2007 dir. Stefan Ruzowitzky
The Counterfeiters is a fictional account of the true story of Operation Bernhard during WWII. To this day, Operation Bernhard is the largest counterfeiting scheme of all time. The Nazis’ plan was to print hundreds of millions of Pound notes and put them in to circulation with the intent to destroy the British economy. They planned to drop a ton of fake notes from planes flying over England in hopes that most of the population would begin to use the money. The counterfeits were so good that Britain had to take all notes over £5 out of circulation for decades. This plan might have worked had The Nazis been in better shape. Their idea came at a point in the war when they didn’t even have the planes to spare. They did print up over £130 million. They cracked the Dollar as well, but it was right before the end of the war and only a handful of those made it through.
The film follows Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch, a russian-born Jew and supposedly the greatest counterfeiter in the world. Before the war Sally gets arrested after a night of passion and passport forging. He’s sent off to a hard labor camp. He survives by painting awesome portraits of Nazi’s looking powerful. Eventually he gets sent off to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he’s enrolled in the secret counterfeiting operation. Sally meets Adolf Burger who is a collotype expert. His memoirs are what the movie is based on. He tries to convince Sally that they shouldn’t be helping the Nazi’s win the war. Sally’s motto is “adapt to survive”. Now he must choose between living another day and helping the Nazi’s kill his own people or dying for what’s right.
The movie was shot on a handheld Super 16 and blown up to 35mm. It looks great. There’s practically no color during the WWII parts of the film. It’s all dreary grey. Even when Sally is in a Paris casino the bright colors are still muted. The music they play on the record player in the camp is just fantastic; it reminds me a bit of Anton Karas2 (I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie and wanted to buy the soundtrack right away.
So, the film looks and sounds great. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film (It would’ve gone to <a href=”http://www.thebandsvisit.com/”target=”blank”>The Band’s Visit</a> though if the academy would’ve recognized it). It won a ton of awards all over the world. It’s a pretty good movie. It’s not a great movie though. It’s got a few overly dramatic scenes that ruined it for me. I saw an episode of Grey’s Anatomy3. once and while it wasn’t as bad as that, it took me out of the film with how perfectly certain plot points came around. Nevertheless, I still liked the movie a lot, it’s still really effective and affecting.
1. Based on real life counterfeiter Salomon Smolianoff
2. Anton Karas-Viennese zither player
3. Jesse hates Grey’s Anatomy
