The Counterfeiters (2007) User Reviews

See this movie.

[antibyte · 9/10 · 23 November 2007]

I just saw this movie in London last night. There were 5 people in the audience (including myself). What a shame because this was a solid piece of film-making. If you haven't seen The Counterfeiters, go see it. Here's why.

The acting is outstanding all the way through. You will learn more about counterfeiting efforts by the Nazis to undermine the British and Americans. This movie has numerous layers to it, and avoids the typical clichés that all Germans acted one way, and all Jews acted another way. You learn the subtle ways that control over other people is used to manipulate them. Do you put aside your beliefs in order to survive? If so, are you being true to those beliefs? Is it better to be a dead, morally right person or a live, less moral one? These are central themes. Finally, does how we make our wealth matter? These aren't ideas unique to cinema, but the way the movie presents them is.

laughter in the dark

[snow0r · 8/10 · 17 October 2007]

Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch (Markovics) is a master counterfeiter, living a life of debauchery in pre-war Berlin, until his luck finally runs out, and he is captured and shipped out to the Mauthausen concentration camp. He witnesses the horrors of camp life; fellow prisoners are beaten, shot, and starved, but Sally, determined to survive, looks out for himself and uses his skills as an artist to secure a more comfortable lifestyle during his incarceration. After taking advantage of his talents, his superiors transfer him to Sachsenhausen, where he is to oversee the largest counterfeiting operation in history.

Here, Sally is provided with all the men and equipment he needs to crack the pound and the dollar; his criminal enterprises are now government funded. The price of failure is made clear, but the counterfeiters are also wary of the price of success, as once the currencies have been cracked, they will be surplus to requirements; their lives depend not only on their successes but also their failures.

This is where Burger (Diehl), the film's moral centre, comes into play. Unlike Sally, he sees the bigger picture, struggling to come to terms with the fact that while his work keeps him alive, it helps the Nazi war effort. Neither can he reconcile himself with the fact that while he lives in relative comfort other detainees, including his wife and children, live in squalor.

These moral dilemmas form the basis of the film, and in the face of the horrors of camp life, Sally tries to shrug them off with De Niro squints and smiles; the maxim that one must look after oneself is one repeated throughout the film. It's a very interesting idea, and it's one that is presented very well, both in terms of style and performance. The camera-work captures the bleak setting effectively, and the lead performances are uniformly excellent, but the use of tango for the score is inspired. The contrast between the music and the images adeptly complement the film's complicated moral tone. There is also a surprising amount of humour; while the bigger picture is indeed bleak, there are moments of comedy, and even if it is laughter in the dark, it is welcome and helps not only to carry the film along but humanise it and its characters.

The Counterfeiters is a very enjoyable film, which isn't something that can be said for many World War II "true stories". Its interesting exploration of adaptation and survival under extreme circumstances makes for an engaging story, and one that is definitely worth seeking out.

But Is It True?

[johnpetersca · 8/10 · 3 March 2008]

Most Holocaust narratives involve cruel Nazis and virtuous, victimized Jews. The Counterfeiters is at least a partial exception. The Nazis in the film are certainly cruel, but their cruelty is based on the perverted ideals of their racist ideology and on their need to obey orders or be killed rather than on their being innately evil men. They are capable of decency when it's in their interest.

The Jews in the special unit of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp depicted in The Counterfeiters are assembled because of their abilities in such skills as etching, printing, and, in the case of Salomon Sorowitsch, the film's protagonist, counterfeiting. The triangles sewn into their uniforms are a mixture of green (criminal), red (socialist or communist) and, in all cases, yellow (Jewish).

Other reviewers have ably described the major theme of The Counterfeiters, the conflict between, as David Denby puts it in the March 3, 2008 New Yorker, the relative heroism of "the morally intransigent man who refuses all compromise with evil, or the trimmer who partly collaborates with an oppressor in the hope of keeping himself and others alive". It may be significant that the German title of the film, Die Fälscher, can refer to falsifiers as well as counterfeiters.

Because The Counterfeiters is repeatedly described, by its publicists and others, as a "true story", I want to focus on some of the variations between the post-war interrogation statement given by Salomon Smolianoff, the real-life master counterfeiter portrayed in the film, and the events depicted in the movie. A photocopy of Smolianoff's original interrogation statement can be found on www.lawrencemalkin.com, the website of Lawrence Malkin, the author of Kreuger's Men, an account of counterfeiting operations during World War II.

My purpose is not to expose fabrications. Rather, it is to explore variations between life and art and to determine whether, in a particular work, these variations have a pattern that supports a consistent explanation.

• The Physical Setting: In the interrogation statement, Smolianoff describes being taken to "a special barrack, which was located in absolute isolation and surrounded by heavy barb-wire." In the movie, there are several occasions on which the relatively privileged participants in the counterfeiting operation are exposed to the screams of regular inmates who are being beaten and killed. Such witnessing would not have been possible with the degree of physical separation described by Smolianoff.

• Pounds and Dollars: In Smolianoff's narrative, he is transferred to Sachsenhausen, after counterfeit British pound notes have been successfully produced, in order to work on the more difficult forgery of American dollars. In the movie, Sorowitsch is involved with counterfeiting both pounds and dollars.

• The Man in Charge: In real life, the German counterfeiting effort was called Operation Bernhard after Bernhard Krueger, the SS man who headed it. In the movie, a fictional Inspector Herzog arrests Sorowitsch in the mid thirties and, coincidentally, heads the counterfeiting project during the final months of World War II.

