Hangmen Also Die!

Hangmen Also Die! (1943) is a World War II-era propaganda flick with an interesting pedigree, being the product of Nazi-loathing German director Fritz Lang (M) and playwright Bertolt Brecht (Galileo, Threepenny Opera). This movie, a fairly typical wartime anti-Nazi piece at a glance, is inevitably dated, but it remains worth watching due to fine direction by Lang, and one of the most oppressive, believable portrayals of life under occupation.

In 1942, Czechoslovakia (now the protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia) is reeling under brutal Nazi occupation headed by SS General Reinhard Heydrich (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski), known by Czechs as "the hangman" for his cruel treatment of the population. Czech resistance fighter/Doctor Franticek Svoboda (Brian Donlevy) assassinates Heydrich, leading to a brutal SS and Gestapo crackdown on Prague. Civilian hostages are rounded up, and suspected traitors tortured and executed. Caught in the middle of this is Mascha (Anna Lee), a young musical student who helps Svoboda evade the authorities, and finds herself and her family suspects in the assassination - especially her Professor father (Walter Brennan). A complicated set of schemes sees Mascha absolved, but her father remain on the track to execution, while Svoboda wrestles with his conscience, debating whether his life - and cause - is more important than the lives of hundreds of innocent Czechs. A parallel plot involves Czaka (Gene Lockhart), a beer manufacturer who is a stool pidgeon for Gestapo Inspector Gruber (Alexander Granach), who tries to disrupt his underground cell - and whom the underground targets for a particularly ingenious revenge.

Hangmen Also Die! definitely sports the earmarks of anti-Nazi propaganda. At base, it's a pretty straightforward story of noble, patriotic Czechs, with comfortably American accents (most egregious being Walter Brennan, and Lionel Stander [Once Upon a Time in the West] as a strangely New Yawk-ish taxi driver), fighting evil, sneering rat-bastard Nazis, all murderous scum, faces bristling with comical mustaches and disgusting boils. A bigger flaw is that pretty much all of the characters are drawn in a broad, black-and-white manner, save Mascha and perhaps Czaka, which occasionally blocks attempts at sympathy.

And yet, given the nature of the story, moral ambiguity would not really benefit the film. Taken for what it is - a skillful piece of propaganda made to inspire our GIs and populace against Hitler's Teutonic hordes - it's very hard to criticize. And very much to its credit, the script by Brecht and John Waxley does raise some questions about how to resist tyranny which posit the film as more thoughtful and considered than most of its peers.

The film's biggest asset is its strong, visceral depiction of life under Nazi occupation, which few Hollywood films of the time would dare touch on (Rossellini's Rome: Open City comes close), prefering easily-evaluated battlefield heroics to the ambiguities of resistance. Although most of the film's violence occurs offscreen, there's a palpable feeling of menace and dread, the sense that one false move or wrong word could leave our characters dead or imprisoned. Despite their cartoonishness, the Nazis are genuinely menacing, from the jackbooted Gestapo to the greasy interrogators. Violence as an answer can only go so far; the brutal Heydrich is disposed of easily-enough, but the Nazis bring much more force to bear in retaliating. Certainly the movie's musings on sacrificing so many innocent Czechs for the sake of an ephemeral cause is much more intelligent and complex a question than most of its contemporaries pose. Ultimately, it takes solidarity and resourcefulness, not just blazing machine guns, to foil the Nazis - to the extent that they can be foiled.

Politics aside, Lang gives typically strong direction. He shoots the movie like a film noir, with expressive, moody black-and-white cinematography (by James Wong Howe) which creates a truly oppressive, foreboding atmosphere. (Unfortunately, the DVD copy has rather lousy picture quality, but that can be put down to a bad transfer or lackluster restoration.) The expressive use of shadows, particularly in the interrogation scenes, is quite impressive, and the denouement seems curiously reminisicent of The Third Man. The film also boasts strong editing by Gene Fowler Jr., with the simultaneous interrogation of Mascha and her family a high-point. Brecht and Waxley's script is well-constructed (aside from a dubious pseudo-happy ending) though the dialogue veers towards the theatrical. Hanns Eisler provides a suitably dramatic, foreboding score.

The cast is a mixed bag. John Ford stalwart Anna Lee (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) is beautiful, charming, and believable as Mascha, the innocent unwittingly caught up in a tangled web of revolutionary activity and political repression. (For my younger readers, a comparison to Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta is not out of place.) Nominal leading man Brian Donlevy is pretty stiff and one-note, Dennis O'Keefe little better, and Walter Brennan has a hard time restraining his distinctive grizzled pappy voice and mannerisms. Gene Lockhart (His Girl Friday) does a fine job in a difficult role; his Quisling character somehow comes off as more than just a slimy rat, and even seems sympathetic in the later reels. The European actors come off memorably, particularly Alexander Granach (For Whom the Bell Tolls) as Gruber, the slimy Gestapo detective.

Hangmen Also Die!, despite its dated aspects, remains entertaining and compelling examination of occupation, resistance and war time preservation.