1941 Directed by Fritz Lang
British hunter Thorndike vacationing in Bavaria has Hitler in his gun sight. He is captured, beaten, left for dead, and escapes back to London where he is hounded by German agents and aided by a young woman.
Walter Pidgeon Joan Bennett George Sanders John Carradine Roddy McDowall Ludwig Stössel Heather Thatcher Frederick Worlock Roger Imhof Holmes Herbert Egon Brecher Eily Malyon Herbert Evans Charles Bennett Frank Benson Ted Billings Walter Bonn Sven Hugo Borg Cyril Delevanti Carl Ekberg Richard Fraser Arno Frey Douglas Gerrard William Haade Keith Hitchcock Olaf Hytten Hans Joby Kurt Kreuger Bruce Lester Show All…
O Homem que Quis Matar Hitler, Chasse à l'homme, Duello mortale, Menschenjagd, El hombre atrapado
Favorite part of this has to be the concept of a gentleman hunter whose idea of a vacation is to sneak into Bavaria and sport stalk Hitler at his vacation house.
MILD SPOILERS
After being caught aiming at Hitler when travelling near Berghof, a British big game hunter (Walter Pigeon) flees to England just on the eve of the Second World War while pursued by enemy agents along the way, in Fritz Lang’s thriller with Joan Bennett and George Sanders.
Lang uses the Expressionist style he’d honed in Germany for a larger purpose, moving away from the mad scientists and criminal masterminds of the silent era to instead focus on a real life evil far closer to home: the fascism that was rapidly infecting his own country and spreading across Europe, this threat explored with a…
“You seem to be in a bit of trouble, sir.”
Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt is a fairly good mix of adventure and World War II propaganda. Although there are dull, talky patches, it has two especially well directed scenes: Nazi agent John Carradine stalking hero Captain Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) through an Underground tunnel and Major Quive-Smith (George Sanders) trapping Thorndike in a tiny cave in Lyme Regis. Screenwriter Dudley Nichols keeps the film’s propaganda mainly in the background until the ending. The main weakness for me is Pidgeon, whom I’ve never cared for except in Forbidden Planet. There’s just something a bit smug and lazy about him. He never seems fully engaged in the material. I used to think…
Fritz Lang's wartime adventure starts with a sequence that seems like something the director might have been fantasising about - a hunter lining up Hitler in his gunsight! He's captured before he can take the shot, but soon escapes making his way to London with the Nazi's hot on his heels. The first act is really good. The opening is absurd in just how brazen it is. Our hero has a conversation with George Sanders' Nazi officer and then there's a tense scene on a boat. All quite thrilling! Then the action relocates to London and Man Hunt rather loses its way. Joan Bennett turns up sporting a completely jarring Cockney accent. Alright guv'nor.....etc. There's an obvious propaganda angle to…
“I know what I can do with a rifle. If I can stalk an animal and get within range, the rest is a mathematical certainty.”
The initial beats are great, but it gets bogged down by the romance and fails to remain thrilling for its duration. It has great potential and is not without a degree of charm, just not enough to get me to watch it again.
"Have you committed a crime, sir?"
"No."
"Was it, um, about a woman?"
"I see you know life."
"I thought so. They're a dickens of a problem, aren't they, sir?"
I wish I could say that I love Man Hunt as much as some of Fritz Lang's other American films, but the fact that Walter Pidgeon's character (a wealthy Brit renowned for his big game hunting expertise) is naïve enough to think that he can travel to Nazi Germany circa 1939 and do as he pleases - assuming that the Gestapo will behave like reasonable chaps and let him go when they catch him trespassing on private, Hitler-owned property - and then makes several more dumb decisions along the way…
Cinematic Time Capsule
1941 Marathon - Film #41
"The sport is in the chase, not the kill."
The first act of Fritz Lang’s pre-war thriller is an incredible work of Hitchcockian suspense, as a man stares through the scope of his rifle and spies non-other than Hitler. Eventually, this big game hunter is caught, tortured and escapes, which forces him into a life on the lam as he’s hounded by agents throughout Germany and England. Sadly, the middle of the film fails to live up to the incredible opening, and the whole thing is nearly mortally wounded by an outrageous accent.
”Couldn’t you have given me a cleaner death than this?”
Cinematic Time Capsule - 1941 Ranked
The New York Times Book of Movies: The Essential 1,000 Films to See
Viewed from Today, MAN HUNT has all sorts of story logic problems. Central among them is why the Nazis would go to such extreme lengths to secure a signature on an assassination confession that they concocted? And by “extreme lengths,” I’m talking about engaging a huge spy network across multiple countries to hunt down one man. Yes, the action is exciting, but is it realistic? Then there is that love story that is pleasant enough, but is it really appropriate for this film to make it such a major component?
Viewed from 1941, though, MAN HUNT’s “story problems” make much more sense. Consider:
* The United States (this was a 20th Century Fox release) wasn’t yet…
A great set up, excellent cast and some very nice suspense sequences from Lang but it somehow loses its way and wastes all that potential. I kind of got the impression that in the end someone got worried about the tone, the last half hour takes a few darker turns than you might expect and it just doesnt quite feel like the movie you started, perhaps because Lang and the world wasn't really using the nazis for high concept thrills by the time it was released.
It has it's moments, i enjoyed Joan Bennett's character despite the appalling accent and john carradine and george sanders are always welcome but i hoped for a lot more.
A film made by a real expatriate. More than that - a film made a truly stateless person, who owes no allegiance to any country, who knows betrayal and sees it everywhere. Germany is full of Englishmen; London is full of Germans. The only film of its era not given to the lie that the two are, in the last instance, morally distinguishable. This is probably Lang's most technically perfect film in the period after M, even if it is hampered by Joan Bennett's brutally bad Cockney performance. The ending feels obligatory and false - we can't believe it for the same reasons we believe Casablanca, which is on this count its opposite.
Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt is a middling muddle. It’s a Noirish thriller sacrificed to the demands of propaganda, such that any seeds of tension are steamrolled by the “message”. The film’s basic trajectory is that of an decent, sporting and independently-minded English chap who, by film’s end, has become a conscientious servant of the British State, having narrowly survived the pursuit of conniving, malicious Nazis, bearing a high monocle count. Along the way there’s a union of the classes sub-plot, which sees our plummy hero and a cockney bird hit it off in a quasi-romance that saves his skin and sacrifices hers, which I’m struggling not to read as do your patriotic duty for the sake of the survival of…
Já fica como comentário para a uma hora e dez minutos restantes de Seven Thunders:
Huillet: "Fiction is important for us, because when it is mixed with documentary, or a documentary situation, a contradiction is created and sparks fly. Fiction is very important, in spite of everything, to somehow ignite a fire."
Straub: "I think what interests us is to show layers…"
Huillet: "Not to eradicate the traces but to build on them."
Ao passo que o Tarantino, e precisamente em comparação a filmes como Man Hunt, Seven Thunders, Berlin Express e Monsieur Klein, cria toda a ficção para chegar ao final e criar uma meta-ficção que corresponderia a uma extrapolação da ficção para a realidade (?), uma "realidade" que…