• Sabotage: In the interrogation statement, Smolianoff describes the decision to sabotage the counterfeiting operation as occurring when the lights go out during an American air raid:

We took this occasion to agree between us for the first time to sabotaze (sic) the whole work. We dealt our tasks and agreed that in the future every one of us should complain about the work of the other, in order to gain time, because the situation of the war, promised to us an eventually (sic) escape from everything and a liberation by the approaching Allied troops…we fought each other really hard, but they couldn't miss (sic) us, because all the work depended on what we were producing.

In the movie, the sabotage is the result of continual discussion between Sorowitsch, the partial collaborator who is concerned primarily with survival, and Adolf Burger, a printer and Communist activist who is willing to sacrifice his life, along with the lives of his fellow prisoners, in order to hamper the German war effort. This is the conflict that David Denby refers to and considers, correctly in my opinion, to be the film's central focus.

Like Smolianoff, Burger is a real person. He wrote memoirs about his experiences shortly after the war and revised and re-published them, under the title The Devil's Workshop, in the 1970s. The introduction to an interview with Stefan Ryzowitzky, the director of The Counterfeiters (www.cineaste.com/articles/the-counterfeiters.htm), states that "Burger played a small but significant part in both establishing and sabotaging the process, although in the film he is presented as the leader of the campaign to subvert the operation."

I believe that these examples show that there are consistent and coherent explanations for the ways in which Ryzowitzky adapted source material for his film: quite simply, to tell a better story and to emphasize the difference between the perspectives of Smolianoff/Sorowitsch and Burger. Throughout history, writers have adapted historical events to fit artistic purposes. Another, more extreme, cinematic example is in The Last King of Scotland where the Scottish doctor who befriends Idi Amin is entirely fictional.

These alterations are not on the level of the deceptions of Binjamin Wilkomirski in Fragments or Misha Defonsece in Misha: a Mémoire of the Holocaust Years. Although these books are presented as factual, they have, beyond any reasonably doubt, been exposed as creatures of their writers' imaginations. They present both short-term problems in that they give aid and comfort to those who wish to deny or minimize the Holocaust and more fundamental difficulties in that they lead readers to question the existence of historical truths at any level.

In all of these situations, they are simple solutions. Dramatic renditions of historical events should include explicit statements of what is and is not historically accurate. Fictional narratives should be published as fiction even if such honesty reduces their status as potential best sellers. In these respects, filmmakers, publishers, and editors all share a responsibility with writers.

Austria's Oscar contender

[Superunknovvn · 8/10 · 10 February 2008]

This is the rare - and by that I REALLY mean rare! - case of an Austrian movie being able to bear comparison with international competition. "Die Fälscher" is a well-made and touching movie about the Holocaust and a special division of Jews in a concentration camp that survived by counterfeiting money (or pretending to do so) for the Nazis. Karl Markovics is the shining light of the cast. Who thought that the guy who came to greater popularity by starring in "Kommissar Rex" would end up getting roles like this one and playing them to perfection? August Diehl is good, too, but he comes across as a bit too dramatic at times. The Nazis - and that's the only weakness of Stefan Ruzowitzky's movie - are the way they always are. Ruthless, cruel, craven and at the same time stupid pigs who do everything to humiliate the Jews at any time. Even though, that is probably the way 99% of them really were, it would have been more interesting to get a differentiated view on some of them.

While "Die Fälscher" may not reinvent the wheel, it is a pretty great movie. And although it's typical that Hollywood would pick only a Holocaust-story from Austria as an Oscar contender, it is exciting as hell for a movie from this country to get a nomination. I really hope that Stefan Ruzowitzky will get the award, because his movie deserves it and it could help the Austrian film industry to finally get momentum again.

Tense and very gripping war drama

[andrew-race · 10/10 · 13 October 2007]

I thought the film was excellent on a number of grounds; the acting by the main players was uniformly good,I suppose one could carp about the main Nazi in that it was the traditional mixture of ' jolly fine fellow when out of uniform and with blonde wife and children but nightmare when faced with the Untermenschen in the camp'. The main actor was unknown to me and something of an anti-hero but the gradual emergence of his positive sides was well done.The concentration on life in the special part of the camp where only the sounds of shouts and gunshots penetrate was very well portrayed and the entire film gripped me from start to finish. I suppose there were no amazing revelations apart from the basis of the story but that was more than enough and I recommend it highly

The Counterfeiter

[rajdoctor · 7/10 · 4 November 2007]

After reading the reviews on IMDb I decided to go to see the movie.

This is a 1936 true story about a counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) who after stints in counterfeiting German currency before World War II is arrested and made prisoner in the concentration camp, where he observes the bloody, uneasy tortures and humiliations of fellow prisoners; until he finds a way to showcase his talent to step outside the prison to draw portraits and pictures of German Commanders and Officers. He is soon promoted by Germans to a position of counterfeiting the dollars in the famous Project Bernhard. The trials and tribulations of Salomon's time in the prison are alarming and sad to watch. The movie ends by showing Salomon as a free man, who lots of counterfeit money that he recklessly spends in casinos and poker games. For him – after living a life in concentration camp he knows what value the money has! The movie solely belongs to Karl Markovics, who has acted magnificently as the counterfeiter. He adds his own style of projecting range of traumatic emotions and thoughts by just a twitch of his eye or lips. Fantastic performance! There are usual characters in the movie that support the protagonist – the fellow prisoners, the brutal officer, the paternal figure leader of prisoners, a prisoner doctor, etc.

The Austrian Director Stephan Ruzowitzky maintains a tight narration very close to the script he has written. He also creates the brutal Nazi concentration camp feel – the clichéd Nazi characters and starved prisoners.

