Yes folks, more Fascists. I guess they're in vogue: in the movies, at the theatre, and of course of TV. once Holocaust reaches the tube, Nazis are making the cash registers ring. There'll always be a market for bad guys.

As long, that is, as there's a market for entertainment like this, which will probably (hopefully ) be some time. I liked The Boys From Brazil. I wouldn't rave about it, or rush back to see it again, but it was alright. In it's way, it was quite good

Thriller/suspense/mystery films (and comedies, and fantasies; most films in the commercial arena in fact) are like toy train sets. You wind them up, the passengers hop aboard, and away they go, loco-moting around the track. The passengers admire the carefully landscaped scenery, repair to the dining-car for refreshments about midway, hopefully become quite exhilarated as the train builds up speed, and as it circles back to the starting point and chugs into the station, everyone breathes a sigh of satisfaction (if it's their particular cup of tea, and the ride hasn't been too bumpy), and gets out. They haven't gone anywhere, they're not usually changed in any way, but they've had a nice time and they've got plenty to talk about when they get home.

Watching for Potential

The Boys From Brazil is like that. It's fun (and often very funny), suspenseful, reasonably exciting and efficient. That last quality is important. Too many films derail (or don't even get out of the station) because they don't use what they've got to best advantage. The railway image actually comes from Brian De Palma's most recent film. The Fury. It itself jumps the tracks, like the toy train Gillian sends telekinetically haywire at the ESP demonstration, because it tried to go too fast, to create too much action and eventually it all becomes a bit ludicrous. The Boys From Brazil is a bit daft, sure, but then the best thrillers usually are. It, though, is under control all the way.

And I think that if films like this are well-controlled, and inventive, and effective, and well-executed, then they can make justified claims to being (wait for it) Art. And no less so than the "serious" films (you know, the stuff they show at the Film Society). To put it another way, look at the Mona Lisa. Who's to say what it "means", or indeed whether it has any intrinsic meaning or value at all? But we we'd all agree, it's a masterly piece of painting. I'm not saying that The Boys From Brazil is a masterpiece, but some of these films are, and that's why I go to all of them (because you can never ever judge a film by its subject matter — let's face it, even Mona L.'s not the best looking broad in the world).

The reason why films in the suspense/ thriller/horror bracket are of special interest at the moment (and why I go on and on about them) is because Stanley Kubrick's next film (The Shining, due out by Christmas) is in this field. And he's already produced two out of a handful of what I consider to be the greatest contemporary achievments in cinematic art, 2001 and Barry Lyndon. So I'm counting the days. It should be quite a ride.

Film Versus Book

However, about time we got back to Brazil. I'm not going to give away the plot, because it revolves around a central mystery (why are a group of Brazil-based Nazis killing off 94 male civil servants all over the world, on or around their 65th birthdays?). One thing in the handling of the plot, though, is interesting — and leads to the rather obvious statement that films and books are different things.

Self-evident, sure. A piece of writing has vocabulary and grammar. Film also has its language, but its vocabulary consists of images and sounds, and its grammar is the arrangement of those images and sounds. Some books and films are very close, despite the difference in language: books primarily are concerned with telling a story (look at the bestseller lists) and like-minded films (eg The Boys From Brazil), often discard those features unique to their own language and produce something that's somewhere between the two. I didn't say that very well. What it amounts to is that some books (usually those with the stress on action, conveyed in a simple straightforward style) are easily translated into films, others aren't. Right. So on with the example.

This film is based on a book of the same name by Ira Levin, of Rosemary's Baby fame (actually both stories have the same basic theme and structure, but Rosemary's Baby is more effective, both as a book and film). And the book was kept direct and "unliterary", just asking to be turned into a Major Motion Picture. It was practically a screenplay already, and you can bet your bursary that was Ira's idea all along. What does "bestseller" mean after all? But there was a crucial difference, that highlights some of the advantages each of the two media has over the other. In the written word, a description may withhold a vital piece of information without unduly arousing our suspicions, thus preventing the game from being given away too soon. But in a film, the parallel of such a description requires us to see the object (or whatever) and spot what we can.

The result in The Boys From Brazil is that we can, simply by a little light exercise of the grey matter, work out the key to the plot quite some time before the denouement, and long before we could in the book. But it cuts both ways in this particular case. The book had to resort to a fairly explicit (that is, obvious) image for its chilling finale, but the film has the upper hand here in that, by its very nature, it can use a simple visual symbol to do the same thing. And Schaffner develops this symbol (a bracelet of some kind) very cleverly, lighting it in such a way as to create a subtle but provocative final image.

But enough. I'm even starting to bore myself.

Sir Larry & Co.

The actors deserve a mention. Good grief, with Laurence Olivier in the cast, it's compulsory. And, of course, he's excellent He really is very good — absorbed in the character, utterly convincing, and, as Ezra Liebermann the aging Jewish Nazi-hunter, endearingly comic. I'm always amazed by this. Even in a piece of unrepentant rubbish like The Betsy, he's delivering a performance that's so flawless and integrated into the production that it's easy to forget that he's there, or at least that you've also seen him as Hamlet, Othello, Richard 111, et al. Gregory Peck also has a great time being on the side of Evil for once, even if he's not as consistently sinister as you could wish for. Rosemary Hams, in a cameo role as one of the widows Liebermann interviews, enjoys herself burlesquing her role in Holocaust. James Mason? He has precious little to do.

Franklin J. Schaffner's direction is, as I've indicated, efficient and at times exuberant. He keeps the whole thing moving forward at a fast and exciting clip, aided by Jerry Gold-smith's pounding score, and produces well-finished film that.....well, if it won't be hard to forget, it's at least very easy to enjoy.

Paul Hagan