Die Fälscher

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with Salomon (Sali) gambling heavily and winning in a Monte Carlo casino just after the war. It then fades back to the late 30s in Germany where Sali is more fully introduced as he parties and does shady deals and is generally talked of as a successful forger. At the party he meets a woman who persuades Sali to forge an Argentinian passport for her, as she clearly intends to escape Nazi Germany. He takes her back to his house where he skillfully produces the fake passport and ends up in bed with her.They are woken next morning by the police crashing him and arresting him. The senior policeman, Friedrich Herzog, exults in arresting "The King of Forgers".The film now moves on 5 years, during which time Sali has moved from prison to a concentration camp. He, and a number of other inmates, have been selected and are being transported from Mauthausen to Sachsenhausen. When they arrive they are introduced to Sturmbannfuhrer Herzog - the police inspector who arrested Sali 5 years before. He explains that they have been selected because of their skills in various aspects of forgery and they are to join "Project Bernhard," the aims of which include destabilizing the economies of Britain and the USA by producing and circulating vast quantities of forged banknotes.The newcomers are given new clothing, which is in reality clothing taken from other inmates and one of the group, Adolf Burger, refuses to wear them. They are then shown their quarters which include sprung beds and clean linen a clear contrast to conditions in the rest of the camp, glimpses of which have been seen as the group walked through the camp.They are then introduced to the large team already working on the project including the kapo (a prisoner who acts as guard) and a Jewish German banker. Herzog makes Sali leader of the team and orders them to concentrate on quickly producing perfect forgeries of pound notes in various denominations. The film follows the development of the "perfect forgeries" with Herzog frequently switching from avuncular to bullying while the rest of the German guards are universally brutal. There are more glimpses of life in the rest of the camp but the forgers are kept in relative luxury. Finally Herzog is satisfied with the pound forgeries and uses a ploy to get a batch examined by both a Swiss bank and the Bank of England - both of which pronounces them genuine.Herzog then says that the dollar has become the priority. It is becoming clear that the war is nearing its end and the Nazis want results quickly. One of the group has developed TB but there are no drugs to treat it. Meanwhile Burger has become more vocal in his opposition to this collaboration and says that he will sabotage it. As time passes, they get no nearer to success with the dollar because of Burger's actions and arguments rage between Sali and Burger over the moral implications. Should they cooperate to save their own lives but in doing so lengthen the war? Should they live in comfort while their compatriots just outside are starving? This is highlighted when, while playing table tennis in their compound they hear beatings over the fence and the bullets which kill the unseen victim pass through the fence. Herzog is heard tearing a strip off the guard, not for shooting the prisoner but for risking the lives of the forgers.Finally Herzog gives the group an ultimatum - complete the work on the dollar forgeries or 5 of them will be shot. Sali then does a deal with Herzog that he will complete the work in exchange for drugs to treat his friend with TB. They both keep their word but, before the drug can be administered, Sali's friend is shot - " to save them all from catching the disease".No sooner has the final dollar forgery been produced than the team are suddenly told to dismantle and pack up all the machinery so that it can be moved to safety in advance of the approaching Allied troops. This has only just been completed when, one morning, they awake to find that all the German guards have left. Herzog is seen recovering his hidden stash of forged notes. Sali confronts Herzog and disarms him. Herzog is at Sali's mercy, however Sali doesn't kill Herzog: he allows him to leave. The next morning the wall of their compound is knocked down and the forgers find themselves faced by a threatening mob of the prisoners from the rest of the camp. Only by showing their tattooed prison camp numbers are they saved.The final scene returns to the Monte Carlo casino where Sali wildly and purposely gambles away his huge pile. Finally, sitting on the beach, he is joined by the glamorous escort from the casino who commiserates him over his losses. "We can soon make some more" says Sali.

Tags: thought-provoking, violence, murder, flashback

Review:
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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 plot is shown previously, but this film, based on a true story as told in the book by Adolph Burger, takes place in Nazi Germany during World War II, is extremely well done.
Not Good, quite Bad. The Counterfeiters' is a film about a Jewish man, in a concentration camp, who forges money for the Nazi's (more on them later) to stay alive.
Karl Makovics has a quite a lot of screen presence, mostly thanks to his interesting chiselled appearance but his performance is so restrained, low key and toned down that any hint of charisma is buried underneath a huge pile of sighs, frowns and long blank stares at nothing in particular.Tonally, the film is all over the place; it's neither a comedy, social artefact, war movie nor drama (the film never reaches such heights) 'The Counterfeiters' plods along, going nowhere, for an hour and half (that will seem like three) and then unceremoniously ends.Despite its uneventful and dull plot, vacuous performances and child like direction it's morally where the films biggest issues lie.
We all know what happened in those camps and I just can't see why we need to watch a Jew having his head blown off by a laughing German every fifteen minutes, these scenes only seem to have been included as a ploy to wake sleeping members of the audience, of which there will surely be many.Overall, 'The Counterfeiters' is an absolute mess of a film but there is one scene that, in a better movie, could be extremely moving and powerful.