Some scenes are too stark and hard hitting that move your heart and make you cry.

My only complain (but a minor one) is the hand held camera used that sometimes distracts us from the serious gravity of steady scene.

On the whole a good movie.

(Stars 7 out of 10)

How they didn't win the war

[stensson · 8/10 · 26 January 2008]

This is about the Nazis, trying to produce false pounds and dollars in the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. The aim is to destroy the British and American economies. For this purpose, they use Jewish experts, who have their privileges, like clean sheets, classical music, showers and the possibility of not being murdered.

It could have been just another Nazi movie, but many ethic questions are raised. What is treason and can you possibly survive without it? The drama between the Hauptsturmführer and the main character, Sally, is described in an interesting way, not at least because of the brilliant acting from Karl Marcovics.

Being in concentration camp, are there any more questions than surviving the next day? Obviously there were.

A day is a day The Counterfeiters

[jaredmobarak · 7/10 · 19 April 2008]

It is very interesting how it seems that every film about the Holocaust becomes a modern classic. The Counterfeiters is the latest attempt to breathe life into the subject by showing a true tale of how the Nazis bankrolled the end of the war with fake currency. The story itself is very intriguing and worth a history lesson, but as far as a film, what we really are given is one more concentration camp experience. There are the Nazis inflicting brutality on the Jewish prisoners, the token general assuaging his guilt by helping those he can for personal gain, the prisoners wanting to create a revolt, and those that just want to survive. While the pretense of why everyone has been brought together is new and refreshing, the total package is what we have seen over and over again.

Even the gimmick of showing us our lead post-war at the start in order for him to remember the hardships that came before is a bit tired. Would him taking the fake money he made to Monte Carlo after the war scenes have been any different than him going there first, us seeing him make it, and then cutting back? Not really. What is intriguing is the comparison between Sally Sorowitsch pre-incarceration and him in the camp. A scoundrel, as one character says, in his bar before the war, Sally is a cocky criminal and womanizer doing what he can to stay in affluence while also honing his craft to crack the American dollar. Once he is captured and able to con his way into a somewhat safe status among the Jewish prisoners, we see his survival instincts take over. A selfish man before, a selfish man he stays, doing all he can to survive the war, painting and creating portraiture for the Nazis and their cause. The first sign of life we see is his compassion for a fellow captive on his final transfer. A Russian art student like he once was, they shared the same school and professor there, Sally gives up his soup and finally shows the solidarity we would expect in that situation. You see, amongst criminals, it seems, there is a code of honor to not give up one's mates. Every jail is the same, he says, you just have to know the angles and the plays…Sally is a professional at both.

The relationship between this "artist" and his captor Herzog is a very interesting one. Being the man who arrested Sally before the war, Herzog not only got promoted for it, but also decides to enlist him to help his cause in the camp that he has started to control. They need each other to survive and that is one of the things that I love about WWII. These Germans are just as trapped in Hitler's regime as the Jews are, (figuratively, yes I know the Jew's had it much worst). Everyone is expendable and must do their job to survive as a high official can even be shot by nothing more than a whim by his superior. I believe one of the best scenes here is Sally at Herzog's house, meeting his wife and children and their utter inability to comprehend what is happening around them outside their mansion's bubble.

Along with those two, the rapport with Sally and Adolf Burger is fantastic as well. These two are kindred souls yet with one main difference. While Sorowitsch looks for his survival and that of those he can see, Burger wants life for his people and the country being persecuted whether he is alive to see it or not. Their moral fortitude is the same, however, and while they may disagree they will never risk the other in order to do what they believe is right. Either way, both men are key components in the fall of Germany, doing exactly what's needed to be done at the exact right time, even though they could have never known it. Sally's ability to get the forgeries made gave them the time for Burger to stall the manufacturing of American currency just long enough for the army to go bankrupt. It's good to see that Burger, the man who's book the film is based on, decided to not center the tale on himself, only allowing one instance at the end to give himself the credit of being a hero. Instead he allows Sorowitsch to take the stage, showing his leadership and unflappable calmness when confronted with the most dangerous consequences.

When a movie like this relies mostly on the reactions of men at the deaths of their friends, you can't usually say much because it's either believable or not. What makes this stand out, in that regard, is the fact that these men are so far gone that their emotions have been dulled. August Diehl, as Burger, is the best example of this, showing the devastation of finding out what happened to his wife without the capacity to cry. Devid Striesow is great too as Herzog, always being the good businessman, using tough love while also utilizing a reward system to keep morale as high as possible. The way he plays those around him is effective. As our lead Sally, Karl Markovics is perfect. Stoic and always thinking, he portrays the man orchestrating everyone's survival with little movement. His blank stare is as emotive as anything else in the film, especially when he flinches at gunshots that he knows have hit their targets. By not showing emotion, he exudes his feelings even more. Mention should also be made for Sebastian Urzendowsky as Kolya, the young art student that Sally takes under his wing. A broken man, he is the most fragile and animated, infusing some much-needed life into an otherwise retold version of the same story we've seen before.

You can almost smell the ink

[PipAndSqueak · 9/10 · 22 October 2007]

The power in this film is that the action and dialogue is understated. We're not subjected to the full visual horrors of life in the concentration camps yet we feel what it was like nevertheless. The main characters' problem in reconciling the differences between being incarcerated in a 'normal' gaol along with 'normal' criminals and their 'code of conduct' - and the imprisonment and abuse of 'normal' citizens is an ever present theme that is conveyed with complete mastery by the script writer, actors and director. An incredible film of enduring merit. The gaunt features of the actors seemed tailor made for this instructive entertainment.

