Hangmen Also Die!

Brian Donlevy makes sure Hangmen Also Die!

Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die! is a pretty good World War 2 thriller that is right in Lang's wheelhouse. Lang ably conjures the oppression and paranoia of Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia. The film concerns the assassination of SS thug Reinhard Heydrich, but, even with script help by one 'Bert Brecht', the film bears little relation to the actual event. Heydrich was not killed by members of the local Czech resistance, as in the film, but by two Czech soldiers who had been parachuted in from England. I think the reason for this tweak was that Hollywood was expected to highlight the efforts of the resistance; as in This Land is Mine, Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, Edge of Darkness, The North Star and many others. These films were meant to convey that our boys were not dying in some vain effort, but were supporting people who yearned to be free and were willing to go underground and fight to achieve this. 

Hangmen Also Die! suffers from some peculiar casting. Brian Donlevy has never been one of my favorites, but seems particularly ill at ease here. Similarly, Anna Lee and Walter Brennan, yeoman performers, are both miscast. I must admit I am a little bit more critical of this movie than I would normally be because I just read Laurent Binet's novel about the assassination, HHhH, and was totally enthralled by the book. Hangmen Also Die! is a very good film, but does not reach the heights of Lang's other wartime thrillers, Man Hunt and Ministry of Fear.

One further aspect of this film I want to touch on is the presence of Communists and future blacklist victims in the film: Brecht, John Wexley. Hanns Eisler and Lionel Stander, who is quite good in a brief role and once whistled "The Internationale" in the 1938 film No Time to Marry. Tagged as a Red film, Hangman Also Die! was withdrawn from circulation in the mid-50s and not seen again until the mid-70s.