# The Boys from Brazil (film)

The Boys from Brazil is a 1978 film about a Nazi hunter in Paraguay who discovers a sinister and bizarre plot by Nazi fugitive Josef Mengele to use cloning to create the Fourth Reich.
    Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. Written by Heywood Gould, based on the novel by Ira Levin.

## Ezra Lieberman

* [about Mengele] He was the chief doctor of Auschwitz, who killed 2.5 million people, experimented with children - Jewish and non-Jewish - using twins mostly, injecting blue dyes into their eyes to make them acceptable Aryans... amputating limbs and organs from thousands without anesthetics.
* You're not a guard now, madame! You are a prisoner! I may leave here today empty handed. But you... are not going anywhere.
* Not Mozart. Not Picasso. Not a genius who would enrich the world. But a lonely little boy with a domineering father, a customs officer who was 52 when he was born. And an affectionate doting mother who was 29. The father died when he was 65 when the boy was nearly 14... Adolf Hitler.
* You know, there was a nurse here, an angel of mercy called Miss Hannah, who actually gives me cigarettes. You know what she said to me the other day? She said, "Mr. Lieberman, if you can escape Buchenwald, and you can escape those bullets, then a few cigarettes will not hurt you." (burns the list of Mengele's clones) Isn't that a nice thing to say?

## Dr. Josef Mengele

* Do you know what I saw on the television in my motel room at one o'clock this morning? Films of Hitler! They are showing films about the war! The movement! People are fascinated! The time is ripe! Adolf Hitler is alive! [Takes photo album and places it on his lap] This album is full of pictures of him. Bobby Wheelock and ninety-three other boys are exact genetic duplicates of him, bred entirely from his cells. He allowed me to take half a liter of his blood and a cutting of skin from his ribs. [laughs] We were in a Biblical frame of mind on the twenty-third of May 1943, at the Berghof. He had denied himself children because he knew that no son could flourish in the shadow of so godlike a father! But when he heard what was theoretically possible, that I could create one day not his son, not even a carbon-copy but another original, he was thrilled by the idea! The right Hitler for the right future! A Hitler tailor-made for the 1980s, the 1990s, 2000!
* He betrayed me, he betrayed you, he betrayed the Aryan race!

## Other

* Mrs. Doring: [about Mengele] Would you like me to tell you who really killed him? God. To set free a stupid little farm girl after twenty-two years of unhappiness. Do Nazis answer prayers Herr Lieberman? No, that is God's business and I have thanked Him every night since He pushed Emil under that car. He could have done it sooner, but I thank Him anyway.
* Bobby Wheelock: [to Mengele] You're so weird.

## Dialogue

    Professor Bruckner: Cloning. What if I were to tell you that I could take a scraping of skin from your finger and create another Ezra Lieberman?
    Ezra Lieberman: I would tell you not to waste your time on my finger.
    Dr. Josef Mengele: You are a clever boy. Are you not? You do not well at school, but it's because you are too clever. Too busy, thinking your own thoughts. But you are much smarter than your teachers, hah?
    Bobby Wheelock: My teachers are nowhere.
    Dr. Josef Mengele: You are going to be the world's greatest photographer, are you not? Have you ever felt superior to those around you? Like a prince among peasants?
    Bobby Wheelock: I feel different from everyone sometimes.
    Dr. Josef Mengele: You are infinitely different. Infinitely superior. You are born of the noblest blood in the world.
    Gertrud: [Mengele has just knocked Mundt to the floor] Get a doctor!
    Dr. Josef Mengele: I am a doctor, idiot.
    Gertrud: Don't you come near him!
    Dr. Josef Mengele: Shut up, you ugly bitch.
    Ezra Lieberman: Did you kill Wheelock?
    Dr. Josef Mengele: [sarcastically] No, he's in the kitchen mixing us some cocktails!
    David Bennet: We have the right and we have the duty.
    Ezra Lieberman: To do what? To kill children?

## Cast

* Gregory Peck - Dr. Josef Mengele
* Laurence Olivier - Ezra Lieberman
* James Mason - Eduard Seibert
* Lilli Palmer - Esther Lieberman
* Uta Hagen - Frieda Maloney
* Steve Guttenberg - Barry Kohler
* Denholm Elliott - Sidney Beynon
* Rosemary Harris - Frau Doring
* John Dehner - Henry Wheelock
* John Rubinstein - David Bennett
* Anne Meara - Mrs. Curry
* Bruno Ganz as Dr. Bruckner
* Walter Gotell as Mundt
* David Hurst as Strasser
* Wolfgang Preiss as Lofquist
* Michael Gough as Mr. Harrington
* Joachim Hansen as Fassler
* Sky du Mont as Hessen

## External links

* The Boys from Brazil quotes at the Internet Movie Database
* The Boys from Brazil at Rotten Tomatoes