Seeing this created my own moral dilemma

[intelearts · 7/10 · 30 December 2007]

I came away with a moral dilemma of my own: though "The Counterfeiters" is excellent in places in others it is not.

The true story of Operation Bernhard and the printing of millions of pounds is a fascinating story. The direction, acting, and script are excellent. But my problem was one that for me was a real shock: I was not as moved by the film as I had hoped or wanted to be.

Dealing with the most singular piece of evil devised by man - genocide, especially in the concentration camps is never an easy subject, and perhaps the fact that it is not overplayed is a bonus - however, I came away admiring the film and its performances but left curiously unmoved by the overall tone of the piece.

Perhaps that's the point of the moral dichotomy (Make money, help the Nazis, don't make money, lose your lives but shorten the war) that is does not scream but rather affects us quietly.

Overall, definitely watchable. But misses greatness.

Notes From The Underground

[writers_reign · 9/10 · 14 October 2007]

This has the advantage of being a true story which falls into the sub-heading of Incredible Stories Of World War Two. In this case an ambitious and quasi 'good' German officer prevails upon a master forger he had arrested in the late thirties to oversee a master-plan to flood the market with initially English sterling and ultimately US dollars which will almost certainly win the war for Germany. Despite its low-key approach that verges on the laconic and punctuated by a minimum of violence, torture, etc, the film holds the attention as a riveting account of life in a concentration camp viewed from a different perspective than usual inasmuch as Solly and his team of professional printers, artists, etc, enjoy a privileged lifestyle in what amounts to a sub-section of the camp, so much so that at the end of the war the inmates who assume control fail to recognize them as fellow prisoners and almost kill them. This is yet another terrific film from the new school of German filmmakers and one fit to take its place beside The Lives Of Others, Downfall, Bella Martha, Goodbye, Lenin and the like. Definitely a must-see.

Survival of the fittest

[jotix100 · 7/10 · 2 June 2008]

As the film opens, we are taken to watch Solomon Sorowitsch, alias Sally, the main character now enjoying the life of leisure in a European casino in the company of an attractive woman. The time of the action is right after WWII. That image is shattered by asking us to examine the same character in 1936. He is a counterfeiter, perhaps the best in the business. Sally makes a good living helping the people wanting to flee Germany with passports that show his ability to produce flawless documents that will not arise the border guards' suspicion.

Alas, Solomon's freedom comes to an abrupt end when he lands in an interment camp because as a Jew, he cannot escape what the Nazi Germans have decided for a race they want to erase from the face of the earth. Sally, fares better when a superior German officer who knows about him takes him to forge English pounds and US dollars in order to flood the currency in world markets, rendering their legal tender obsolete, thus attaining complete domination.

"The Counterfeiters", created and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, presents an aspect of that sad time of history. In it, we are taken to observe people like Salomon, who has to go along with his captors in order to survive the horrors of those camps. As such, Solomon fares much better than some of his fellow Jews that had nothing to offer in exchange to the corrupt captors.

One of the main reasons for watching the film is the amazing work by Karl Markowics, who as the forger runs away with the film. Devid Striesow is seen as Herzog, the cynic Nazi officer. August Diehl also contributes to the total success of the movie.

"The Counterfeiters" show us the horrors of the war in a different context by admitting to what extent human beings stooped in order to survive the horrors of that conflict.

Poor Cinematography, Passive Hero

[amenfd · 5/10 · 13 August 2021]

"The Counterfeiters" is a drama about Operation Bernhard, following Salomon Sorowitsch as a Jewish criminal in the concentration camps of World War II. Salomon is a professional counterfeiter before the war, and after a few years, Nazis recruit him as a centerpiece member of Operation Bernhard. This is an overall enjoyable movie; however, it has few disappointments.

The story is the greatest disappointment of this movie. It starts and continues well. It revolves around the moral question of trading your honor and ideals for survival. The dialogues move the story forward, and Salomon's interactions with Burger make the audience ponder upon the said question. However, as the hero, Saloman is a highly bland character, and his passiveness makes the third act anticlimactic and unsatisfying.

The general atmosphere of the movie is both good and bad at times. In many moments, there are shakings in camera and zoom-ins and zoom-outs that in times make you wonder whether this is a low-budget movie filmed by an amateur. However, the music and general sounds are what compensate for the cinematography. For example, in The scene where Holst shoots Karloff and the next part, the music and the sounds capture the tension perfectly.

To conclude, I would recommend "The Counterfeiters" to anyone interested in movies about Holocaust and Operation Bernhard. However, if you are looking for something worth your time, you have better options.

A Brand New Classic

[Shilpot7 · 10/10 · 14 October 2007]

I don't go to the cinema much these days. Even sitting through the previews before I saw this I was beyond bored, even though Meryl Streep was in two of them, even she's in boring rubbish these days.

But, 'The Counterfeiters' is classy stuff. The Austrians (as well as The Germans) are excellent at making period films (masters at detail) & when they handle the subject of The Holocaust, the few things I've seen, have been superb.

Everyone's good in this. The lead is hypnotic.

If the subject of The Holocaust interests you, don't hesitate seeing this. It's a very good film indeed. It's nice to see something brand new that you can confidently call a classic.

The moral dilemma of helping madmen

[Chris Knipp · 8/10 · 24 November 2007]

The story of Die Fälscher had to be told because it is a unique one that reveals both an extraordinary Jeweish experience under the Nazis, that of the arch-counterfeiter and surviver Salomon Sorowitsch (or "Sallie," Karl Markovics), and another level of Third Reich insanity, their idea, or somebody's, of flooding the market with fake pounds sterling and American dollars and thus somehow bringing down the Allies through economic sabotage, late in the game.

