The Counterfeiters (Die Falscher)

NEW YORK (CNS) - "The Counterfeiters" ("Die Falscher") (Sony Classics), the German nominee for this year's best foreign film Oscar, is an absorbing true story about the largest counterfeiting operation in history.

In 1944, expert counterfeiter Salomon (nicknamed "Sally") Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a Russian Jew, is arrested by police inspector Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow), and brought to Mauthausen, a camp where his skills as an artist come to light, and the SS pulls him out of the ranks to be their personal portraitist.

Opportunist that he is, he's content to survive in such a manner, but he is eventually transferred to Sachsenhausen, where, because of his abilities, he is chosen by now-commandant Herzog to oversee a separate forgery project -- dubbed "Operation Bernhard" -- in tandem with other artists, typographists and printers. The team lives in separate quarters in relative comfort, and their work is accompanied quite incongruously by the operetta music of Johann Strauss and others.

Their assignment is to forge vast amounts of British currency to undermine England's war efforts by flooding that country with the phony bills. They indeed succeed in flawless replicas of British pounds, prompting their captors now to demand a similar feat with American dollars.

But team members, especially Adolf Burger (August Diehl), with a wife in Auschwitz, feel they must not help the Nazi war effort, and Burger especially does everything he can to sabotage the operation, much to the pragmatic Sally's initial annoyance. Admirably not wanting to turn in one of his mates, though, and beginning to recognize the moral implications of the situation, he makes excuses to Herzog about the delay in production. (The film is based on a book by the still-living Burger, with Sally's character based on the actual Salomon Smolianoff).

The bravery of these individuals, we are told, possibly changed the course of history.

Writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky's frequent use of hand-held camera technique (a bit too frenetic at times, actually) and Marius Ruhland's jazzy score add contemporary touches to a suspenseful tale. The film is further bolstered by good performances, including those of Markovics, Diehl, Striesow and the actors playing the other inmates.

Despite some obvious concentration camp beatings and killings, the violence is mostly off-screen, and this very different Holocaust film is first and foremost a story of conscience in the face of the most inhuman of conditions, and the degree to which compromise is allowable in the face of otherwise certain death.

In German. Subtitles.

The film contains some violence including brutal shootings, brief upper female and rear nudity, further brief shower nudity, brief nongraphic sexual encounters, a crass scene of urination, an irreverent joke, a few expletives including the f-word, and racial epithets. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops