Hangmen Also Die! (1943)

Hangmen Also Die! (1943)

Year: 1943

IMDb Rating: 7.4/10

Genres: Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller

Directors: Fritz Lang

Cast: Gene Lockhart, Dennis O'Keefe, Brian Donlevy, Anna Lee, Alexander Granach, Walter Brennan

On May 27, 1942 the Nazi Reichsprotector of Bohemia/Moravia, the "Hangman" Reinhard Heydrich, died from the bullets of unidentified resistance fighters. Hangmen Also Die is the story of Heydrich's assassination in fictionalized form. It was Bertolt Brecht's only comparatively successful Hollywood project; the money he received allowed him to write "The Visions of Simone Marchand", "Schwyk in the Second World War" and his adaptation of Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi". Hanns Eisler won an Academy Award for his musical score.

Hangmen Also Die! is a 1943 war film directed by the Austrian director Fritz Lang and written by John Wexley from a story by Bertolt Brecht (credited as Bert Brecht) and Lang. The film stars Brian Donlevy, with Walter Brennan, Anna Lee, and Gene Lockhart, and Dennis O'Keefe in support. Alexander Granach has a showy role as a Gestapo detective, and Hans Heinrich von Twardowski has a cameo as Reinhard Heydrich. Hanns Eisler composed the Academy Award nominated score, and James Wong Howe was cinematographer. The film is loosely based on the 1942 assassination of Heydrich, the Nazi Reich Protector of German-occupied Bohemia and Moravia during World War II. The number-two man in the SS, and a chief mastermind of the Holocaust, Heydrich earned the epithet of "The Hangman of Europe." Though the real Heydrich was assassinated by Czechoslovak soldiers parachuted from a British plane in Operation Anthropoid, this was not known at the time of filming. Instead, Heydrich's killer is depicted as a member of the Czech resistance with ties to the Communist Party.

After the German administrator of Czechoslovakia is shot, his assassin tries to elude the Gestapo and struggles with his impulse to give himself up as hostages are executed.

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