On the other hand when one compares this film with something with the grandeur of sweeping Holocaust films like Spielberg's Schindler's List and Polanski's The Pianist, or the poetry of Lajos Koltai's Fateless (Sorstalanság), Ruzowitzsky's film seems somehow pinched and narrow-minded. It's a good story and a tense one but it dos not sing and it will not change your life.

One reason is that the Russian-born Sallie--his story framed by inconclusive later episodes of his gambling after the war-- is such an unappealing figure. He is an ugly little hard-faced man, expressionless at key moments, and extremely difficult to care about. And nobody cares about him. When he gets syphoned off with some others from the direct path to concentration camp death at Mauthausen to work on the Nazi's mad secret project , he is the key to its success. There are bankers, printers, graphic designers, lithographers ; not evidently any other counterfeiters at all, but we take it on faith that he is an ace at the trade, worthy to head up any team aimed at creating banknotes foolproof enough to survive repeated scrutiny in massive quantities. The other men on the team bow to him, because he alone can maintain quality control and make the project a success. But do they want to make it a success? Herein lies the obvious dilemma. For Sorowitsch, survival is the priority. At the opposite extreme, Adolf Burger (August Diehl), a collotype specialist whose printing experience was for leftist political purposes, sabotaging the project is the only real option.

All we know is that SS Chief Inspector Herzog (David Striesow) supervises this business; and it was he who arrested Sorowitsch in the first place. Sorowitsch has managed to gain favor in the camp by putting himself forward as a gifted sketch artist who does portraits of officers families. Apparently this has gone on for years before the counterfeiting scheme began. The screenplay is a bit vague about the background of this effort, who approved it, who masterminded it; obviously it is essential to the welfare of Herzog. But as the Nazis' situation becomes increasingly desperate and Berger's efforts to block the making of a perfect dollar keep succeeding, Herzog himself is in trouble.

There are other important characters that give the story life. The sweet young Russian boy Kolya (Sebastian Urzendowsky) is a purist, living only for his individual style and his love of the classic Russian modernists. Unfortunately he has tuberculosis, and no one can save him, not the resident doctor, Klinger (August Zirner), nor Sallie with his bargaining power over the increasingly desperate Herzog.

All this definitely holds your attention in its rather terrible grip. The duel between Sallie and the idealistic Burger achieves a tormenting level of moral complexity. Sallie is selfish, but in saving himself he is saving the whole team; in wanting to become a martyr Burger is volunteering the others for martyrdom without their permission. in between there are drones and bankers who simply want to do a job and if possible somehow also stay alive. Outside the counterfeiting team's little compound where the beds have nice linen terrible things happen, and sometimes the terror penetrates in to them too.

The most powerful sequence is at war's end when the "real" concentration camp prisoners, dirty, bleeding, and skeletal, creep into the money makers barracks with guns, unable to believe they are prisoners. This sets the experience in the context of nightmare horror and grasps a minute of the awesome poetry of Fateless' final moments, when the fifteen-year-old György Köves wanders into Budapest and takes a tram wearing his prison stripes. Otherwise, good acting and a compelling story still aren't enough to put this in the first rank of films of this genre.

Another touching holocaust story

[Luigi Di Pilla · 7/10 · 13 April 2008]

Be prepared that this is not a bum bum war movie but another interesting film that touched my feelings. The first scene begins on the dreamingly beach of Nice in South of France where I am going always jogging with my wife in my holidays. Then it dives directly in the second world war time telling how the Jewish people were kept and murdered by the Nazis. DIE FÄLSCHER shows how high talented Jewish forgers have been forced by the SS to work with them. I have now a better view about the development of the German machinery. The movie is well directed with a fast pace and full of turns and twists that led to the Oscar as best foreign film of this year. I have never got bored and I liked it.

There have been several respectable productions in the last years about the holocaust as for example THE PIANIST, BLACK BOOK, DER UNTERGANG, DIE LETZTEN TAGE DER SOPHIE SCHOLL or DER LETZTE ZUG. Read for all these mentioned movies my reviews.

Final vote 7/10 and another important DVD for my best of collection.

Triumph of the Human Spirit?

[Redcitykev · 9/10 · 30 January 2008]

This is film has proved to be the big International hit of the year so far, and on watching it it is easy to see why.

The basic narrative of the film is that of one of the world's greatest counterfeiters, who just happens to be Jewish in Nazi Germany, gets arrested, manages to survive one concentration camp, then gets sent to another camp where he is used to help produce counterfeit money, pounds Stirling and dollars, which the Nazis want to use to undermine the economies of their enemies. The fact that he survives is no big secret due to the way the film is structured, with topping and tailing scenes at Monte Carlo which occur after the war.

Within this narrative, which is based on a true story, arises the eternal question of whether the prisoners survive because of the triumph of the Human Spirit, idealism - ie one certain camp member who does his best to sabotage the operation, is he a hero or a person doing his selfish best to survive? - or just plain determinism not to allow the Nazis to get the better of them? The film offers no easy answers to these questions, and it is up to us, the viewer, to make our own minds up. This also applies to just why the Nazis want such huge sums of money, is it to undermine the economies as we are told, or, as is also implied, to actually fund their war effort? As one would expect from a film set largely in a concentration camp there some disturbing images and moving moments - the moment when the real passports are delivered, or a scene late on when a prisoner, not one of those working on the counterfeit plan, is seen wondering about like a zombie, all Human feeling and responses removed from his body and mind. Such scenes as these are handled with dignity and care, and the film treads a careful line between telling a all-too-human story to which all right minded people can respond, and being voyeuristic. Where the film derives its real power is by keeping the film personal. This is another film, like 'The Kite Runner', which deals with huge political issues in such a way as to relate them to just a handful of main characters, allowing the viewer to make up their minds about the wider political issues being dealt with.

