Franklin J. Schaffner
The Boys From Brazil

This news circulated widely in the newspapers about ten years ago on the occasion of the release of the book 'Mengele, the Angel of Death in South America' by the historian Jorge Camarasa, who dedicated much of his studies to the lives of Nazi hierarchs fleeing Germany after World War II.

There is a small town in Brazil, a city in the state of Rio Grande do Sul named Candido Godoi, near the border with Argentina and Paraguay, where, according to Camarasa, the Nazi doctor and war criminal Josef Mengele would have lived for several years.

We are talking about one of the darkest personalities of Nazi Germany.

Graduated in anthropology from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and in medicine from the Goethe University of Frankfurt, Josef Mengele is also commonly known as the 'Todesengel' ('Angel of Death').

After enlisting in the military service, he subsequently served in the SS and became a doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he used the deportees as human guinea pigs for his medical studies.

The figure of Mengele is clearly a frightening one and one of the most discussed, which still today arouses interest among scholars both from a historical point of view and from the point of view of simple macabre curiosity, but also from the medical and scientific perspective.

He was somehow not only a deviated personality, but more precisely the most striking representation of a certain way of practicing medicine and science, which is fortunately considered outdated today by time and by the adoption of different methodologies that put the patient's integrity at the center.

Moreover, after the war ended, he somehow became a mythical figure because he escaped (in ways very similar to Adolf Eichmann) every attempt by the Mossad to capture him and took refuge in South America, where he survived until 1979, when he died of a heart attack.

In a sense, Mengele survived himself because his figure over time became so popular that at least two particularly famous films were made about him. The first is 'Marathon Man' (1976) by John Schlesinger with Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, and a stunning Laurence Olivier. The second is this film, perhaps less famous, but actually very beautiful, interesting, and deserving attention for its still relevant contents: 'The Boys From Brazil' (1978) by Franklin J. Schaffner and based on the novel of the same name by Ira Levin.

We are talking about a director who is particularly dear to me. 'Planet of the Apes' is one of my cult films par excellence and what about 'Papillon'? Just to mention two among the films directed by Schaffner (Oscar winner for Best Director in 1971 for 'Patton'), in this film, he uses a rich and composite cast in which the protagonists and antagonists of the story stand out: Laurence Olivier, but this time in the role of the 'good guy', that is, Ezra Lieberman, an avid hunter of retired Nazis; Gregory Peck in the role of Dr. Josef Mengele.

The film is essentially set in Paraguay, where Mengele would have hidden after the end of World War II and where he practically implemented his greatest plan with the collaboration of a team of former Nazis and young and fanatical new adepts.

Josef Mengele's obsession with twins is well known. After all, the news I reported at the beginning of this review referred precisely to this aspect.

Candido Godoi, where Josef Mengele would have operated, is described by the old inhabitants of the town as a sort of 'country doctor' who went from house to house treating women, has an unusually high percentage of twins among the population compared to the average. It is estimated that from the end of the Second World War to today, one pair of twins has been born every five births.

The percentage of twin births in the town would be practically 10% higher than the 1.8% found in the state.

The feeling is that in that town, he carried on his purpose of creating and spreading as much as possible his 'prototype' of 'Aryan race' as it was wanted according to Nazi ideals.

The suggestion in the specific case is further increased by the fact that indeed these twins are mostly blond and blue-eyed. But here a clarification must also be made.

The first is that Brazil is historically a land where many Germans emigrated even before the end of World War II. In certain regions, the number of immigrants of German or Polish descent is predominant.

This also applies to Candido Godoi, which, specifically, has a derivation tracing its origins back to the German region of Hunsruck, where the presence of twins is also historically higher than the average.

Consequently, Jorge Camarasa's studies tell a truth that is based both on real facts, because it seems and is documented that Mengele lived there and that in any case, he continued his insane studies, as well as on true and proper suggestions.

Franklin J. Schaffner's film, on the other hand, tells an even more complex story and an even more insane plan that could also make one think of the darkest aspects of the history of Nazism.

Dr. Mengele's idea is indeed to 'recreate' Adolf Hitler. His intentions are based on the realization of a series of predefined circumstances and situations and on a plan meticulously studied over the years.

Firstly, the film presents the theme of 'cloning', which evidently fascinates much less today than it did about twenty years ago (do you remember Dolly the sheep?) but which in itself in the seventies was already 'science fiction'.

Through the cloning of Adolf Hitler's blood and tissues, Josef Mengele has brought to life 94 children genetically identical to the Fuhrer, entrusting them to as many families scattered around the world but chosen according to specific characteristics and with the aim of exactly recreating the social and family conditions in which Hitler grew up.

The plan consequently provides at a certain point for the completion of 94 murders because, as happened to Hitler at a certain point in his existence, these 94 children should have become fatherless by violent death.

The film is exciting, especially on the conceptual level, and the 'classical' acting of the performers perhaps makes it distant from the typical patterns of today's science fiction cinema, but the story is in itself undeniable and is enough alone to support the entire film.

The best moments are obviously those of the direct confrontation between the two protagonists, who after a long chase will end up in a face-to-face confrontation in which in the end it will not be clear which of the two parties has actually won the match.

A breathtaking finale and at the same time full of symbolic meanings that dig deep into that great nightmare that was Adolf Hitler's Nazi dream and which periodically returns. Perhaps indeed it never truly went away.