The Boys from Brazil

• Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
• October 6, 1978 (US) / March 15, 1979 (UK)
• Based on the 1976 novel The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin

A Nazi hunter in Paraguay discovers a bizarre plot to begin anew the Third Reich.

Driving events here, The Boys from Brazil is built around secret Nazi science along with long-standing conspiracy theories stemming from the era of WWII. A knowledge of post WWII history helps when watching but it’s much more rewarding if you view this largely ignorant of such information.

Whatever level of uncertainty you have The Boys from Brazil hooks you. It piques your curiosity enough to stick around to find out what’s going on. That and the appearance of Steve Guttenberg before he became famous from Police Academy. He is one of several people who make it into the opening credits with their time in the movie amounting to barely a cameo.

I don’t know what it is but James Mason is a perfect Nazi. His German accent as Col. Eduard Seibert is virtually nonexistent but he’s ideal as a person that casually believes in the Nazi cause. There is no passion but rather it is just his job. Banality of evil I guess.

This is in can contrast to Gregory Peck’s Josef Mengele who is a diehard believer in resurrecting the Third Reich and has begun a rather audacious plot to not only resurrect the Third Reich, but do it with a duplicate-physically and psychologically-of Adolf Hitler by placing numerous clones (all played by Jeremy Black) in homes with similar family structures as that of a young Hitler.

Peck gives Mengele a fanatical and almost religious zeal to what he’s doing. There’s a bit of bluster and perhaps even bombast in his delivery of lines. I think what unintentionally comes across is Peck viewed this as a little silly. Other actors in the movie were treating their parts more seriously than he did.

Laurence Olivier was one of the greats though as Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman his character can appear surprisingly uninterested in hunting Nazis when shocking and convincing info is presented. I get that. He thinks the guy is going off on his own and perhaps ill-informed, but he seems very willing to push away anything even when Lieberman is looking into what Steve Guttenberg’s Barry Kohler claimed. It’s weird. It’s to slow up the story and I hate when filmmakers do stuff like that. It’s not a logical hindrance, but rather an illogical roadblock to extend runtime.

Knowing what could be coming if nothing is done, Lieberman takes the moral high ground which leads to one of those “We’re screwed” endings. Another young Nazi hunter (John Rubinstein) who has connected with Lieberman wants to hunt the Hitler clones down to be safe but Lieberman burns the list with their names and addresses because they’re kids. I think if somebody is trying to re-create Hitler you might wanna take steps to make sure Hitler is not re-created even in they are kids in homes meant to create an individual with Hitler’s psychological composition.

This is not a film filled with action sequences. The only real fistfight we get is between two old men rolling around the floor of an even older farmhouse. A little silly. Even Gregory Peck later admitted it was a little silly and that both of them started laughing. I think that moment could’ve been handled some other way. It certainly exemplifies their anger and hatred towards one another but these two significantly older men getting in fisticuffs was a tough swallow.

Lieberman follows clues to put together what even he admits is unbelievable yet the world that’s created by director Franklin J. Schaffner makes it feel possible. Mengele from the opening is experimenting on a small child who he appears to be trying to convert to the perfect physical white boy. When last seen alive the boy has blue eyes and there’s no way he should have blue eyes. Small pieces help strengthen the story.

The Boys from Brazil is a great bit of filmmaking. You follow along as the mystery is revealed with revelation after revelation. It keeps you watching because of the acting and the story and not based on random action sequences. You won’t be able to walk away.