Inspired by the widely published real-life memoirs of Holocaust survivor Adolf Burger, this tense and highly gripping world war II period drama tells the tale of Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics)- a skilled Jewish artist and identification/currency counterfeiter who's forced to spearhead a covert Nazi counterfeiting operation set on destabilising the British and North American economies by flooding their financial systems with forged notes.Book ended by post-war events in the life of Salomon (Markovics' haunted expressions and facial idiosyncrasies tell all), the film largely tells of his lengthy ordeal within the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and his tortured team's complex, life-threatening and principle-ridding struggle to meet the unlawful demands of their Nazi capturers.In a truly remarkable yet strenuous parable that recurrently tugs at the heart and soul strings while drawing ever-so-slight levity and even laughs on occasion, The Counterfeiters (like most Holocaust orientated pictures) rarely fails to shock or disturb, rivet or touch.
The counterfeiters is your typical holocaust film: shocking because of the atrocities, tense because you are always expecting the worst from the Nazis, we see things mostly from the point of view of the victims who are portrayed either like geniuses or heroes.The better moments come from the specifics we are given on the craft or art of counterfeiting, how they managed to replicate the pound's paper, or the process of collotyping.
Hoping to accomplish this, they forced large numbers of Jewish prisoners in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen to print false currency.The most interesting aspect, at least in my view, is the relationship between head counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) and Sturmbahnfuhrer Herzog (Devid Striesow).
Based on a true story and singed with horrifying details of the Nazi treatment of 'detainees' (primarily Jews) during WW II, the inner story of this film is one of resilience and survival against near impossible odds and how one man turned his criminal gifts into a system so impressive that he served as a 'provider' of funds to the financially depleted Third Reich war effort.
The story is in itself fascinating enough to hold our interest for the duration of the film, but it is the incredibly ingenious and wily character of Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch that burns a space in our minds of how one man survived the concentration camps and in his own way helped fellow Jews to likewise survive the Holocaust.
Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) is a brilliant counterfeiter, a Russian Jew so gifted in his ability to forge documents such as passports that he is able to live the 'good life' - money, women, gambling, etc.
Though Karl Markovics is very strong in the leading role, the supporting cast of some of Germany's finest actors brings a depth of humanity and perception to the major issue the film addresses - both death and survival in the onerous concentration camps of the Nazis.
Without being an excellent movie,I think The Counterfeiters is a very interesting film.The story could keep me interested almost all the time and the slow tone from this movie helps for building the characters in a solid way.Director Stefan Ruzowitzy made a very precise work and he could extract very good performances from the entire cast.I also thanked this movie does not show the Nazis as demons.Do not misunderstand me:the Nazis made atrocious and aberrant things without a reason but,this movie shows that,behind the monsters they were,they also were human persons.But,this movie has some fails which make the film only very good when it could have been excellent.As I mentioned before,the slow tone is justified but,on some moments,the film is excessively slow.I think that,with a better edition on some parts,the result could have been a more compact and solid film.Also,I think the screenplay falls short on some aspects.But,in spite of that,The Counterfeiters is a very good film which deserves to be recommended,with the warning of its slow tone..
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.
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.
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.
Rating: 6/10 {Clue: Adapted from a memoir by this man or Fast food favorite with fries} Behind-the-scenes of Nazi Germany's World War II Operation Bernhard- the largest counterfeiting scheme in history, Underdeveloped characters leads to difficulty empathizing,Reduced by its formulaic determination as awards season bait.
One of the biggest scams of the war, the counterfeiting operation printed over 130 million pounds sterling in its attempt to destabilize the allied cause and help the sinking German economy."The Counterfeiters" tells the true story of a group of Jewish prisoners who were recruited from other camps for such a career--much against their wishes, if not for the threat of death.
He is torn between his determination to stay alive with the knowledge that producing the perfect American dollar will affect the lives of his fellow workers, as well as undermine the entire Allied cause."The Counterfeiters" differs from other films involving the Holocaust in that the emphasis is on the personal moral choices that are made--rather than the overall horror and despair.
6.Finally, the memorable scenes in the movie :a.While at the Mauthausen concentration camp, Sorowitsch's threatening SS warden of stabbing him if he hits him(Sorowitsch) b.Sorowitsch handing his soup to a wounded and weak Kolya c.Sorowitsch's discovery of the English using rags in manufacture of the Pound d.Sorowitsch making Kolya eat food like a father feeding babies - 'A spoon for Expressionists, A spoon for Avantgardists', a way that suits Koyla who often speaks about his academics e.The BEST scene - an unbeatable gambler, Sorowitsch, deliberately loses all the counterfeit money at the casino and is later shown resting on the beach 7.Over all, I include this movie in the list of 'MUST-WATCH' ....
The Counterfeiters, a true story of a concentration camp ordeal based on an autobiographical account, conceives a disquieting moral predicament any one of us could identify with, one not quite like any of the series of great, good and bad Holocaust films to date.