Yes there are faults, some of the clichés, especially of the German guards, (ie "good cop, bad cop" etc), and some of the hand-held camera work takes a little getting used to, but these are worth overlooking in order to see a film which has a heart and soul, and something important to say about the Human Condition.

The more wars change...

[cliffhanley_ · 7/10 · 21 October 2007]

Just as the Americans decided which of the Nazies were 'good' after the war (Verner von Braun etc), the Nazies themselves took a pragmatic view of the Jews. A 144-strong team of artists, forgers and printers was assembled to manufacture first pounds then dollars, the plan being to undermine the enemy economies. The counterfeiters were spared the worst of the privations in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, although they inevitably struggled with their consciences as they helped the German war effort within hearing of the cries of their fellows being tortured and shot. It's the same sub-theme as with 'Bridge Over The River Kwai', but a good deal more visceral. It was difficult to stifle a laugh when, after the team has done its best in reproducing the Bank of England's finest, their reward is unveiled, in the sordid, muddy, blood spattered surrounds of the camp…a ping-pong table! Stefan Ruzowitzky based his film on 'The Devil's Workshop', the book by Adolf Burger, one of the three surviving members of the team. Burger appears as a lad in the film although it is another prisoner, a colourful forger and playboy, Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch, who is the central figure. One telling scene, before his arrest, has a good-time girl backing off, twisting her face in an ugly scowl when she hears his Jewish name.

The entire story is shot in washed-out colour; starting after it's all over and flashing back to explain how Sally found himself here on this beach. The 'past' is even closer to sepia, and grainy with it - appropriate as a recreation of the contrast in now/then, warm/cold, safe/insecure.

One of the strongest things about the drama is its acceptance that the Germans, the 'Nazis', would have been under pressure to close ranks. Some took considerable pleasure in making life intolerable for others and others were by default with their fellow soldiers. That is a timeless situation (as is the concentration camp),and could apply to all uniformed policing organisations.

Just one carp about the sub-titling: Sally says to one other forger, 'I saved all our butts by making pounds.' - This, to some of us, is about collecting cigarette ends. It was very kind of the director to give us a happy ending ( and the company that prints Jack Vettriano's posters will be even happier) although despite Sorowitsch's final promise of riches and comfort to his new lady, we can be sure that he would never, in his mind, have really left the camp.

One of the greatest Holocaust films

[heisenberg83 · 10/10 · 9 October 2007]

I went to a special preview screening of this movie last night in London. There were little counterfeit £5 notes left on all the seat in the cinema which was a nice publicity touch. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, in fact I definitely say it's one of the best Holocaust films - easily up there with Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful. The story is gripping and fascinating, how this group of men survived the war. The performances by Karl Markovics, August Diehl and Devid Striesow were very good indeed. I highly recommend this to everyone. Afterwards I read an interview with the director. *small spoiler* He said the scene where the prisoners are playing ping-pong, while outside their section other, less fortunate, prisoners are being brutalized and murdered could be an analogy for the kind of world we live in today. We get on with our rather material and sheltered lives, while in other, less fortunate countries, people are brutalised and murdered (e.g. Darfur). Amazing, made me really think about things. *end of small spoiler* If you want to see a film that will force you to think, keep you gripped, and leave you with a well of emotions, this is for you.

Adapting to the Holocaust

[ackstasis · 7/10 · 10 May 2008]

I don't think that I've ever seen a bad film about the Holocaust. Though it's very likely that I just haven't been looking hard enough, I've often wondered if a film can receive an added boost of respectability based purely on its subject matter. Is 'The Counterfeiters (2007)' a compelling and harrowing viewing experience? Yes, it is. Does it offend our sensibilities, and leave us disgusted at a particularly dark chapter of human history? Yes, it does. But is it possible to distinguish between the emotional power provided by the true story, and that provided by genuine quality film-making? I'm not too sure. Stefan Ruzowitzky's picture, which was awarded the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is an undeniably solid exploration of one Jewish man's experiences in the German WWII concentration camps, but it distinctly lacks the lingering emotional strength of former efforts, such as Spielberg's 'Schindler's List (1993),' Polanski's 'The Pianist (2002),' Wertmüller's 'Seven Beauties (1975)' or even Benigni's 'Life is Beautiful (1997).'

From the brutal Jewish death-camps of the Nazi regime, a group of capable prisoners are selected to govern Operation Bernhard, a secret plot to destabilise the United Kingdom by flooding the British economy with meticulously-forged currency. At the centre of this story is Jewish master counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), who has been coerced into cooperating with the Germans' scheme. The various prisoners involved in the Operation, mostly honest businessmen and workers, complete their tasks reluctantly, willing to do anything in order to guarantee their safety. However, Adolf Burger (August Diehl), willing to die for his principles, deliberately sabotages the counterfeiting operation, placing the lives of his comrades in jeopardy, but delaying the progress of the Nazi machine. The film was adapted from the real-life memoirs of Adolf Burger, a Jewish Slovak typographer who was imprisoned at Sachsenhausen concentration camp to work on Operation Bernhard.

