The Counterfeiters

I remember quite clearly a review that ran in The New York Times in what must have been spring 1981. Vincent Canby opened his critique of the Soviet film, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears by expressing his incredulity that this trifling comedy would have won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, besting, among other films, Truffaut's The Last Metro and Kurosawa's Kagemusha. The poor little Russian film got caught up in circumstances not of its own making, and made Canby hate the film more than he might have.

It is unfortunate that a film can not exist solely on its own and be judged on those merits, but external events are bound to color our opinions. So it is with The Counterfeiters, which is not a bad film by any means, just a thoroughly mediocre one. It's particular crime is that not only did it win this year's Oscar for Best Foreign Film (over four films I have yet to see), but the one that everyone liked, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, wasn't even nominated. So, the first question: is The Counterfeiters better than the snubbed Romanian film? Not even close.

Frequently the Academy is accused of being biased toward films that feature the holocaust as a theme. Though this may be true, it makes me squeamish to raise it, because of the whiff of anti-Semitism that such an accusation carries. But with The Counterfeiters winning the award it must be brought out, as ugly a claim as it may be. There is nothing special about this film, even as holocaust pictures go. We have seen in dozens, perhaps hundreds of films how horrible the Nazis were, especially in high profile English language films like Schindler's List and The Pianist. We have seen it so many times that, dare I say it, it's starting to feel routine. Perhaps it's time to start thinking like Frederick, the artist played by Max Von Sydow in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters: "The question is not how could this happen, but why doesn't it happen more often?"

The story here concerns a master forger named Salomon Sorowitsch, played by Karl Markovics. He is living high in 1936 Berlin, forging documents and counterfeiting money. He is also a Jew, but isn't terribly political. Then he is busted and thrown into a concentration camp. Some time goes by very quickly, and he is treated a little better because of his artistic talent. Another five years flies by before he is enlisted in Operation Bernhard, in which the Nazis attempt to counterfeit the British pound and the U.S. dollar in an attempt to flood the market and disrupt the Allied economies.

That's not a bad wrinkle on the well-worn holocaust front. We get to know some of the other members of Sorowitsch's crew, especially an idealistic Communist, Burger, who wants to sabotage the Nazis efforts even if it costs his and his comrades lives in the process. The S.S. officer in charge of the operation, Herzog, isn't a bad sort, for a Nazi, and tries to be kind to his charges, using the carrot rather than the stick. Of course his second-in-command is a pig who thinks nothing of urinating on a prisoner, or shooting them.

The focal point is the character of Sorowitsch, and it is here that the movie sags. I liked Markovics--if this were a Hollywood film he would have been played by someone far more dashing, but here he is a slump-shouldered fellow who seems to have resigned himself to despair long ago. But we just don't know enough about him to be effected by any change he undergoes. He is not really heroic, he says he adapts to stay alive, and I'm not sure that's profound enough to generate two-hours of interest.

Also, this film is technically a bit of a mess. I don't expect a movie set in a concentration camp to look like the Emerald City, but even when we are in decadent Berlin or post-war Monte Carlo, dinginess is the rule. The editing is also at times slapdash, and the sound mixing seemed off to me (of course that may have been caused by the equipment in the theater). The director, Stefan Ruzowitsky, tells the story in a workmanlike fashion, bracketing the film as a flashback that doesn't really add much to the overall effect.

To echo Vincent Canby's words from over twenty-five years ago, seeing this film tells me more about the Academy's voting practices than it makes for exciting cinema.