Hangmen Also Die! (1943)

Man oh man. I love a World War II movie made during World War II, and Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die! comes from an idea Lang came up with alongside Bertolt Brecht. This movie was banned for a while in the U.S. (I presume) because of Brecht's involvement and possible pro-Communist sentiments. (U.S. American fascism is fascinating, honestly. We rant and rave about the Nazis burning books and then we ban films like this.) In any case, Hangmen Also Die! is a thriller, and it's excellent. The cast is great – Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan, Anna Lee, and Gene Lockhart especially, but really everyone.

This movie is about an assassin who has killed one of the worst men during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. But the film starts after "the Hangman" has been assassinated, and what we watch instead is his attempts to escape – to find a place to hide in the immediate aftermath and to avoid detection once the Nazis begin to crack down on finding the Hangman's executioner.

What's so great about this is the plotting of the Czech resistance to fight the Nazi occupation. I can see why the U.S. American fascists opposed this. It's a film about choosing community over the individual. It's about resisting coercion and working as a group to do what's right. This is honestly a great film, and as I said, it's a thriller. I was honestly on the edge of my seat the whole time. I'm glad we can watch it in full now – and free – on Amazon Prime.