Middle-aged Dr. Svoboda (Brian Donlevy) is the unlikely assassin. He is sheltered by Masha (Anna Lee), the daughter of ornery professor Novotny (Walter Brennan). Masha is engaged to grim-faced Jan (Dennis O'Keefe). Meanwhile, colorful Gestapo agent Gruber (Alexander Granach) leads the investigation to find the assassin.
Soon, Novotny is arrested by the Nazis as a hostage. Masha is desperate to save her father, and considers telling the Nazis what she knows about Dr. Svoboda. The latter is also wracked with guilt when he learns that many hostages are getting executed in reprisal for his action.
How others will see it. Hangmen Also Die! received two minor Oscar nominations. It won an award at the Venice Film Festival, but not until 1946, when Mussolini and Hitler were both safely dead.
How I felt about it. Fritz Lang was born in Austria, but became celebrated as a director in the mid-1920s with a series of silent German films, most notably Metropolis (1927). M (1931) was another triumph.
When Nazis took over the country, Lang soon emigrated to France, then resumed his career as a director in Hollywood. His film noirs there aren't quite as highly regarded as his prior German films, but many are quite good nonetheless. Hangmen Also Die! could have been a hysterical (not in the comedic sense) propaganda film in someone else's hands, but since Lang had actually fled Nazi Germany, he undoubtedly harbored a personal animosity toward the Nazis that resonates here. Yes, it is propaganda. But gripping propaganda.
Of course, the Nazis here are brutal, maniacal, unimaginative, humorless, and remorseless. The occupied Czech people are relentless brave and patriotic. Hardship and mass death doesn't result in despair. It simply leads to further resistance from the public toward their despised occupiers. Quislings are few, and they get what is coming to them.
We suspect that it wasn't so black and white. We suspect many submitted to the occupiers, kept their mouths shut, and did what they could to stay alive under bleak circumstances. Because that is what a typical person would do. But that is uncinematic, and it wouldn't satisfy the public need for see inspirational righteous resistance on the silver screen.
But Lang gets away with it, partly because he is so good at directing, and partly because the intensity of his hatred for Nazi officials flavors his depiction of a Nazi occupation.
The film succeeds despite curious casting decisions. Brian Donlevy seems better cast as a banker than as the top hitman-spy in the Resistance. Similarly, Walter Brennan sounds more like a Western geezer than a Czech university professor, and cabby Lionel Stander sounds like he's still in the Bronx. Lanky Dennis O'Keefe is also too blatantly American to pass as a Czech businessman. We accept Anna Lee in the lead role, enjoy Gene Lockhart as a detestable pro-Nazi informant, and Alexander Granach is a delight as a corrupt but menacing Gestapo agent.