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Occupied Czechoslovakia in the studio laboratory courtesy of Fritz Lang and Bertolt Brecht, with Hollywood actors mingling with players from Caligari and Nosferatu. Hitler escapes (Man Hunt) but Heydrich the Reichsprotektor (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski) falls, the assassin is a surgeon cornered in Prague (Brian Donlevy). (Applause combines with Smetana's "Má vlast" as the news spreads in a movie theater.) Curfews, arrests and interrogations ensue, the witness (Anna Lee) is caught in the middle, her father the professor (Walter Brennan) rekindles the old revolutionary flame while awaiting execution. "Fight on, my merry men all, I'm a little wounded but I'm not slain." A palpable sense of fear presides as human nature's barbaric side is given free rein, a word or a glance might mean death. (Jagged shadows on a concrete floor or jackboots and a whip's tip at the top of the screen are enough for Lang to suggest the depths of torture.) The Gestapo bloodhound (Alexander Granach) savors beer and a good deduction, sordid and sardonic under his bowler hat—a purposefully degraded version of Inspector Lohmann from M and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Brecht bulletins scattered about, at the Nazi headquarters ("He who serves Hitler—serves Germany" "He who serves Germany—serves God") and at the cabaret ("Czechs and dogs not permitted"). Chess in the dungeon, blood behind white curtains. The entrapment of the Quisling (Gene Lockhart) brings the town together, a new reality pieced together by landlady and restaurant waiter and cab driver, from cackling madly in the back of a police car he stumbles and expires before church steps. "I suppose that in wartime life moves a lot faster." Losey evinces rare appreciation in Mr. Klein. With Dennis O'Keefe, Margaret Wycherly, Nana Bryant, Lionel Stander, Tonio Selwart, Reinhold Schünzel, and Sarah Padden. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |