The Boys From Brazil (1978)

Gregory Peck, auditioning for a role as a Bond villain.

Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner 

Written by Ira Levin, Heywood Gould

Starring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Denholm Elliott, Bruno Ganz

Do you remember Josef Mengele? Well, not personally (I’m assuming), but you’ve heard the name, yes? Mengele – as you’re no doubt aware – was a genuinely twisted and repugnant monster, even by the standards of a century packed with them. He was responsible for the torture and murder of hundreds of individuals, mostly twins, in the name of a warped and horrific view of medical science. His sadistic and brutal experiments to satiate a curiosity about humanity and to attempt to prove theories that were glaringly wrong constitute a crime almost without compare in human history.

All of which makes it rather surprising to find a different Josef Mengele in The Boys From Brazil. This Mengele did commit the same monstrosities – we know this, it’s mentioned briefly, and we see a couple of people who’ve been experimented on (they have suddenly blue eyes) to prove it – but that’s barely relevant. See, it turns out that Mengele was not so much a vicious and deranged sadist as a camp 60s supervillain that even Ian Fleming would have considered a little too over-the-top. 

 

We find this Nazi Blofeld (Gregory Peck, unexpectedly) in Paraguayan exile, the final brush both with actual history* and common sense. Clearly, he must be caught, and it falls to elderly Nazi-hunter Ezra Liebermann (Laurence Olivier, in a role inspired by Simon Wiesenthal) to catch him. Why? Is it enough to try to catch Mengele because he deserves to be brought to justice? No, of course not. Mengele needs to be caught because he’s planning to take over the world with his secret army of Hitler clones. Obviously.

(The Hitler clones, for what it’s worth, all have dark hair, pale skin and… blue eyes. Presumably because everyone knows Hitler was obsessed with blue eyes, and regardless of the rather glaring fact that Hitler had brown eyes, and any clone of him would be the same. Even allowing for the relative lack of genetic knowledge in the 1970s as opposed to today, it would still have been reasonable to assume that genes trump ideology every time when it comes to reproduction. Nonetheless, we know they’re all Hitler clones, because they’re a bit grumpy and selfish and have severe partings in their hair.)

The bones of the story could easily have been turned into a comedy-scifi-thriller, with an entirely fictional cast of characters. Might have been a bit of good fun, too, particularly if it lost the embarrassing fight scene between the two elderly leads. Today, it might have a cult following and a high standing amongst comedy thrillers of the time. But no. 

 

Alternatively, the fine cast could have been put to better use in a serious thriller about the actual pursuit of Nazi war criminals in Latin America, and the courageous and devoted work of those who dedicated their lives in the hope of finally achieving justice. But no.

No, what we have is a daft, hole-ridden plot, polished by some picturesque locations and that exemplary cast. And we have something else: we have a torturer and murderer turned into an absurd villain in an adventure story. Perhaps I’m oversensitive, but I find such a lack of respect and decency towards all those who suffered and died in horrendous circumstances at Mengele’s hands to be insulting and deeply offensive.

This is a horrible film: horrible, stupid, and all the worse for that stupidity. 

*I accept, of course, that at no point did the movie claim to be anything other than fiction. I raise this issue purely because of the highly significant and unpleasant historical nature of the real Mengele and the decision to use him as a character in a daft thriller.