Themes: Mad Scientists, Conspiracies, Crimes Against Humanity
Main Cast: Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen
Release Year: 1978
Country: US
Run Time: 130 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
This film of Ira Levin's novel The Boys from Brazil wastes no time in establishing the fact that several seemingly unrelated men have been mysteriously murdered. Elderly Jewish Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), brought into the case when the clues seem to point to a neo-fascist plot, traces the trail of evidence to Paraguay. Here he finds an unregenerate Auschwitz doctor, patterned on Joseph Mengele and played by -- of all people -- Gregory Peck. Lieberman discovers that the murdered men had all fathered sons who were identical -- the results of a cloning experiment, designed to create a race of incipient Hitlers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
The Boys from Brazil is a solid, tense, and thoroughly respectable thriller. The cast is excellent all around, with distinguished leads Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier turning in performances that live up to their reputations. The time-honored structure of the arch-nemesis duel works well here, and, perhaps due to the age of the principals, the movie focuses on suspense and mystery rather than merely action. Boys was directed by the late, great Franklin J. Schaffner, whose mere 13 features included several milestones of American cinema, including Planet of the Apes, Patton, and Papillon. Though The Boys From Brazil is not quite up to the level of those classics, it certainly succeeds in keeping the viewer's attention. Based on Ira Levin's novel, the story is intriguing and unique, to say the least. Its theme of cloning has more resonance with every passing day than it ever did at the time of the film's release, and may lend a permanent sense of topicality to the film. Moreover, the film's ultimate message -- human beings are more than just "nature or nurture" -- is a pleasantly humanist one, affirming the need for free will as we head into an increasingly uncertain future. Olivier, editor Robert Swink, and composer Jerry Goldsmith all earned Oscar nominations for their work. ~ Matthew Doberman, All Movie Guide
Peter Lamont - Art Director, Anthony Mendleson - Costume Designer, José Lopez Rodero - First Assistant Director, Franklin J. Schaffner - Director, Robert Swink - Editor, Robert Fryer - Executive Producer, Jerry Goldsmith - Composer (Music Score), Gil Parrondo - Production Designer, Henri Decaë - Cinematographer, Robert Fryer - Producer, Stanley O'Toole - Producer, Martin Richards - Producer, Elaine Paige - Singer, Derek Ball - Sound/Sound Designer, Heywood Gould - Screenwriter, Ira Levin - Book Author
The Boys from Brazil is a 1978 thriller film made by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and produced by Stanley O'Toole and Martin Richards with Robert Fryer as executive producer. The screenplay, by Heywood Gould, is based on the novel of the same name by Ira Levin. (The 1993 film with the same name is not related.) The music score was by Jerry Goldsmith and the cinematography by Henri Decae. As of August 2006, an updated remake of this film is in the works with New Line Cinema, featuring director Brett Ratner and screenwriters Richard Potter and Matthew Stravitz. Production was expected to start in early 2008.[1]
When well-intentioned young Barry Kohler stumbles upon a secret sect of Third Reich war criminals holding clandestine meetings in Paraguay, he alerts Ezra Lieberman by phone. Lieberman is well aware that Dr. Mengele is alive and in hiding, but is highly skeptical otherwise.
Kohler is discovered and killed. Lieberman begins following the trail of the Nazis, traveling throughout Europe and North America to investigate the suspicious deaths of a number of civil servants. He meets several widows and is amazed to find an uncanny resemblance in their adopted, black-haired, blue-eyed sons.
Lieberman's investigations unnerve Mengele's superiors, who demand that he abort his scheme. But the doctor has spent twenty years pursuing his plans, having acquired skin and blood samples from Hitler to use as DNA in a plan to recreate the Führer body and soul and to fulfill the aims of the Third Reich. For him it is now or never. Mengele ends up traveling to rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where one of the young Hitler clones lives on a farm. There he murders the boy's father, a dog breeder, and lies in wait for Lieberman, who is on his way.
They fight savagely until Mengele gains the upper hand. Mengele then taunts Lieberman with his hopes of turning the world into one run by a Hitler clone. With one desperate lunge, Lieberman reaches the closet where the dogs are held and turns them loose. The dogs corner Mengele. At that point, young Bobby, now revealed to be one of the Hitler clones, arrives home from school. It is Mengele's first look in person at one of his "boys". Bobby can tell from the carnage that something is amiss. Lieberman tells him that Mengele has killed his father and to notify the police. Bobby sets the pack of vicious Doberman dogs on Mengele, relishing his bloody death and avenging his father's murder.
Lieberman is encouraged by fellow Nazi hunters to expose the scheme and turn over a list identifying the names and whereabouts of the other "boys from Brazil" from around the world, so that they can be systematically killed before growing up. But they are mere children, in Lieberman's opinion, so he destroys the list. The film ends eerily with Bobby happily developing the photos he took during the dog attack.
^ Olivier plays a Nazi-hunter in this film, whilst in the previous Marathon Man (1976), he played Dr. Christian Szell, a Nazi physician modeled after Mengele (who was still living during the filming of both movies) and nicknamed the "White Angel." Mengele was nicknamed the "Angel of Death" and the "White Angel."
