HANGMEN ALSO DIE

Prague, 1942. With the Skoda factory workers not working hard enough, Nazi ‘Reichprotektor’ Heydrich orders several executions to make an example of them. However, he is killed in an assassination by a member of the Czech Resistance, Frantisek Svoboda (Brian Donlevy). The Germans declare a state of emergency and impose a curfew, while the perpetrator takes refuge in the house of Professor Stepan Novotny (Walter Brennan). Novotny is taken hostage by the Gestapo along with four hundred other prominent people in the city. To save him, his daughter Mascha (Anna Lee) begs Svoboda to surrender to the Germans, but the Resistance members decide to accuse Emil Czaka (Gene Lockhart), a wealthy brewer and collaborator, with false evidence and the help of the people of Prague. The Nazis are thus forced to eliminate Czaka, but the hostages are also executed.

Hangmen also die is Bertolt Brecht’s best contribution to film, despite the fact that his relationship with Fritz Lang soon deteriorated. The film is characterised by its breathless editing, its dark, chiaroscuro photography and the harshness of its music composed by the German Hans Eisler (also exiled to America), who was nominated for an Oscar. The film also became famous for its singular ending, with the intertitle ‘Not the End’.