Though, according to the film, Sorowitsch and his colleagues were largely shielded from the horrors experienced by their less-fortunate companions in the death-camps, director Stefan Ruzowitzky doesn't shy away from some occasionally-graphic imagery. Karl Markovics is strong and charismatic in the lead role, and Devid Striesow is also very impressive as Sturmbannführer Friedrich Herzog, the unsympathetic Nazi who demands results from his workers. The film's most haunting sequence comes at the War's end, as Jewish prisoners overrun the concentration camp and momentarily mistake the well-clothed and fed counterfeiters for Nazi conspirators. Though it would be inaccurate to describe Sorowitsch as looking particularly healthy, the contrast with these other souls – their skeletal limbs and expressionless faces, their bodies reduced to wordless shells – is stark and disturbing. Though lacking the prestige of countless other films on similar subject matter, 'The Counterfeiters' is a solid war-time drama, raising pertinent moral questions, and treating the Holocaust with the respect and solemnity that it deserves.

Harrowing yet Mesmerizing Survivor's Tale

[J_Trex · 10/10 · 30 April 2008]

It was clear from the first few minutes of the film that the protagonist (Solly) survived his death camp experience. The scene is the immediate aftermath of WWII and Solly checks into a casino hotel in Monte Carlo, along with a suitcase of US Currency. After a brief encounter with a woman he picked up in the casino, the scene flashes back to pre WWII in Berlin, where Solly is a successful counterfeiter, eagerly sought after for his skills in forging identity documents for Jews seeking to flee Nazi Germany.

Solly is also Jewish, but feels he is clever enough to elude the coming storm. Eventually he is betrayed by a rival and ends up in a concentration camp. However, his counterfeiting skills help him escape the gas chambers. The Nazis plan is to undermine US & British currency through a massive counterfeiting project & Solly (among other fellow Jewish concentration camp inmates) is recruited to lead the effort.

The moral dilemma of the Jewish prisoner's ability to survive by helping the murderers of their fellow Jews weighs heavily with Solly and his associates. The movie does an excellent job of portraying the dynamics of the issue, from the different perspectives, namely the prisoners who want to survive by actively participating in the counterfeiting project, and those who would rather die by sabotaging it.

As the leader of the counterfeiters, Solly needs to walk a fine line between following his own instincts to survive, and respecting the imperatives of those who want to sabotage the project, ensuring the death of the entire group.

There are many films that touch on the narrative of the holocaust victim compromising one's own moral outlook in order to survive. "The Pianist" & "Fateless" are two recent critically acclaimed films that explored this territory. I would rate "The Counterfeiter" superior to both of these excellent films.

This was an outstanding film, and I recommend it highly.

survival

[LunarPoise · 7/10 · 9 June 2011]

Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch is an expert counterfeiter whose luck runs out when he overrules his survival instinct for one more roll in the sack. Unfortunately for him, this is 1930s Germany and he will serve his time in a concentration camp rather than prison. Sally, however, treats them as one and the same, and it is his prison code of working an angle while giving others their place that sees him survive, and flourish, if such a term fits the meagre circumstances.

Prison code also means never snitching, and it is this dilemma that will decide his fate.

Based on a true story, The Counterfeiters leans more towards prison drama than out-and-out Holocaust movie. The horrors of the camps intrudes only occasionally - that is the guilt-ridden dilemma of these prisoners - and mostly off-screen, as when the god-forsaken 'shoe squad' march next door, and we witness one of them being executed only by virtue of the bullets that ricochet through the fence and endanger the precious forgery team. There is division in the ranks of the Jew forgers, between those who want to survive and those who want to sabotage the war effort. As the war draws to a close, their aims slowly converge.

Karl Markovics excels as street-wise habitual criminal Sally. He scoffs at left-wing ideologue Burger, believing his jailbird instincts will get him through this ordeal. The wake-up call comes when he is cleaning the latrine, on his knees, and Hauptscharführer Holst, the camp's chief sadist, let's him know in no uncertain terms how he regards his contribution to the war effort, and indeed his very humanity.

The film bookends its opening and closing with Sally in Monaco, having survived the war, ready to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. Needless to say, the monetary gain soon loses its allure.

Well acted, technically excellent, The Counterfieters entertains rather than provokes thought, but is worth viewing nonetheless.

Largely pointless.

[raimund-berger · 4/10 · 24 March 2008]

So here's, I have to say, another concentration camp story, this time focusing on a counterfeiting operation aimed at providing the Nazi regime with foreign currency. And it is a group of Jewish ex counterfeiters, printers and bankers now camp prisoners who are supposed to do the job.

The very largest part of the story is concerned with a group conflict being related to a much discussed historical question, i.e. why the Jewish people didn't put up more resistance. Accordingly, there's the party voting for and performing sabotage, represented mainly by one group member, and the majority primarily interested in saving their lives by conforming. This group conflict comprises basically the whole plot.

And that's already my complaint. There's little else then repeating discussions about why or why not the prisoners should comply, occasionally interrupted by random Nazi guard violence almost appearing to be included just for beefing up the otherwise thin story.

While the principal plot idea isn't that bad, it's unfortunately poorly performed, very linear and shallow in various respects, including character portrayal. Story wise I mean, the acting generally is pretty good, like much of the raw production aspects, camera, sets, editing etc.

While I wouldn't call a single watching of this movie a total waste of time, I also wouldn't regard this a must see. Why this movie received an Oscar for best foreign film is, frankly, a mystery to me.

Idealism and Survival

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 4 April 2010]

In 1936, the greatest forger in Germany, the Jewish Russian Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), is arrested by the agent Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow) and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. Years later, he is transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp to work with a group of professionals counterfeiting sterling pounds under the command of Herzog in the Operation Bernhard. When the group is ordered to produce American dollars, the idealistic Adolf Burger (August Diehl) sabotages the work of Sally and his team.

