"Hangmen Also Die"

"Hangmen Also Die!" is a 1943 film directed by the Austrian director Fritz Lang and written by John Wexley. It originated as a story by Bertolt Brecht (credited in the film as Bert Brecht) and director Fritz Lang. This is their only known collaboration.They were both German Refugees of the Holocaust.

The film, based on the real life story of The Hangman, stars Hans Heinrich von Twardowski in the title role of the real life German leader Reinhard Heydrich. He was a high-ranking German SS police official and a principal architect of the Holocaust. For his full, inhumane story just Google his name.

Walter Brennan, usually cast in character roles and more widely known to many as Grandpappy Amos on the TV sit com "The Real McCoys", is cast here as a well respected Professor and member of the Czech underground in Praque.

Not since the film "Swamp Water" had he played such a serious dramatic role. When compared to films such as "To Have and Have Not", the screen adaptation of Hemingway's novel of the same name, written for the screen  by William Faulkner, and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, had his true range of acting been so plainly revealed.

During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovokia, a well respected Surgeon named Franticek Svoboda (Brian Donlevy) assassinates the Hangman. Dr. Svoboda escapes with the aid of history professor Stephen Novotny (Walter Brennan). He, along with 400 other Czechoslovakians, are then betrayed by Nazi sympathizer Emil Czaka (Gene Lockhart). The Czech prisoners are told that if Svoboda does not surrender, they will all be executed.

Finely restored from the original silver nitrate film, this story is the story of the never ending struggle of Good and Evil, which still goes on in 2022. This was my first encounter with this gripping film.

https://youtu.be/WiQFkEM1H00