As luck would have it, as is usually the case, Stefan Ruzowitzky has a 'true story' to be based upon, which is that there was in 1944 the biggest counterfeiting scheme in history being run by the Nazis- from forced Jewish labor in a camp in Germany of course- in order to flood out the currency of the British and Americans.
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.
A touching and gripping piece of work based on the all too true story of a group of talented prisoners in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp who worked for the Nazis, counterfeiting British and American money in order to survive the ordeals that their fellow Jews faced.Fantastic performances all round, this film will grab your heart and squeeze it tight whilst posing provoking questions such as: just how far would you go to survive?
However, "The Counterfeiters" is not just another film about the holocaust but discussed an obscure but true story about a small number of Jewish prisoners who were able to spare their lives by working WITH the Nazis.
Many people knew, for example, that there were concentration camps in Germany where financial experts, sketch artists and print-house handymen, all of them Jewish prisoners, worked as counterfeiters for the Third Reich, forging money that would help the Nazis support their financial war...but few knew the actual story behind this fact.
Stefan Ruzowitzky's "Die Falscher" is yet another fresh and broad look at a true story from WWII, about a group of Jewish men who worked in one such forging agency disguised as a concentration camp.The film follows Salomon Sorowicz (Karl Markovics), a man of few words but with a strong and resolute personality, who's famous throughout Germany for his infallible forging of passports and money.
He is actually a kind of the criminal, an unsuccessful artist who becomes a master forger of documents and money and is initially thrown in jail because of this, to end in a concentration camp because he is a Jew. He will survive together with a team of other 'specialist' by becoming part of a program of printing forged pounds and dollars in such quantities that they would affect the economies of Britain and the US in time of war.The main hero is wonderfully acted by Karl Markovics whose performance is maybe the best part of the film.
Just when you think that there is little new that can be said about the Second World War in a movie, there comes along a film that tells us something not just different but astonishing: a secret German plan to destabilise the British and American economies through the largest counterfeiting operation in history code-named Operation Bernhard.
In some ways, he might well do so since, although the film is centered on Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch (played by Austrian Karl Markovics), a Russsian Jew who was a professional counterfeiter until his arrest in Berlin, the moral core of the plot comes from the Burger character (German actor August Diehl), a Slovak Communist trained as a typographer.The interplay between these characters - who were close friends in the camp but never saw each other after the war - draws out the moral dilemma facing the 144 Jewish prisoners of 13 different nationalities at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp: forced to produce perfect pound notes and work on counterfeit dollar notes while housed in relatively comfortable conditions or die immediately, knowing that their efforts could undermine the economies of the Allies and that once their work was done they would be killed anyway.At times the characters are a little cardboard, but generally this is a worthy and accomplished work that tells a remarkable story with real attention to detail and consistent maintenance of tension.
The notes are considered among the most perfect counterfeits ever produced, being almost impossible to distinguish from the real currency.Karl Markovics is outstanding as Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch, a counterfeiter who figures out how to survive the concentration camps, and whose talents are put to use by the Nazis.
Boasting an incredible story about basic human instinct and survival, we journey with the protagonist down a slippery slope from within the confines of a concentration camp in Operation Bernhard, fictionalized in an account of the Nazis' plot in flooding the British economy with fake currency.Based upon the memoirs written by Adolf Burger, The Counterfeiters tell of a group of Jewish prisoners who got recruited from camps for such a career much against their wishes, if not for the threat of death.
This is a good example of a film that can be produced by though two countries.The film tells the story of Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a expert Jewish counterfeiter living in Germany.
On the other hand, if you see the setting primarily as the backdrop for examining moral dilemmas, then you will probably like this.I have to confess that before watching this I asked myself if I really needed to see another Holocaust movie, since I had read Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," and Speer's, "Inside the Third Reich" (among other books) as well as having seem numerous films like, "Shindler's List," "The Pianist," and "The Young Lions." But I am glad I saw this movie since it poses the dilemma of how much you would collaborate with an enemy in as stark a manor as I can imagine.The story revolves around a group of Jews gathered together in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in order to counterfeit British pounds and U.S. dollars in an attempt to flood the market with such and bring down the Wester economies.
This separates them and one of the counterfeiters named Adolf Burger can't live with the fact that he is financing the Nazis.Like the Polanski film The Pianist, this is a story of survival.
The story of the Nazi attempts to counterfeit British and US currency to destabilize their economies during World War 2 using concentration camp inmates is based on the memoirs of Adolf Burger, a Slovakian printer and one of the survivors.
Based on the memoir "The Devil's Workshop" by Adolf Burger, one of the survivors of the program, The Counterfeiters is the story of Operation Bernhard, a little known World War II program engineered by the Nazis to use Jewish prisoners to subvert the currencies of the U.S. and the U.K through forgery.
Based on the memoir "The Devil's Workshop" by Adolf Burger, one of the survivors of the program, The Counterfeiters is the story of Operation Bernhard, a little known World War II program engineered by the Nazis to use Jewish prisoners to subvert the currencies of the U.S. and the U.K through forgery.