Man Hunt
by Fritz Lang
List Price:
Our Price: $7.17
You Save: $7.81 (52%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $6.91 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: George Sanders, Joan Bennett, John Carradine, Roddy McDowall, Walter PidgeonDirector: Fritz Lang
Brand: PIDGEON,WALTER
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 105 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-05-19
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of Man Hunt
Movie Review: ASSASSINATE HITLER
Summary: 5 Stars
Long before Tom Cruise decided to take on tale of VALKYRIE, a movie was made concerning the same subject, the assassination of Adolf Hitler. With the release of Cruise' film to DVD, this movie now comes out of the vault and makes its way to homes as well. The film is called MAN HUNT.
Walter Pidgeon stars Capt. Alan Thorndike, a retired British officer and big time game hunter on vacation in Germany. As the film opens, Thorndike is perched on a hill overlooking the secret headquarters of Hitler along with a pair of binoculars and a high powered hunting rifle with the best of scopes attached. Getting Hitler in his sights is easy and he pulls the trigger only to hear the click of the gun. This was an exercise in skills, not an actual killing.
But for some reason Thorndike isn't satisfied. He inserts a bullet and takes aim once more. His chance to kill Hitler has passed though as he is captured before he can act by a guard patrolling the grounds.
Taken prisoner, Thorndike is brought before the chief interrogator Quive-Smith (George Sanders). It seems that Quive-Smith is a big game hunter as well and recognizes Thorndike. During questioning, Thorndike insists that he was simply performing an exercise, just trying to see if he could accomplish this goal without following through. Not believing this news, Quive-Smith has him tortured. Quive-Smith offers him a last chance. He will release him to return to England as long as he signs a confession that he was sent there by the British to perform the task of killing Adolf Hitler. When he refuses, Thorndike is taken to the woods and dropped off a cliff with the intent to make it seem he fell to his death.
Except that luck was with Thorndike. He was caught on a branch and though wounded, was able to escape. Making his way to the docks, he sneaks aboard a vessel headed for England and with the help of a young cabin boy (played by a young Roddy McDowell), he reaches home, but not safety.
It seems that the Germans are set on getting their confession. Their agents have been aboard the boat as well. And they now wait to capture Thorndike on his home turf. After a shot chase, Thorndike is aided by a young woman named Jerry Stokes (Joan Bennett). Untrusting at first, she helps him get to his brother and then aides him as he tries to flee the country. But the Germans are always one step behind and getting closer to capture.
The movie makes for not only a great mystery but a great adventure film as well as Pidgeon's Thorndike moves from one predicament to another as he avoids capture. Each time he moves himself from danger, he puts those he cares for in the middle of it. Determined to use his test of skill to show British involvement, the Nazi's don't give up easily. And should they get their confession, an excuse to launch an attack on England is in their hands.
This movie has been praised by many who recall first seeing it on late night television as a long lost classic. Having found it that way myself many years ago I would have to agree. Simple in it's telling, it still has a profound effect when you consider the subject matter. What if someone had taken that shot and killed Hitler before he had the chance to subject the world to his madness?
Perhaps that is the major theme that the films director, Fritz Lang, was trying to express here. The German born director of films such as M and METROPOLIS was fortunate enough to have escaped Germany before his anti-Nazi sympathies could do him in. Perhaps this film was his way of hoping for a different world for the one he was born in.
In any event, Lang has offered us a tremendous thriller that holds your interest throughout. The performances are well done for the time and the story, while for some a bit unbelievable, is done in such a way as to make it possible.
This is one man attempting to take down Hitler as opposed to the German generals of VALKYRIE working together with civilians. But it holds just as powerful a story as well. And by films end, my guess is there wasn't a person in the house who could sympathize with the Nazis.
Summary of Man Hunt
Genre: Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 19-MAY-2009
Media Type: DVD
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
Similar DVD Movies
Scarlet StreetPublished: 2001; DVD
Best price: $1.14
You Only Live OnceImage Entertainment; Release date: 2003-06-24; DVD
Best price: $9.40
Price in other shops:
The ProwlerRelease date: 2011-02-01; DVD
Best price: $7.47
Price in other shops:
![While The City Sleeps [Remaster] Image](/images/While-The-City-Sleeps-Remaster-B004VA0R7Q-X.jpg)
While The City Sleeps [Remaster]Warner; Release date: 2011-05-16; DVD
Best price: $14.69
Price in other shops:
Hangmen Also DieKino International; Release date: 2000-01-18; DVD
Best price: $14.38
Price in other shops:
The Big HeatSony; Release date: 2001-12-18; DVD
Best price: $8.39
Price in other shops:
The Woman in the Window (MGM Film Noir)ROBINSON,EDWARD G; Release date: 2007-07-10; DVD
Best price: $25.95
![Beyond A Reasonable Doubt [Remaster] Image](/images/Beyond-A-Reasonable-Doubt-Remaster-B004VL1ERW-X.jpg)
Beyond A Reasonable Doubt [Remaster]Release date: 2011-05-16; Published: 2011; DVD
Best price: $15.99
Price in other shops:
Rogue MaleRelease date: 2007-04-24; DVD
Best price: $3.35
Price in other shops:
FurySIDNEY,SYLVIA; Release date: 2005-05-10; DVD
Best price: $12.72
Price in other shops: