Hangmen Also Die! (1943)

Hey, I wonder if there are any parallels, any at all, with the Nazi government in this movie and things happening today in the United States.

This movie absolutely rules. It shows the brutal incompetence of a fascist regime. It does not pussyfoot around the issue. It shows the fascists beating people in the streets, rounding up people with the wrong thoughts, upturning people's lives because they can. All of that. Then, the movie shows us how to deal with that.

Very overt methods of slowdown in the economy, gumming up the works of the Nazi war machine, and small acts of sabotage that cause just enough of a problem to be an issue, but not enough to cause a crackdown. Ultimately, the movie kills the Gestapo guy which took just a bit too long. Over and over throughout this thing I was remarking to myself that "that's a good idea," or "hell yeah, that's exactly how you deal with that."

The plot moves in a perfect direction, framing the shitty Czaka for the assassination, brilliantly, with the help of every damn person in the neighborhood, because that's how you deal with Nazis and collaborators. Hell, that town almost lost its shit on wonderful young Miss Novotny because she planned to rat someone out to the Gestapo. That's how you deal with that shit. Fritz Lang pulled hero punches on the Nazis. He made them look like bumbling, moronic thugs who were incapable of properly running any town under occupation and were constantly trying to make up for it with brutality. Fuck them. History dealt with them properly.

The movie's message obviously spoke to me quite loudly. But more than that, Fritz Lang's filmmaking was exceptional here. I appreciated and thought a lot of the city scenes essentially being America, but it's Prague, you know. The cabbie talked like a New York cabbie. Professor Novotny used the phrase, "don't let yourselves get snowed under at Valley Forge," which I can't imagine was a common thing to say in 1940s Prague. Those elements left me not even thinking or worrying about where this was, because that was unimportant. This could have been anywhere the Nazis occupied. Lang made it familiar, which helped keep the focus of the movie on its message.

One of my favorite demises of a character was that of Czaka. His bitch ass tried to get into the church as he was dying to save himself, and the Nazis prevented even that from happening. If you collaborate, this is how it should go with you. Dead. Unrepentant. A stain on history. Thank you for that, Fritz.