DVD Review: Man Hunt: Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders, John Carradine, Roddy McDowall, Fritz Lang: Movies & TV

May19

DVD Review: Man Hunt: Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders, John Carradine, Roddy McDowall, Fritz Lang: Movies & TV

Posted by admin | on 19 May, 10:04 AM

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Fritz Lang was in peak form as a Hollywood studio director when he made Man Hunt (1941), a terrific thriller whose title, like so many things Langian, cuts two ways. First, Capt. Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon), celebrated English big-game hunter, is caught near Berchtesgaden just as he’s drawn a bead on Adolf Hitler. Thorndike claims he had no intention to shoot, it was just “a sporting stalk”–a notion mystifying to his Nazi captors, who aim to parade him before the world as a British government assassin. There follows a harrowing escape, in a forest primeval straight out of Die Nibelungen, and now it’s Thorndike who’s the quarry, pursued across Europe and home to foggy London–not that he finds much refuge there.

Based on Geoffrey Household’s hit novel Rogue Male, Man Hunt itself became a big hit on the eve of World War II. It’s still a grabber because Lang, abetted by top Fox cameraman Arthur Miller, art directors Richard Day and Wiard B. Ihnen, and composer Alfred Newman, created a brilliantly atmospheric and entirely studio-bound world–just like the old days at Ufa, but with superior production resources. The film is Germanic to the max, with imagery of fierce angularity and chiaroscuro, literally underground confrontations, and a scenario rife with doppelgängers and secret selves. Gestapo pursuer-in-chief George Sanders rates a bravura introduction, posed ramrod straight in a white uniform in a white room with a white mountain vista outside … and yes, he has a monocle (like Lang’s). Man Hunt marked Lang’s initial association with two future partners: screenwriter Dudley Nichols, who would script the director’s American masterpiece Scarlet Street, and actress Joan Bennett, who starred in three more Lang pictures. Her character–a little English streetwalker, not that the Production Code allowed her to be acknowledged as such–is key to the movie’s potent emotional wallop (she anticipates the Gloria Grahame role in The Big Heat). As Lang told an interviewer three decades later, she “had all my heart.” Which also cuts two ways. –Richard T. Jameson

I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time,

By calvinnme “Texan refugee” (Fredericksburg, Va) -
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)

“Man Hunt” is an excellent thriller that doesn’t look like it is almost seventy years old, and is one of my favorite Fritz Lang films. Ahead of its time in the complexity of its characters, it is about a British hunter (Walter Pidgeon) who contemplates assassinating Hitler when he gets him in his gun sight and gets caught doing so. Left for dead at the bottom of a cliff by the authorities, he lives and makes his way to a boat on its way to London. However, on the ship there is someone all too interested in his story. Soon he realizes he is being followed. Back in London he turns to Joan Bennett for help. If I’m getting the details wrong, it’s because it’s been about ten years since I’ve seen this one anywhere. Lang manages to do a very good job of portraying the Nazis in a more complex and articulate manner than other films of this time period (it was made in 1941). The following is the list of extras:
Commentary by Author Patrick McGilligan
Rogue Male: The Making of Man Hunt
Restoration Comparison
Trailer
Interactive Pressbook
Still Gallery

I have heard this is being released to coincide with the DVD release of Tom Cruise’s Valkyries. Even though that movie is not as good as this one, I’ll take it any way I can get it. This is somewhat like the release of the Dracula - The Legacy Collection (Dracula / Dracula (1931 Spanish Version) / Dracula’s Daughter / Son of Dracula / House of Dracula) as a publicity stunt for the laughable CGI-fest Van Helsing (Widescreen Edition). Sometimes great films from the past emerge on DVD as a result of publicizing the films of the present.

At Last, the Hunt is Over,

By J. Michael Click (Fort Worth, Texas United States) -

Taut direction and splendid performances distinguish this World War II thriller about a big game hunter pursued by Nazis after he is caught targeting Hitler in his gunsights, and manages to escape back to Britain. Walter Pidgeon is fine as the stalwart “Rogue Male” (the film’s original title, taken from the book on which the script was based), and George Sanders is supremely villainous as the crafty Nazi who is tracking him. On the distaff side, Joan Bennett is touching and convincing as an ill-fated Cockney streetwalker who is caught up in the conflict between warring ideologies; this is the first film of four that she made with director Fritz Lang, for whom she gave some of her finest film performances in the mid-forties (including “The Woman in the Window” and “Scarlet Street”, made for their own independent company, Diana Productions).

Briskly paced and edited, “Man Hunt” remains a tense thriller throughout its 105 minute running time, right up to its suspenseful climax. Seldom screened on television or in revival, and never before released on video, this classic film (which enjoys a small but avid cult following) has been long-awaited and arrives highly recommended.
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