"Die Fälscher" is based on a true story of a group of Jews that are forced to counterfeit currency to destabilize the economy of England and North America in World War II. The realistic plot discloses a fight between the idealism of Burger and the intention of surviving the war of the group of Jews led by Sally in excellent performances. The result is another great and powerful German film that leaves an open question: what could you do or how far would you go to survive? My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Os Falsários" ("The Forgers")

The biggest con operation of the entire history: Operation Bernhard & the horror of the small concentration camps

[antoniatejedabarros · 10/10 · 16 October 2017]

Atze (Veit Stübner): "Warum ist Gott nicht in Auschwitz? Der kam nicht durch die Selektion!"

Die Fälscher is one of my favorite movies about the Holocaust. It's an Austrian film where the Nazi pigs bark in German (not English) and the victims speak, cry and pray in German, Russian, and Hebrew (not English). I can't stand the Holocaust movies where the Nazis speak English with a German accent, no matter how good the movie is. That goes for Schindler's List and many others (the only exception is probably The Pianist, an excellent film that if it were in Polish and German would be a real masterpiece).

In Die Fälscher one can really breath the brutality of the small Nazi concentration camps (there are no extermination camps shown here). Viktor Frankl wrote that in the ordinary small concentration camps most of the extermination took place. In Die Fälscher we see a Nazi pig kicking to death a prisoner in Buchenwald and we see how little life was worth in Sachsenhausen (you could be shot any time and for no reason). The elegant and cultivated German Nazis could kill and torture as much as they felt like.

The film focuses on the biggest con operation of the entire history: Operation Bernhard. Operation Bernhard managed to counterfeit more than 134 million British pounds and some American dollars. Created in 1942 by the Nazi Germans and developed in Sachsenhausen's Blocks 18 and 19 by 142 Jewish prisoners who were forced to forge millions, Operation Bernhard could have given a dramatic turn to the war. The Nazis counterfeited not only British pounds and American dollars, but also many passports, identity cards, birth and marriage certificates, other official documents, and stamps. The Nazis were not only cruel and monstrous (we know that they loved to gas men, women, and children, and that they enjoyed massacring people and burning babies alive), but they were also great thieves (they stole many Aryan-looking Polish children – after having killed their parents, of course–) and they were also the greatest common criminals: they organized the biggest con operation of all times (but, luckily, too late). The Nazi Germans possessed all of the disgusting and lowest attributes that a human can have: racism, violence, cruelty, and dishonesty. And all that beautiful pack came from one of the most cultivated countries of the entire world. The Germans, with their amazing philosophy, their amazing poetry, their amazing music and their amazing art produced the most horrific monstrosity of human history: the Holocaust.

Die Fälscher is loosely based on the memoirs of Adolf Burger, originally written in Czech (Komando padělatelů) and first published in 1983. The translation into English was published only 26 years later (in 2009) under the title The Devil's Workshop: A Memoir of the Nazi Counterfeiting Operation (I didn't read the book, but I just ordered it). Burger was a Jewish Slovak typographer and Holocaust survivor born in 1917. He was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau together with his wife when he was 25 years old, in 1942. At that time he was making fake baptism certificates to save Jews. In Auschwitz-Birkenau he was tattooed with the number 64401. His wife perished in Auschwitz that year. He survived 18 months in Auschwitz-Birkenau and was then transferred to Sachsenhausen (April 1944) to work in Operation Bernhard. In 1945 he was transferred to the Ebensee concentration camp (a camp within the Mauthausen network) until its liberation by the US Army on May 6, 1945 (that isn't shown in the movie). Burger died 10 months ago in Prague, age 99 (yes, 99!), in December 2016.

The casting of the film is superb. Karl Markovics (who portrays Sorowitsch, a character based on the real Salomon Smolianoff, an Ukrainian Jewish professional counterfeiter who died in Brazil at age 76) gives an outstanding performance. I really love this actor. He's amazing. August Diehl (the famous SS whom Fassbender blew his balls off in Inglourious Basterds) plays the real Burger. He appears super thin and his performance is stunning. Sebastian Urzendowsky plays Kolya, a young Russian painter also involved in Operation Bernhard. His performance is breathtaking (Urzendowsky gave an impressive performance too in the German film Berlin'36). Devid Striesow plays the Nazi Herzog, to my taste a too nice and soft character. Herzog is based on the real Bernhard Krüger, a murderous SS who led Operation Bernhard (the operation was named after him). As the vast majority of German and Austrian murderers, Krüger got off scot-free (after a brief period of detention) and died peacefully in Germany at age 84. Charlie Chaplin's granddaughter (Dolores Chaplin) makes a small appearance in the film.

The tango music of the film (written by Marius Ruhland) is truly amazing. The details of the film are really painful and really well made: the apple, the bloody hands, the second hand clothing, the touching of the clean bed sheets, the reaction of Kolya at the beginning of the shower, the huge humiliation in the toilet, the walking-corps after the liberation of Sachsenhausen

Around 134 million counterfeit British pounds were produced at Sachsenhausen. In 1945 Operation Bernhard moved to Mauthausen. In 1959 some of the boxes with counterfeit British pounds were discovered at the bottom of Lake Toplitz (in the Austrian Alps), and in 2000 the same company who discovered the Titanic pull out from the lake many boxes with counterfeit British pounds and some counterfeit American dollars.

Die Fälscher won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language (Austria). After it won the Oscar, Burger said that he felt happy because now more people would see the movie and will know that the Nazis were not just murderers but also common criminals.

The worst: some small factual errors.

The best: everything else.