Hangmen Also Die! (1943)

Hangmen Also Die!
Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Fritz Lang, Berthold Brecht, and John Wexley
1943/USA
Arnold Pressburger Films
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant Video

[box] Czech Patriot: Your mothers were slimy rats! Their milk was sewer water![/box]

Lang and Brecht bring their special understanding of and hatred for Nazis and their genius to this exciting thriller about the Czech resistance.  Although the story kind of gets away from them in the last act, this is a compelling and beautifully shot movie.

The story is a fictional account of the real-life assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich by Czech resistance fighters.

Masha Novotny (Anna Lee) is quietly buying some turnips when she sees a man scurrying through the street.  Some Gestapo officers question her and she points them in the wrong direction.  So begins a nightmare for her entire family and the city of Prague.  The man, who calls himself Karel Vanek, (Brian Donlevy) has just assassinated Heydrich, better known to the Czech populace as The Hangman.  “Vanek”, who has nowhere else to hide, makes his way to Masha’s apartment with roses saying he met Masha at the symphony.  It is turning curfew and, being careful not to ask any questions, Masha’s father Stephen (Walter Brennan), a prominent history scholar, invites Vanek to stay the night.

The next day, the Gestapo rounds up 400 hostages, saying that it will execute ten per day until the assassin is caught.  Stephen is caught up in this net.  Masha puts some remarks Vanek made together and locates him in his real identity, Dr. Franticheck Svoboda, a surgeon at the hospital.  She castigates him for not giving himself up.  She is so outraged that she goes to the Gestapo to try to get her father out of jail by revealing Svoboda as the assassin.  The things she witnesses at Gestapo Headquarters, however, cause her to make a vain attempt to flee.  Now she is well and truly in the soup as crafty Gestapo investigator Gruber gradually begins suspecting her and her family’s connection with the case.

Patriotism wins out and Masha starts assisting Svoboda in his cat and mouse game with the authorities.  In the meantime, we get a subplot about the Czech resistance cell Svoboda works with and Gestapo informer Emil Czaka (Gene Lockart).  The third act deals with an elaborate resistance plot to eliminate Czaka and free the hostages in one masterful stroke.  With Dennis O’Keefe as Masha’s fiancé and a score of fantastic character actors, many of them foreign born.

Lang’s Nazis are anything but stupid, a refreshing change from other patriotic movies of the period.  They are piggish, thuggish, and merciless, though.  They don’t even have to talk. The way Lang shoots them tells the whole story.  The plot, which unfortunately gets more and more incredible toward the end, never stops being suspenseful.  The tension in the first part gets almost unbearable in places.   The performances are all top-notch.  Donlevy is wonderful and the supporting players are even better.  Walter Brennan plays his part without tics and lends a quiet dignity to the proceedings.  The look of film is enhanced by the beautiful lighting of James Wong Howe.  Highly recommended.

Some might say that this is “propaganda”.  Given the life-and-death struggle for survival that was going on at the time, I am prepared to cut the patriotic impulses of filmmakers a lot of slack.  The recently restored print looks fantastic.

Hangmen Also Die! was nominated for Oscars in the categories of Best Sound, Recording and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Hanns Eisler)

Trailer