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The Boys from Brazil (film)

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The Boys from Brazil
Theatrical release poster
Directed byFranklin J. Schaffner
Screenplay byHeywood Gould
Based onThe Boys from Brazil
by Ira Levin
Produced byMartin Richards
Stanley O'Toole
executive
Robert Fryer
StarringGregory Peck
Laurence Olivier
CinematographyHenri Decaë
Edited byRobert Swink
Music byJerry Goldsmith
Production
companies
ITC Entertainment
Producer Circle
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release date
  • October 6, 1978 (1978-10-06)
[1]
Running time
125 minutes[2]
CountriesUnited Kingdom
United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$12 million[3][4]
Box office$19,000,000[5]
$7,600,000 (rentals)

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 Pinschers. The trained dogs corner Mengele until Bobby arrives home from school.

Mengele proudly reveals the boy's origins, but Bobby doubts the story. Finding his father murdered, Bobby instructs the dogs to kill the Nazi doctor, watching coldly as the man dies.

Later, while recovering from his injuries in hospital, Lieberman burns Mengele's list of the names and whereabouts of the other boys, declaring that the clones are innocent children who may yet grow up to be harmless. The final scene shows Bobby Wheelock's fascination with his freshly-developed photographs of Mengele's corpse.

Cast

Production

Development

The book came out in 1976 and was a best seller.[6] 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.[7] Fyer had just made Voyage of the Damned for Grade.[8] According to producer Martin Richards, Robert Mulligan was originally offered to direct the film.[9]

In May 1977, it was announced Laurence Olivier would star.[10] By this stage Franklin Schaffner was attached to direct.[11] Gregory Peck joined the film in July.[12] 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.[13] Peck agreed to portray Mengele only because he had wanted to work with Olivier.[14] Mason initially expressed interest in playing either Mengele or Lieberman.[15] Lilli Palmer also accepted a small role just to work with Olivier.[16] 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.[17]

"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."[18]

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.[18] 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.[17][19]

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.[20]

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.[21]

In 2015, Shout! Factory released the film on Blu-ray.[22]

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."[23] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 40 out of 100 based on reviews from 7 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews.[24]

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."[25] 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."[26] 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."[27] 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."[28] 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."[29] 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."[30]

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.[31]

Accolades

Academy Awards Nominations
Golden Globe Awards Nomination
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:

See also

References

  1. ^ The Boys from Brazil at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
  2. ^ "THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (X)". British Board of Film Classification. 1978-12-10. Retrieved 2013-05-21.
  3. ^ Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History, Scarecrow Press, 1989 p258
  4. ^ Portugal --the new locale for moviemaking: Cooperation praised Peck as a villain By Helen Gibson. The Christian Science Monitor 16 Dec 1977: 22.
  5. ^ "The Boys from Brazil, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Retrieved January 27, 2012.
  6. ^ Best Seller List: Fiction General Book Ends New York Times ]21 Mar 1976: 220.
  7. ^ book notes: Getty's version of fact, fable Lochte, Dick. Los Angeles Times 1 Aug 1976: j2.
  8. ^ Robert Fryer--Clout Plus Taste: ROBERT FRYER Glover, William. Los Angeles Times 22 Dec 1976: e10.
  9. ^ Priggé, Steven (2004). Movie Moguls Speak: Interviews with Top Film Producers. McFarland. ISBN 9780786419296.page 36
  10. ^ At the Movies Flatley, Guy. New York Times 6 May 1977: 54.
  11. ^ CRITIC AT LARGE: In Search of World Viewers Champlin, Charles. Los Angeles Times 27 May 1977: g
  12. ^ Mike's honeymoon: tea for 3 Daly, Maggie. Chicago Tribune 15 July 1977: b4.
  13. ^ Movies: Laurence Olivier 'Getting On With It' The Indestructible Laurence Olivier Lewin, David. Los Angeles Times ]26 Feb 1978: n33.
  14. ^ "Gregory Peck: Elder statesman of the screen who stood for nobility, honour and decency". The Independent. 14 June 2003. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
  15. ^ Ebert, Roger (12 October 1978). "JAMES MASON: "THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL"". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
  16. ^ "Lilli Palmer Joins Cast Of 'Boys From Brazil'". The New York Times. 8 February 1978. p. C20.
  17. ^ a b MacKenzie, Chris (13 March 1978). "A Clone No More, Jeremy Black Is Back". The Hour. Retrieved 27 September 2015.
  18. ^ a b FILM CLIPS: Once Around Producer Circle Kilday, Gregg. Los Angeles Times 19 Nov 1977: b9.
  19. ^ FILM CLIPS: Lew Grade's $97 Million Projects Kilday, Gregg. Los Angeles Times 15 Oct 1977: b9.
  20. ^ Fishgall, Gary (2002). Gregory Peck: A Biography. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9780684852904.page 300
  21. ^ Lew Grade, Still Dancing: My Story, William Collins & Sons 1987 p 248
  22. ^ “THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL” (Blu-ray Review)
  23. ^ "The Boys from Brazil (1978)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 29 February 2020.
  24. ^ "The Boys from Brazil". Metacritic.
  25. ^ Variety Staff (September 27, 1978). "Film Reviews: The Boys From Brazil". Variety. p. 20.
  26. ^ Siskel, Gene (October 10, 1978). "'Boys' doesn't make the Grade". Chicago Tribune. Section 2, p. 2.
  27. ^ Champlin, Charles (October 5, 1978). "Clone Caper in 'Brazil'". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 1.
  28. ^ Arnold, Gary (5 October 1978). "The Crafty Chill of 'Boys From Brazil'". Washington Post. pp. B1, B13.
  29. ^ Kael, Pauline (October 9, 1978). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker. p. 168. Retrieved 2022-05-04.
  30. ^ Kroll, Jack (October 9, 1978). "Little Hitlers". Newsweek. p. 92.
  31. ^ Zeki, S.; Goodenough, O. R.; Greene, Joshua; Cohen, Jonathan (2004-11-29). "For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. 359 (1451): 1775–1785. doi:10.1098/rstb.2004.1546. PMC 1693457. PMID 15590618.
  32. ^ "AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills Nominees" (PDF). Retrieved 2016-08-20.
  33. ^ "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains Nominees" (PDF). Retrieved 2016-08-20.
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