Cloning A Disaster

THE IDEA FOR Ira Levin's The Boys from Brazil is potentially no more idiotic than those which have fueled many successful Hollywood thrillers. A nasty Nazi doctor clones 94 infants from a graft of Hitler's skin, and plants his babies all over the world, trusting that in the correct environment at least a quarter of them will grow up to be fuhrers. It might have worked as satire of Hollywood, because these Nazis think like producers and studio-heads: Why bother to devise something new when cloning the old formula makes for a smashing success?

Say what you will against Hitler, but he could have taught producer Lew Grade and director Franklin J. Schaffner a thing or two about captivating an audience. He would have told them that manipulation requires careful pacing, a dash of wit, and a lot of fervor. You've got to work and keep working, he would have said--you can't be sluggish or cowardly. It's all right to be simplistic and to prey upon people's most basic fears and desires, and it helps to be as perverse and merciless as possible, but you've got to have charisma too.

Schaffner's direction has no charisma, no wit, little skill. With the exception of the obvious, lowangle shots of Gregory Peck as the evil doctor, his camera set-ups are standard and static, the editing choppy and unrhythmical, the use of select German symphonies and thundering crescendos at the sight of Peck ludicrous. The pace is non-existent until the last twenty minutes, a bloody brawl between Peck and Laurence Olivier as an old Nazi-hunter, when it may be labeled "slow." The old men resort to biting each other, and the graphic shredding of Olivier's ear and Peck's hand detracts aesthetically from the suspense.

Gregory Peck has gleefully transformed himself into a hulking, slit-eyed, "embodiment of evil." He isn't as awful as you'd expect--he tries hard and he can't help the screenplay, but as an actor he tends to be as stolid and uninspired as this movie. You could, in fact, label The Boys from Brazil "the Gregory Peck of thrillers." But there are compensations...

Lord Laurence Olivier in Ira Levin's The Boys from Brazil?

Well, after Harold Robbins, anything is an improvement. Olivier's Nazi hunter is a dazzling creation, easily the best male performance of the year. Who cares if he overacts--he did that in The Betsy too, and it made the damned thing worth seeing. Pale, parched, and very thin, with a mop of white hair, a fluffy white moustache, and a high, whiny, sing-song jewish voice, Olivier moves through the movie like a haunted little ham, carrying the weight of the Holocaust on his feeble shoulders. The character pushes himself--the way Olivier must have pushed himself to do this role while in and out of the hospital for heart surgery--and suddenly he'll erupt with a screech so charged that this comatose movie wakes up and shakes itself.

OLIVIER PRESERVES the classical rhythm, the curling-up pitch at the end of a line and the elongation of select syllables until they detonate, and he fuses all this with bravura good-humor. Compare this portrait to his massive, thick-featured, iron-rimmed Nazi dentist in the Marathon Man and you've good example of why people label this great man the most versatile actor who's ever lived. Olivier is on-screen more than anyone else in the The Boys from Brazil, and he hasn't had a movie role this large since Sleuth in 1972. If for no other reason, you should see this film, to see him biting Gregory Peck, hissing at Uta Hagen, or grimacing at Rosemary Harris' attempt to seduce him. (Remember the film of Uncle Vanya, where he lusted after her?)

It's wonderful to see Olivier this often these days, and it almost doesn't matter that the movies are so bad. If only he could liven up every dumb thriller or grace every little comedy. And if only he could go back to the stage too, and do Lear and Prospero and any new, good play that comes along. Screw Hitler--let's clone Oliver.