Hangmen Also Die (1943)

Director: Fritz Lang                                      Writer: John Wexley
Film Score: Hanns Eisler                              Cinematography: James Wong Howe
Starring: Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan, Anna Lee and Nana Bryant

A lot of European émigrés during World War II wound up fitting seamlessly into Hollywood in all levels of production. Then there were those who had absolute disdain for the Nazis and took any opportunity to portray them as evil overlords in Europe--something that, in retrospect, wasn’t nearly as evil as they actually were. Fritz Lang was definitely in the later camp. In the opening scene of Hangmen Also Die Lang has SS General Reinhard Heydrich acting like the worst imitation of a Nazi you’ve ever seen. In reality the portrayal of him by Kenneth Branagh in Conspiracy is closer to the truth. But I’m not sure that was really Lang’s point. The caricature is not only wartime propaganda but, more importantly for an audience that didn’t want to be teased in attempting to learn the motivations behind the actions, it made those motivations easily recognizable. In that sense, Lang’s portrayal of Heydrich is deadly accurate.

Brian Donlevy, after a decade of playing gangster and military roles, makes an unlikely resistance soldier, but he actually does a good job of toning down his blue-collar image. But then all of the actors seem strange, given their roles. Walter Brennan is a professor and is incredibly incongruous. Then there’s the cab driver with the Brooklyn accent. Now while this can be blamed on the studio system, I’m not sure that Lang didn’t use this to create a sense of what Nazi occupation would be like for Americans, and using Czechoslovakia as an allegory. This is made especially clear when Brennan is arrested and tells his former students, “don’t get snowed under at Valley Forge.” This direct reference to the American Revolution is an obvious parallel to righteous resistance to authoritarian rule and fits perfectly with the ethos of the day.

The plot centers on the execution of Heydrich by Donlevy. Anna Lee, who is in the street when the Nazis are looking for him, points them in the opposite direction. Donlevy, with nowhere to go, winds up at the apartment of Lee’s family and inadvertently involves them all. The Gestapo arrest Lee’s father, Walter Brennan, and when she goes to them to expose Donlevy, realizes that her entire family will be executed in retaliation if they discover she knew is real identity. Like most propaganda film during the war era, the theme of loss of freedom and the striving resistance movement is in the forefront, playing on American feelings of patriotism. To aid the effort, there are some great character actors, Dwight Frye in the scene where the poem is being read in prison camp. Gene Lockhart plays the resistance leader whose allegiance is in questions. Alexander Granach, who was so wonderful as Knock in Nosferatu, is Gestapo Inspector Gruber.

Lang is in full command of his artistry--and having James Wong Howe behind the camera couldn’t hurt--using some nice overhead angles to mix in with his conventional shots, and great use of shadows to elongate the bars in the prison scenes. But one has the sense that his films rely too much on his artistry, that he is left on his own to carry the entire picture--which I’m sure he wanted. The film score is unmemorable and Lee’s acting is a bit exaggerated, leaving the audience to wonder what his film would have been like had he participated more fully in the studio system, drawing on greater talents that matched his own. But that probably seemed too threatening for the man who was the greatest German director of his day and was now relegated to émigré status in Hollywood. Still, Hangmen Also Die is a nice piece of work by a master craftsman and a classic example of World War II propaganda.