheme
to the world. Instead, Lieberman burns the list he has complied of children’s
names and their whereabouts. After all, without Mengele’s intervention, these
children should be allowed to grow and prosper with hearts and minds of their
own. Unlike the end of Ira Levin’s novel, there is no guarantee in the film any
of them will grow up to become the next Adolf Hitler. Then again, there is no suggestion
either made that they won’t!
The Boys from Brazil is a darkly cynical and
occasionally thought-provoking movie whose ‘cloning scenario’ must have seemed
pure science fiction back in 1978, but has since proven to ring ominously with
more than an ounce of truth in the intervening decades. The book, not the
movie, seems more plausibly allegorical than suspense-laden fiction now. Without
Levin’s context, Franklin Schaffner’s flick is little more than a jigsaw puzzled
‘who done it?” with the ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ factored in. This might have worked;
except, both Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck are so ostentatious in their
characterizations they virtually eclipse the material with rank theatrics. These
aren’t towering performances so much as supercilious gestures of glad-handed
thrombosis; the clots created by each attempting to outdo the other, neither
complimentary nor competitive; merely, a veritable mishmash of acting styles.
Olivier comes out marginally better. Peck is decidedly out of his element. His
speeches become perfunctory when anchored to platitudes; recitations that never
rise to a more sinister menace. Instead, Peck is boastful and flashy, more the
carnival barker than this bedeviled and bloodthirsty architect of a New World Order.
The Boys from Brazil is still highly
watchable. But it never quite attains a status befitting its star power. This
is its shortcoming, and indeed, its genuine shame besides.
There’s
nothing shameful about Shout! Factory’s Blu-ray release. As part of an
agreement between Shout! and ITV Films in Britain, The Boys
from Brazil sports an identical and very snappy 1080p master. Overall, the
image is generally sharp, colorful and free of age-related debris and other
artifacts. Fine detail in
hair, skin and fabrics really pops. Flesh tones look quite natural. Ditto for
film grain. The various locations are breathtaking; the frosty blue-white of
snowy in Vienna, the lush tropical splendor in Paraguay: it all looks precisely
as it should. You’re in for a treat. A few brief scenes near the end can appear
marginally soft, though not to any degree where they might distract. Although ITV has not ‘restored’ this image,
it also hasn’t applied any untoward DNR, edge enhancement or other artificially
digitized ‘clean up’. The film looks very film-like, right down to some
extremely minor gate weave. The 2.0 mono DTS audio is crisp and sonically on
very solid ground. While Nino Rota’s more intense and ominous score is at the
mercy of this slightly tinny sound field, dialogue is naturally placed, is
crisp and clean with no hiss or pop. *Please note: the back cover indicates a
runtime of 118 minutes. But this is the full 124 min. cut. The one oversight
here…no extras! Bottom line: recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
4
EXTRAS
0
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