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The Counterfeiters
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Editorial Reviews:
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Winner of the Academy AwardŽ for Best Foreign Language Film, The Counterfeiters tells the true story of Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a swindler who made a name for himself as Berlin's "King of the Counterfeiters." However, his life of women and easy money is cut short when he's arrested and placed in a Nazi concentration camp. With the German army on the verge of bankruptcy, Sorowitsch makes a sobering deal with his captors: in exchange for a comfortable bed, good food and fair treatment, Sorowitsch, along with the other hand-picked specialists, must counterfeit bank notes to fund the Nazi War effort. If he does as they say, he lives another day. If he rebels, he faces the same fate as the rest of the camp's prisoners. But if he lives, will he be able to live with himself?
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A deft blend of suspense and docudrama, Stefan Ruzowitzky's sixth feature focuses on history's largest counterfeiting operation. Before World War II breaks out, Salomon Sorowitsch (the compact yet steely Karl Markovics), a Russian-born Jew, lives the good life in Berlin. He forges documents, like passports and banknotes, and sketches beautiful women to the romantic strains of tango records. Sorowitsch's dolce vita comes to an end when he's sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. Once Reich officials decide to deploy imprisoned printers, craftsmen, and bank officials to counterfeit foreign currency, they draft Sorowitsch for "Operation Bernhard" and ship him to Sachsenhausen. Though he and his colleagues receive preferential treatment, the threat of execution hangs over their heads at all times. First, they master the pound; then they tackle the American dollar. At this point, communist co-worker Adolf Burger (The Ninth Day's excellent August Diehl) suggests sabotage. As he explains, they're extending the conflict and increasing the death toll, but the entire team will suffer if they fail, even their SS supervisor, Freidrich Herzog (Downfall's Devid Striesow), whose career depends on it. As Jews, however, they stand to lose more than their jobs. Based on Burger's book The Devil's Workshop, Austria's Ruzowitzky (Anatomy) sheds a compassionate light on the guilt and complicity of survivors. Though The Counterfeiters plays more like a prison camp movie than a Holocaust drama--Stalag 17 comes to mind--that doesn't make it any less significant, just less wrenching than some of its counterparts. --Kathleen C. Fennessy Stills from The Counterfeiters (click for larger image)
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The Counterfeiters
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User Comments About The Counterfeiters
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Found this movie for $5 at the video storea 'gem' at that price. The story of the Nazis forcing concentration camp inmates to forge foreign currency to bankrupt England was compelling. The 'dilemma' the characters face of doing good work and enjoying more comfortable survival, or sabbotaging their captors efforts, drives the film. The special features include a Q&A with the Director where a lot of great information is told about what happened to the characters after the War.
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2. The story is interesting and the presentation is fine, but for two things that it is worth only 3 stars to me:. Anyway, still a good film produced by foreign producer other than Hollywood esp based on WWII true stories. too much grainy effect on the video quality that it seems only marginal improvement over DVD ver, which I happened to have bought earlier, and the comparison of two tells no big difference. The director seems to produce the effect that there was a camerman running with the actors and shotting at the spot. The DVD version in 480p is truely what the director desired for heavy grainy look.
It is said to be the director's intent to make it look like old style movie, but too much would ruin what made us buy the BR version instead of the DVD. But again, too much of anything would kill the good intent. 1. . too much hand shaking effect to the camera in many occasions. It just gets me headache to watch.
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Excellent movie about an interesting true story.
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You aren't quite sure what happened to some of the main characters between the last days of the war and the ending where the main character is in a Casino in Monaco. At times, especially at the beginning, it seems to jump quickly over events. This is a pretty interesting movie. It is based on a true story. It takes a little to get into the flow of the movie and feel comfortable with who the characters are. The end of the movie is a bit abrupt also. In spite of these drawbacks, this is an interesting movie that makes you want to go out and learn more about the events it was based on.
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A Compelling Story, Strangely Told
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In one of the DVD special features writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky asserted that he was trying to create a documentary effect. economies. It all comes off as too contrived. The interview given by Adolf Burger is very touching. Late in World War Two the Nazis rounded up Jews who had been confined in various concentration camps and set up a large counterfeiting operation designed to undermine the British and U.S. Now in his nineties, he is a survivor of the counterfeiters. It just did not seem "genuine," somewhat like a good counterfeit. They are quite good at striking poses, but enough is enough.
Burger was a consultant on the film. It's an important and compelling story. The German-Austrian film The Counterfeiters is based on a remarkable true story. In one incident, a group of the counterfeiters can hear a guard insulting a man as he executes him.
The Nazis found some 150 Jews with the necessary skills and put them together in a special section within the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, providing the latest money-making equipment, giving them plenty of food and comfortable accommodations. Markovics likes to strike a pose, as do the other key players, both victims and tormentors. He has devoted decades of his life to keeping the memory of the Holocaust and the counterfeiting operation alive. Sally is a very clever, tough, wily man who jerkily moves about like a bantam rooster surrounded by mean foxes. The bullets fly through the very wooden wall next to which they are standing.
I recommend the audio commentary by Ruzowitzky. The main character is Saloman "Sally" Sorowitsch, portrayed very energetically by Karl Markovics. I think he failed at this. Just outside the counterfeiters' quarters other prisoners were brutalized by the Nazis. Too much eye-darting, if such a thing is possible. But much of the film was shot with a hand-held that often awkwardly jumps from actor to actor in prolonged scenes.
But the counterfeiters were constantly pressured to produce (at pain of death) and there were sadistic S.S. guards who cruelly reminded the counterfeiters that they were still in Hell. Although this film received the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, I would not rate it so highly. His eyes dart from tormentor to tormentor. He addresses some of the things I wondered about, like the sometimes bizarre soundtrack.
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an amazing more or less true story
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Burger, one of the other workers on the operation, wants to sabotage the operation, so as to hamper the Nazi war effort. They were assigned to forge pounds and dollars, in order to undermine the Allied economy and finance the Nazi war effort. Until watching this movie, I had no idea that the largest counterfeiting operation of all time was carried out by prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp. This movie is a fictionalized version of this story.
Sorowich, a master counterfeiter, is brought in to take charge of the counterfeiting operation. Prisoners with relevant skills are brought in to a special, top-secret area in a concentration camp, where in contrast to the appalling conditions elsewhere, they are provided with sufficient food, decent beds, time for breaks, etc. One is really immersed in the concentration camp, which is quite scary, although not nearly as gruesome as it could be since we are in the elite section. For example, in reality, only two people knew about the sabotage, unlike in the movie where for dramatic purposes lots of people knew about it so that they could argue about it on screen. The end result is to delay the production of the dollar just enough. The protagonist is Sorowich, who initially just wants to save his skin, and also has a personal longing to crack the dollar, but eventually sort of comes around to the other point of view.
The acting is excellent, especially the actors who play Sorowich, and Herzog, the boss of the concentration camp. This view is not popular among the other workers, who do not feel like dying for this cause, just so that other workers can be brought in to do the job for them. But if they don't produce results, they will be shot. They ended up printing over 100 million pounds sterling, which even the Bank of England could not distinguish from the genuine article. On the other hand, as a result of stalling tactics, they didn't crack the dollar until the war was almost over and it no longer made any difference. The bonus features are worth watching and tell more about the true story on which the movie is based.
Much of the movie is a dramatization of this moral argument. The movie is very well done.
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