Hangmen Also Die! (1943)

Very well executed

So much average

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Fantastic!

Quite a few Nazi exiles were involved with Hangman Also Die, a project that even if hardly true is many cuts above the typical wartime propaganda flick. Director Fritz Lang, writer Berthold Brecht and many in the cast knew the Nazi mentality well and what it was like to live under them. They had the intelligence and foresight to leave while the getting out was good.We in America knew about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, but scarce few details before the war was over. Lang and Brecht created an apocryphal tale of what should have happened. Hangman Also Die is one intricately plotted affair, a lot more than you would see it in a film of this type in wartime America.Hans Heinrich Von Twardowski is on ever so briefly as Heydrich in the beginning. His performance reminded me of Christopher Plummer as Commodus in The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire. Heydrich was far from the colorful character he's portrayed here in real life. This was a man who could go home to the wife and kids, home and hearth after a day's gassing at Auschwitz. Still Twardowski is memorable if not true to life.We never see the actual shooting. We do see Brian Donlevy who is a doctor as well as an assassin fleeing the scene of the attack and Anna Lee misdirecting the pursuing Nazis just by patriotic instinct. The Nazi response is swift and brutal. They start shooting chosen hostages one of them being Anna Lee's father university professor Walter Brennan.I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at Brennan here who gave a well thought out and restrained performance. In the North Star I thought he was out of place as a Russian peasant. I was expecting the same, but it was nice not to have expectations lived up to.The whole film is about a collective crisis of conscience for the Czech people. What do we do about this assassin, do we hide him, support him, or do we turn him in hopes that hostage shooting will cease? In the meantime the Gestapo presses on with the investigation.Gene Lockhart is also in the cast as a collaborator. His exposure as one is one of the best scenes in the film. Lockhart played many roles like this in his film career, but he was absolutely at his best in a part he honed to perfection.It should have happened this way in real life. The way the Gestapo closes the books on the Heydrich case is really well done. All I can say is that Brecht and Lang play on the characteristics of the Nazis, most of all their paranoia. Intricately plotted and executed beautifully by Fritz Lang and his cast.

Hang man also die! is an excellent war period movie. It however does not show war as such, but portrays a very believable account of the lives of a populace living under an occupational, dictatorial and brutal regime. The film narrates the frustration, the anger and the yearning for freedom of the Czech people, living a subjugated life under the German army. The screenplay is very tightly woven; there were almost no dull moment during the nearly two and a half hour duration of the movie. However, the film lacks a multi-layered plot and varied shades of the characters in it. The plot is too linear; it is throughout the same story of good versus evil, where the distinction between good and evil is clearly drawn out. Consequently, the charterers are also portrayed in black and white- Germans always as evil, sinister characters, and, the Czech characters are just the opposite to them. Although there were moments where, briefly, some other shades were glimpsed upon, for example, when the protagonist doubted whether he should hand over himself to Gestapo, in order to save the execution of the innocents, and, when the lead female character is torn between love for her country and concern for her father's life. However, these moments remain as glimpses only- Lang does not develop them further. In the end, the film merely tells a story of a fight between good and evil, and it does that very well. However, a too linear narrative structure, and, black and white characterization stops the movie from achieving the heights, achieved by, for example, Rossellini's war trilogy, or, Battle of Algiers.

During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda (Brian Donlevy), a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski), and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny (Walter Brennan), who is himself under suspicion by the Nazis, and his daughter Mascha (Anna Lee).I am sad that Dwight Frye has such a small (uncredited) role, and I am sad that this film was banned by the McCarthy era politicians. That just shows how crazy they were. Why would they ban a film that stands up against Hitler and contains an awesome punch through a window? The film portrays Nazis in the stereotype that we expect of them today. Yet, this was still 1943... so this film deserves credit for influencing how we view the Nazi regime, and also for being based on a true story in the middle of a war rather than after the fact. (Had the outcome of the war gone differently, this film would have been quite the problem.)

Hangmen Also Die! (1943)The best part of this movie is knowing it was made right in the middle of the war, not in some recreation of the events. It's a little hyperbolic, for sure, but really well acted (both the Nazis and the Czechs), and it ends up being a battle of wits and tricks between the two sides.Fritz Lang was a refuge from Nazi Europe and made this in Hollywood, with an expected sensibility for the cruelties and barbarism of the occupying nasties. And they probably were this nasty--worse, in truth, though less comically so, as the movie sometimes pushes it a bit. Still, really enjoyable, in all. Yet, somehow, it was long. The twists from one scene to another started to sound familiar, and the tension was sustained rather than invigorated, if that makes any sense. Brian Donlevy is the leading good guy here, and he's always a little less than compelling, though he is not in most of the scenes so I suppose that's fine. The double-crosser was played by Gene Lockhart, whose presence grows as the movie gets on, and by the end he's really pretty amazing (far beyond the caricature of, say, the judge he played in "Miracle on 34th Street"). Walter Brennan makes an appearance, recognizable mostly by his voice. Two of the Nazi higher-ups were terrific, both the Pilsner guzzling brute and the slightly comical but scary gestapo head.Lang is no fool, and he makes this movie not only a pleasure, but an important tool to remind viewers to be involved, to realize that you can fight oppression, even Nazi oppression, with enough wits and sacrifice.