Cheap Hangmen Also Die (DVD) (Fritz Lang) Price

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Austere WW2 fictionalized docudrama
Fritz Lang's "Hangmen Also Die", written by Bertholt Brecht is a propagandized 1943 account of the assassination of Reichprotector Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich was the despicable, pompous and belligerent Nazi appointed military governor of parts of Czechoslavakia played by Hans Heinrich von Twardowski. The hated Nazi is shot by Dr. Franticek Svoboda played effectively by Hollywood tough guy Brian Donlevy. <
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>Donlevy is part of a Czech underground anti-Nazi movement. As a result of his involvement Donlevy is ultimately protected by the Novotny family headed by terrific character actor Walter Brennan, who plays Professor Stephen Novotny. His daughter, Nasha played by Anna Lee, is initially willing to colloborate with the Gestapo to reveal the identity of the assassin to protect her family. As punishment for the shooting, prominent Czech citizens are rounded up and put in camps to be summarily executed. Included in this group is her father, Brennan. <
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>Lee eventually comes around, inspired by the bravery of the Czech citizens. She aids Donlevy in ultimately framing traitorous Czech beer magnate Emil Czaka played by rotund Gene Lockhart as the assassin. <
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>Lang's creation was a powerful film that delivered an important message to the viewers in the midst of WW2. The resolve and determination of the Czech people to throw off the yoke and Nazi oppression was effectively portrayed.

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Solid Anti-Nazi Propaganda From Fritz Lang
If you like political thrillers, first-rate war propaganda films, idealism that's not too melodramatic and Fritz Lang, you owe yourself a look at Hangmen Also Die. It was made just after the real-life assassination of the Nazi "protector" of Czechoslovakia, Reinhard Heydrich. Lang, a Nazi refugee, got together with Bertold Brecht to fashion a story of the killing that would bring greater awareness of Nazi oppression. This film is very efficient at doing that. <
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>In the movie, Heydrich is shot by Dr. Franticek Svoboda (Brian Donlevy) in a plan involving a number of members of the Czech resistance. He escapes thanks to a young woman, Natasha Novotny (Anna Lee), who brings him into her house. He receives the protection of her father, Professor Novotny (Walter Brennan). A city-wide manhunt begins, ruthlessly conducted by the Nazis, led by a Gestapo officer, Alois Gruber (Alexander Granach). Dozens of hostages are taken, and are systematically shot in small groups to force someone to come forward and identify Svoboda. No one does, and the remaining resistance fighters -- average people who have everyday jobs as a cleaning lady, a butler, a taxi driver, a waiter -- develop a scheme to put the blame on an unctuous, scheming collaborator, Emil Czaka (Gene Lockhart). Czaka had pretended to be sympathetic to the resistance but was in the pay of the Gestapo. Eventually the crime is pinned on a groveling Czaka, who is executed by the Gestapo. Later Berlin tells the local Nazis that Czaka couldn't have done it, but to protect the reputation of the local German heirarchy they say that the case must be closed. <
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>Donlevy does a fine job as a Czech surgeon who becomes Heydrich's assassin. Brennan also is very good as a quiet professor who finds great strength as he faces probable execution. And Alexander Granach as Gruber is fascinating, if always threatening to go over the top into caricature. This is probably just how Lang wanted the Nazis portrayed. Hans von Twardowsky who plays Reinhard Heydrich gives an absolutely over-the-top protrayal of Heydrich as a vicious, effeminate creep. Another repellant Nazi keeps picking at a sore on his face. Lang spares none of them. <
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>This is a very well-developed story, with incident after incident building tension. There is no humor to speak of, but much satisfaction in seeing how Svoboda is protected, how Czaka is framed and how Gruber is dealt with to provide the finishing touch to the frame. The direction is brisk and the photography and editing are typical of Lang's style. <
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>The DVD picture is very good. There are no extras.

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No surrender
I love war movies made during the war they portray. They're usually unabashed propaganda, bold strokes painted with primary colors. The stories are the ones that matter today, and will sometimes be buried by history. The bad guys are ruthless, invincible, menacing without the benefit of hindsight. It's like Red Riding Hood meeting the wolf. <
> Fritz Lang's 1943 HANGMEN ALSO DIE is one such film. Based on a true story, it's a moving tale set in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. The Reichprotektor Heydrich has been assassinated and the Gestapo is conducting a massive investigation to apprehend the killer. <
> Frustrated in their search, and by the Czech resistance, the Gestapo rounds up 400 hostages and begin executing them at regular intervals until the assassin in apprehended. Brian Donlevy plays the killer, Dr. Franticek Svoboda, Anna Lee the young woman who inadvertently (at first) throws the authorities off his trail, and Walter Brennan plays Prof. Stephen Novotny, Anna Lee's father and one of the four hundred hostages. <
>The Nazis in HANGMEN ALSO DIE were played by Jewish actors, refugees from a hostile Europe. Whether brooding over a pimple on the cheek, annoyingly cracking knuckles while tormenting a poor old vegetable monger, or cavorting with naughty girls, Lang's Gestapo agents are animated and interesting. The Czechs, on the other hand, are all played by American actors and all, even Brennan, give stiff, dull, and wooden performances. Donlevy especially gives some of the flattest line readings of his career. <
> It's tempting to blame the actors, but in Lotte Eisner's admiring biography, Fritz Lang, she quotes an old interview in which Lang discussed the movie. "We didn't want," Lang said, "analyses of characters, we simply schematized into those who resist and those who organize, those who aspire to freedom but have not yet found or chosen the means of action, and finally the collaborators, the genuine enemy of the people.... <
> "I don't think it is possible in such a plot to go far into the psychological development because the psychology does not change." In other words Lang got the performances he wanted, without any emotional window dressing. Well, he's a genius, I'm not, but Lordy it would have been nice if his heroes had had a little more panache, a little more brio. <
>I had a few problems with this film. The plot pivots on a shaky point or two - the unsmeared lipstick clue, two unarmed men bearing down on a man with a gun without being shot - that seem a little manufactured and more than a little implausible. Still, HANGMEN ALSO DIE was stylish and an interesting take on a little talked about, at least in America, incident in World War II. <
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