TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Antonia Tejeda Barros 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.

Bene Cumb The Jewish nation has provided very many talented people; some of them found use of the talent on another side of law - as the counterfeiter Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch, the protagonist of Die Fälscher. Imprisoned before the World War II already, he was naturally transferred into a concentration camp, where he and other "graphic" talents survived due to their skills only as they were necessary for Operation Bernard. As there are Jews of different political views, moral values, education, countries of origin etc, tensions are high soon, and apart from their common enemy - Nazis, they will have fights with each other and inside themselves. All this is expressed in a realistic and enrapturing manner (although the ending is too sudden and trivial).During the film, you would also realise how similar totalitarian regimes (incl. the Soviet Union) were, i.e. in handling the sick, putting criminal and political prisoners together etc (btw, the Soviets took over Sachenhausen and used it as a NKVD special camp). Ancient principle of Divide And Rule! was widely used.The cast is very strong and even, beginning with Karl Markovics as Sorowitsch and Devid Striesow as Sturmbannführer Herzog. All the characters are elaborated, reasons for their deeds logically visible.Recommended to all those fond of historical dramas based on true events.

laurance-oneill I only discovered this film while showing my dad how to watch films on his pc using the BBC iplayer. As yet I have not yet even watched it. I will and I fully expect it to be a very good and interesting film. Having browsed through most of its reviews not once (as far as I can see) has any one even hinted at the wonderful 1981 BBC mini-series Private Schultz staring the late and sadly missed Ian Richardson and Michael Elphick. Surely I can't be the only person to notice that both deal with the same story. Albeit that the BBC version has a lighter dark comedy treatment?Private Schultz is now at long last available on BBC DVD. It has only relatively recently been released. Prior to its release on DVD some very silly over sensitive people believed that it showed Jews during the war to be forgers, thieves etc...what absolute rubbish, and thank goodness the people in control of this matter have seen sense. As I've said even without seeing The Counterfeiters I'm sure I'll enjoy it...But I really must recommend Private Schulz to anyone who enjoyed this film Laurance O'Neill

trimmerb1234 In many films the dialogue leads, action follows and from this we understand the situation. In The Counterfeiters we understand the situation just as the characters do, share their dilemmas and wait to see how they will react. We get to know their individual characters, their loyalties and urge for self-preservation so fully appreciate their silent struggles with themselves. There is such assured writing and direction that the revelation of the reward for producing enough money to wreck a nation's economy appears to the audience as grotesquely pitiful in its meanness as it might have done to the real life forgers. So too the scene where the master forger with the weight of the world on his mind meets the pretty, innocent and dim Nazi wife who talks to him as if he were her husband's work-colleague brought home for a meal. We experience it as he experiences it. It is all the more involving because it almost entirely lacks violence, gun-play, music or exaggeration. Less is much much more.