Made at the height of WWII not long after the events upon which it is based took place, "Hangmen Also Die" is a testament to the patriotic spirit of the Czechoslovakian people under the most dire conditions imaginable. After the Nazis have invaded and conquered the country, a brave resistance fighter assassinates the brutal leader of the German occupation forces, SS leader Reinhard Heydrich, who, like Klaus Barbie, was a ruthless butcher of the innocent. Heydrich subjugated the Czech people by murdering, torturing and enslaving hordes of non-combatant civilians.
Just before the Nazi tyrant is shot, he threatens to end a factory slowdown by the murder of hundreds of Czech workers. It is this threat that precipitates the assassination. The desperate killer of Heydrich, member of an underground Czech resistance group, narrowly escapes capture with the assistance of civilians who suffer the consequences immediately afterwards when many are taken hostage by the Nazis, with the threat of imminent death hanging over their heads if the assassin is not turned over to the Gestapo.
At the center of the tense drama is Nasha Novotny, flawlessly played by Anna Lee, as the daughter of a distinguished university professor and patriot, portrayed by character actor Walter Brennan. Nasha is instrumental in aiding Brian Donlevy (as Dr. Svoboda, the assassin with ice water in his veins) to escape his bloodthirsty Gestapo pursuers. But when Nasha's own father is picked up by the Gestapo, she is forced to question her loyalty to the resistance, begins to regard the man she has saved as a deadly threat to her family and nearly turns traitor to save her father's life. Expatriate German director Fritz Lang and his scenarists show great sympathy in portraying this all too human failing. In a few simple touches they go far beyond stereotype in showing how the recalcitrant patriot overcomes her strong personal misgivings to rejoin the heroic struggle against the Nazis.
"Hangmen" is not a movie for the mechanically minded. Its craft is the art of understatement. Many of the events dramatically most important to the story -- such as the assassination -- are not depicted or happen off-screen. Whole sections of the plot line are there only by inference. This is particularly true at the end of the film, when the entire conspiracy to frame up an enemy collaborator is only hinted at before it is sprung as a surprise upon the audience, as on the unwitting villain. How did the underground resistance fighters arrange to fabricate so deadly a case against a traitor? We can only guess, but may hardly object to the ironic way in which the informant meets his end.
Fritz Lang has a well known reputation as a leader of the noir school of film maker. Yet, in spite of its horrifying premise, the movie is neither bleak nor pessimistic but a straightforward affirmation of the struggle against tyranny. Unlike many of his less gifted followers, Lang is no mere stylist but is just as much concerned with the historic and moral significance of his story as the artful way in which he presents it. To those who might object that the Nazis are portrayed as stereotyped bad men, the answer is that the Nazis were precisely what the film shows them to be: ugly brutish travesties of human beings. And who would know that better than Fritz Lang and his excellent scenarist Bertolt Brecht? Both of them had lived in Germany under the Nazis and escaped to the United States to strike a devastating propaganda blow against the enemy.
Just before the Nazi tyrant is shot, he threatens to end a factory slowdown by the murder of hundreds of Czech workers. It is this threat that precipitates the assassination. The desperate killer of Heydrich, member of an underground Czech resistance group, narrowly escapes capture with the assistance of civilians who suffer the consequences immediately afterwards when many are taken hostage by the Nazis, with the threat of imminent death hanging over their heads if the assassin is not turned over to the Gestapo.
At the center of the tense drama is Nasha Novotny, flawlessly played by Anna Lee, as the daughter of a distinguished university professor and patriot, portrayed by character actor Walter Brennan. Nasha is instrumental in aiding Brian Donlevy (as Dr. Svoboda, the assassin with ice water in his veins) to escape his bloodthirsty Gestapo pursuers. But when Nasha's own father is picked up by the Gestapo, she is forced to question her loyalty to the resistance, begins to regard the man she has saved as a deadly threat to her family and nearly turns traitor to save her father's life. Expatriate German director Fritz Lang and his scenarists show great sympathy in portraying this all too human failing. In a few simple touches they go far beyond stereotype in showing how the recalcitrant patriot overcomes her strong personal misgivings to rejoin the heroic struggle against the Nazis.
"Hangmen" is not a movie for the mechanically minded. Its craft is the art of understatement. Many of the events dramatically most important to the story -- such as the assassination -- are not depicted or happen off-screen. Whole sections of the plot line are there only by inference. This is particularly true at the end of the film, when the entire conspiracy to frame up an enemy collaborator is only hinted at before it is sprung as a surprise upon the audience, as on the unwitting villain. How did the underground resistance fighters arrange to fabricate so deadly a case against a traitor? We can only guess, but may hardly object to the ironic way in which the informant meets his end.
Fritz Lang has a well known reputation as a leader of the noir school of film maker. Yet, in spite of its horrifying premise, the movie is neither bleak nor pessimistic but a straightforward affirmation of the struggle against tyranny. Unlike many of his less gifted followers, Lang is no mere stylist but is just as much concerned with the historic and moral significance of his story as the artful way in which he presents it. To those who might object that the Nazis are portrayed as stereotyped bad men, the answer is that the Nazis were precisely what the film shows them to be: ugly brutish travesties of human beings. And who would know that better than Fritz Lang and his excellent scenarist Bertolt Brecht? Both of them had lived in Germany under the Nazis and escaped to the United States to strike a devastating propaganda blow against the enemy.