Man Hunt (1941)

My streaming list appears to be dominated by dramas, recent releases, and foreign films, none of which I particularly wanted in the immediate aftermath of Incendies. So I chose an American studio's WWII thriller, made shortly before the U.S. entered the war. One factor to intrigue me was Fritz Lang, a director I generally like but whose work I hadn't seen since before I started this blog.

English sport hunter Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) just so happens upon the woodland estate of the Fuhrer, who remains oddly unnamed throughout. He lines up a shot on the Fuhrer but gets captured in time. His captors, led by Major Quive-Smith (George Sanders), try to torture him into signing a confession that the UK government assigned him an assassination mission; when their patience runs out, they try to give him an accidental-looking death, but their method is too unreliable. He escapes to London, but it turns out that German agents, among them a "Mr. Jones" (John Carradine), are very good at posing as Englishmen in various positions, so the adventure has just begun.

Thorndike does have some help along the way, partly from his aristocratic family and partly from some sympathetic English strangers. One of them is played by a preteen Roddy McDowall. More notable is Jerry Stokes (Joan Bennett), a pointedly lower-class potential prostitute whom Thorndike spontaneously ropes into giving him a place to hide. Her indignation turns to intrigue, followed by an awkward crush. I'm not sure how credible that is, but...well, I'm afraid you can't count on Lang for "happily ever after."

Thanks to the Hays Office, all torture details are left to the imagination, tho Thorndike does retain a facial scar. The office's main concern had to do with the pro-war sentiment, compounded by the complete lack of non-villainous German characters. (Recall that Lang was Austro-Hungarian by birth and used to direct at a German studio.) Producer Darryl F. Zanuck actually banned Lang from the editing room, but with help from an associate, Lang edited in secret. To my postwar American eyes, the depiction is fair enough.

Lang thrives on film noir, but this is the first time the Master of Darkness ever truly reminded me of the Master of Suspense. Hitchcockian elements abound, not least the genuine suspense. I heartily approve.