GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

IncaWelCar In truth, any opportunity to see the film on the big screen is welcome.

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

othershos This is a long movie for 1943 propaganda. However, it was also a mystery with many characters of interest. Would Dr Swoboda turn himself in? Would Professor Novotny be executed? What would Emil Czaka's fate be? The final message about him provides ironic justice. The locale seemed to be Prague, and there was (unless I missed it) no mention of the destruction of Lidice, so inextricably associated with Heydrich.JB

rooee "Die if you must for a cause that is just." It's a line from a poem which becomes a song of defiance, written by a Czech civilian taken hostage by and awaiting execution at the hands of the Nazis. It's also the core mantra for many of the Resistance heroes who face death for the sake of the greater national good. The plot of Fritz Lang's film, adapted from a story by Bertolt "Bert" Brecht and loosely based on real events, concerns the assassination of the "Hangman of Europe" Reinhard Heydrich (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski) in occupied Prague. Naturally the Gestapo are all over the case, but their efforts to nail the assassin are thwarted at every turn by Resistance sympathisers – many of them ordinary folk turned potential betrayers. The chief inspector is Gruber (Alexander Granach), a bawdy, beer- swilling cop with a nose for sniffing out lies. But the prime suspect, Svoboda (Brian Donlevy), is his intellectual equal, casting a web of deceit that entangles innocent witness Mascha (Anna Lee), whose father is subsequently captured and used as leverage. Mascha's dilemma is a Sophie's Choice that encapsulates the terrible decision at the heart of all citizens living under oppression: Speak out and her family will be shot; say nothing and only her father dies. Hangmen Also Die! was made after Lang's emigration from Nazi Germany in the 1930s and before his move into hard noir with Scarlet Street and The Big Heat. It was produced during wartime yet somehow avoids many of the demonising clichés that could potentially turn depictions of the Third Reich into a pantomime of evil (even if some of the performances are a tad broad). The precision and nuance by which such a complex array of characters is mapped out is remarkable – the stuff of AAA television in our current era. Lang and his co-writers somehow make it all work, with virtually every scene a nail-biting moral or ethical decision, or some devastating revelation. It's the leanness of the narrative, with every word and frame employed to maximum effect, that makes this level of intensity possible. Special mention should go to the great female roles here, from factory workers to fruit sellers, all taking their punishment for their part in the Resistance effort. Mascha in particular could have been a hysterical wuss, but she's as calm, capable, and principled as the men plotting each other's doom. She never asked for this – yet she's the one making the sacrifice regardless.The mix of political intrigue, melodrama, and hard-boiled noir may not sit comfortably in many minds but on screen it's a masterful balancing act. Just as with M, Lang dares to paint his subjects in shades of grey (the Resistance fighters are no more pure of heart than the Gestapo police are pure evil), and the results are utterly engrossing and grimly plausible. If you've seen Lang's big-hitters, it's time to try out this lesser-known little classic.

Claudio Carvalho On 27 May 1942, in Prague, the Deputy Reich-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia "Hangman" Reinhard Heydrich is shot by the resistance member Dr. Franticek Svoboda (Brian Donlevy). After the attempt on Heydrich's life, Nasha Novotny (Anna Lee) gives the wrong runaway direction of Svoboda to the Gestapo agents. When Svoboda sees that he is trapped, he goes to Nasha's apartment seeking shelter and he introduces himself as the architect Karel Vanek. He is welcomed by the patriarch and former revolutionary Professor Stephen Novotny (Walter Brennan) and he spends the night with the family. On the next morning, the Gestapo captures hostages including Professor Novotny to force the population to denounce the assassin. Nasha goes to the St. Pancracio Hospital to seek out the resident surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda and ask him to surrender to the German authorities to protect the hostages. But sooner she learns that the occupation police has no intentions to let the prisoner go and she helps the resistance in the plan to frame the traitor Emil Czaka (Gene Lockhart). "Hangmen Also Die!" is a flawed but entertaining war propaganda film based on a true event, the murder of "Hangman" Reinhard Heydrich. The fictional plot of fight for freedom is engaging and it is interesting since it was filmed in 1943, before the end of the war. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Os Carrascos Também Morrem" ("The Hangmen Also Die")

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Somehwhat fictionalized account of the assassination of the Nazi installed Reichsprotector of Bohemia/Moravia SS Obergruppen-Fuhrer Reinhard Heydrick, Hans Henrich Von Twardowski, who was known "affecfinotly" by his subjects, the Czech people, as the notorious "Hangman" Heydrich.Even though he's the major subject of the film we only get to see the "Hangman" once at the very beginning of the movie and what an impression he makes in the few minutes of screen time he has in it! Swaggering around like an obnoxious buffoon Heydrich comes across as someone you wouldn't trust in getting you a container of coffee and buttered roll for breakfast much less running a country- Czechoslovakia-of some 10 million people. It's not that long after being introduced to this shrieking lunatic that he's reported to have been shot by Czech patriots while driving through the streets of Prague in his Mercedes. Trying to flee the scene of the shooting is Heydrich's assassin Czech freedom fighter Dr. Franticek Svoboda, which incidentally means "freedom" in Czech, played by Irish/American actor Brain Donlevey who then makes his way into the nearby Novotny residence to avoid capture. Using the alias of architect Kanel Vanek Dr. Svoboda stays with the Novotny's until the curfew, imposed by the Nazis after the Heydrich assassination, is lifted.We also get to see defiant Pargue Taxi driver Banya, Lionel Stander, who helped Svoboda make his successful getaway getting arrested and later tortured by the Gestapo only to escape by jumping through a shut window in Gestapo headquarters never to be seen or heard from again in the film! It's as if the Gestapo felt it wasn't worth looking for him or else the slippery as an eel Banya somehow made it back to England, where the real life assassins of the "Hangman" came from, and freedom! The rest of the movie has the Nazis out on a rampage arresting jailing and executing Czech's, innocent of the "Hangman's" assassination, by the hundreds until his killer, Dr. Svoboda, gives himself up to them!Pretty accurate account of the Heydrich assassination and its aftermath that tries to be even handed in just how non active most Czech's were in fighting the hated Germans who were occupying their country. We get to see the Czech's slowly start to revolt against the Germans only after they started to indiscriminately arrest torture and execute hundreds of their fellow countrymen for a crime that they, those arrested , didn't commit: The assassination of "Hangman" Reinhard Heydrich! In fact the person who did it-Dr. Svoboda-seem to be totally immune from arrest and tortured by the Gestapo even though they had far more on him then anyone else in their custody!It was the person who helped Dr. Svoboda hide from the Nazis Nasha Novotny, Ann Lee, who was more then willing to turn him over to the Gestapo in that he by being hidden by them put her entire families, headed by her dad Prof. Steve Novotny (Walter Brennan),lives in jeopardy. It's later that Nasha sees the light after almost being lynched by her fellow Czechs, when she tried to go to Gestapo headquarters to report Dr. Svoboda, and actively joins the fight for her country's freedom against the hated Nazis.***SPOILERS*** There's also an interesting side story in the film that has really nothing to do with the dear departed "Hangman" Heydrich that involves Czech traitor Emil Czaka, Gene Lockhart. Czaka had been the Gestapo's inside man in the Czech resistance movement providing them with all the information they needed in who its members are. It was both Dr. Sovboda and Nasha together with her fiancée Jon Horak, Dennis O'Keefe, and dozens of fellow Czech patriots who set the traitorous Czaka up in being the man who whacked "Hangman" Heydrich by manufacturing an air-tight case against him! To finally convince the Gestapo that in fact Czaka did it, assassinate the "Hangman", the only witness who could have saved his rotten neck Gestapo Inspector Alois Gruber, Alexander Granach, not only ended up getting killed, suffocated to death by both Dr. Sovboda & Jan Horak, but his murder was linked to the very man he could have proved innocent of being Heydrch assassin: Emil Czaka!