Reviewed by Lindsay Mackie
Stars Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow,
Martin Brambach, August Zirner, Veit Stübner,
Sebastian Urzendowsky, Marie Bäumer
Written by Stefan Ruzowitzky
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £19.99
DVD Region 2 | Runtime 98 minutes
Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky
This film is based on a true story, revealed in some detail in a book by Adolf Burger, a printer who was part of the concentration team put together by the Nazis to produce such perfect forgeries of the pound and the dollar that the world’s money markets could be distorted and the Allies’ national economies ruined. Operation Bernhard, the film suggests, very nearly succeeded.
The Counterfeiters was made in Austria. In itself this is part of the profound questions raised again by the subject of this fascinating and tragic work; Austria’s work in acknowledging her part in the Fascist war is controversial, to put it politely. The film does no such dodging. Its main characters among the camp inmates — the master forger Salomon Sorowitsch (Markovics), Adolf Burger(Diehl), Dr Klinger( August Zimer) — all have to face the fact that if they produce the perfect dollar, then the Nazis, bankrupt in 1944, have a chance of winning the war. Burger turns to subtle sabotage — but the choices and deals twist and become hydra headed throughout the film.
The craftsmen selected to perpetrate the fraud are taken to a special section of Sachsenhausen and are properly fed, sleep in clean sheets, have medical care. But the realities of the camp are brilliantly kept to the forefront — the sounds of brutality, fear and degradation form an appalling plainsong from behind the fences of the special section of Operation Bernhard. This is a film about the Holocaust; it’s not — as some writers have said — a film apart, examining some specific moral dilemmas outwith that catastrophe. The choice, which is not a choice as any civilised society would understand it, facing the printers, under the master forger Sorowitsch, has been wholly constructed by the Nazi camp command — forge these notes or be tortured and shot. “My wife always said it is the job of a printer to print the truth,” says Burger. And that choice was not available to these men. With the clarity Ruzowitzky brings to this film, it is as hard to watch and think about as any unblinking description of the camps is. The Nazis deal in sadism, so their roles — as good as Devid Striesow is as the camp Commandant Friedrich Herzog — are less to ponder.These characters have given up that right. This is another fine contribution to always remembering the depths of Nazism. The actors more than rise to it; Karl Markovics, living for the chance of even one day, shows in gaunt, careful, brave expressions, the cost of trying to survive such an onslaught of barbarism.
EXTRAS *** A "making of" featurette; an interview with Adolf Burger; an interview with director Stefan Ruzowitzky; an interview with lead actor Karl Markovics; Adolf Burger’s artefacts; and a few deleted scenes.