"Hangmen Also Die" (Dir: Fritz Lang, 1943)

This is a very entertaining film set in Czechoslovakia during the 1942 Nazi occupation. The Nazi in charge of the occupation, Reinhard Heydrich (known as "The Hangman" for his brutality), is assassinated, and the Nazis are trying to locate the killer. They round up 800 hostages and vow to kill 40 of them every few hours until someone comes forward to identify the killer. The Czech underground resists, showing extraordinary bravery.

The movie starts with Heydrich being shot, and a woman directs the Gestapo the wrong way to puruse the killer. We are inroduced to other minor characters among the Czech citizenry, and they show up near the end of the movie as part of a masterful plot to frame a two-faced traitor. I had to watch it a second time to be able to match up the characters from the beginning to those at the end.

The dignified, soft-spoken professor is the heart of the story, wonderfully played by Walter Brennan. (I didn't realize the first time through that it was Brennan, but I recognized his voice the second time through.) When the professor is scheduled for execution, as part of one of the groups of 40, his adult daughter is allowed to visit him, and he dictates a letter for her to give to his 11-year-old son when the son was older. Part of that poignant letter was this: "Don't forget that freedom is not something one possesses, like a hat or a piece of candy. The real thing is fighting for freedom. And you might remember me, not because I'm your father, but because I also died in this great fight". If only we Americans were as united and diligent in the cause of fighting tyranny as these brave Czech patriots were!

Some of the Nazis are portrayed in a semi-comic way, but this adds to the entertainment value of the film, without detracting from the serious nature of the effort to identify the killer. Over two hours long, but worth every minute. Filmed in stunning black and white, as befits the grim subject matter it is depicting.

Historical fact check. Reinhard Heydrich was in fact in charge of occupied Czechoslavakia, and he was in fact assassinated in the Spring of 1942. At the time the movie was made the details of the assassination were not yet known. It eventually came to light that the Czech government-in-exile, trained by the British Special Forces, formed a grouop which parachuted into Czechoslavakia on December 28, 1941, and lived in hiding until shooting Heydrich on May 27, 1942.