7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
After the Nazi administrator of Czechoslovakia is shot, his assassin tries to elude the Gestapo and struggles with his impulse to give himself up as hostages are executed.
Starring: Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan, Anna Lee (I), Gene Lockhart, Dennis O'KeefeFilm-Noir | 100% |
Drama | 36% |
War | 9% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: LPCM 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
None
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
There’s a thrilling moment in the timeless classic Casablanca when refugee Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) leads a bunch of defiant club goers in a rousing rendition of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. It’s a moment of supposedly “innocent” but unmistakably visceral resistance in the face of Nazi evil. There’s much the same sentiment running rampant through Fritz Lang’s 1943 thriller Hangmen Also Die, a film that was in today’s parlance “ripped from the headlines”, in this case the then recent assassination of SS major domo Reinhard Heydrich. Hangmen Also Die, while featuring a screenplay credited to John Wexley, actually began life as a story collaboration between Lang and fellow exiled German Bertolt Brecht (Americanized somewhat hilariously in this film’s credits as Bert Brecht). Not known for ever shading their progressive political tendencies, Lang and Brecht aren’t especially subtle with their thesis in Hangmen Also Die, but the film has a stalwart resoluteness that makes it a quite stirring manifesto in support of a free people’s attempt to thwart outside domination. The Nazis here may be cartoons at times (Heydrich is depicted as a lipstick wearing, mincing fool who would be right at home in Springtime for Hitler), but there’s little doubt that Lang especially wanted Americans to wake up to an imminent threat. That’s perhaps one reason why the good guys here—ostensibly Czech citizens—all speak in good, old fashioned American accents, while the nefarious Germans have a tendency to lapse back and forth between their native language and heavily accented English.
Hangmen Also Die is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. The film includes the following explanatory card:
Restored in 2012 by the Restoration Department Pinewood Studios UK utilising the best of the surviving archive film elements that included some original 1943 nitrate.The most important word in that explanation is probably "included", for it seems apparent that this was probably cobbled together from several different source elements, with some fairly wide variances in everything from contrast and clarity to grain structure and sharpness on display. That said, there have been excellent (some might even say heroic) efforts here to "normalize" things and provide a generally consistent, organic viewing experience. Contrast has been noticeably improved, and if there are still fluctuations, the bulk of the film offers some great, convincing blacks, very important for the ambience that Lang and iconic cinematographer James Wong Howe were going for. Parts of this transfer can still look relatively soft, but the restorative efforts here have minimized overt damage like scratches and dirt. Fine detail is good if not overwhelming in midrange shots, and quite good in close-ups. While some clean up has obviously been done, the good news is that there are no signs of over aggressive sharpening or denoising. Given the state of the elements utilized for this restoration, this is a very commendable effort that will most likely more than please the film's fans.
Hangmen Also Die's uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mono track has its fair share of pops and cracks, but there's no untoward damage here. Dialogue is always easy to hear, and Hanns Eisler's Oscar nominated score, while just a tad brittle sounding in the upper ranges, rings through very well without a lot of distracting distortion. Fidelity is good but occasionally problematic. All told, this is listenable if not pristine.
"Hangmen Also Die" is a historically important film by a very respected director. Still, as with many films from this era, the original film elements have not weathered the test of time very well. Cohen Film Collection, in conjunction with the British Film Institute and Pinewood Studios, endeavored to breathe new life into this forgotten classic, so that a new generation of film enthusiasts could enjoy it anew. These three brief before and after examples illustrate some of the complexities behind restoring this classic film to its former glory.
Some people consider Hangmen Also Die to be an out and out masterpiece, but I'm afraid I'm not quite in that camp. The film is probably too polemical for its own good, and while Lang is to be commended for dealing with some issues in an almost abstract fashion, when he indulges in more literal minded gambits like one character stumbling toward a church as he's being gunned down by Nazis, things move from unsubtle to almost parodying levels. My biggest hangup is with Donlevy's almost somnambulistic performance, which I suppose is meant to come across as stolid, but instead simply looks stiff and uninspired (and perhaps more importantly, given the character's position, uninspiring). Lang and cinematographer James Wong Howe still make this a fascinating film to watch. While there are some minor issues with video and audio here, the supplements are great and (warts and all) Hangmen Also Die comes Highly recommended.
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