Customer Reviews

Man Hunt

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

"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.

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.

I have loved this film for many years and have awaited it coming out on video. That said, the restoration looks great compared to TV versions I've seen. I've only seen a few minutes of the documentary plus the trailer, but these features seem to be more than on most older films. It's an exciting story played out against the backdrop of early WWII (even if the central premise is a bit far-fetched.) This is one movie I can watch several times and still enjoy.

This is an icon movie set in Nazi Germany and Great Britain, perfect cast: Walter Pidgeon-Joan Bennet-George Sanders-John Carradine and a new kid/star, Roddy McDowall...it's all about a world/class game hunter who inadvertantly decides to assassinate, Adolph Hitler, just to prove it can be accomplished...it gets botched and the SS/Gestapo chase is on to hunt down and capture the worldy hunter from Germany to London...probably the most thrilling scene is the chase in the subway tunnel of underground London town...another is Pidgeon's expertise in the field to...improvise...at the end of the chase in a swampy area [well done]...the art/direction is superb [like you are there]...many little intrigues populate this fine film made during the WW2 years...you are in for a good Hollywood treat and a run [no pun] for your money...sit back and enjoy this movie [DVD] whenever it gets transferred to DVD....SSGT CHRIS SARNO-USMC FMF....PS.....FYI, the British/novel was entitled, "Rogue Male" and Peter O'Toole starred in the remake [the role of Walter Pidgeon]...it can't measure up to the "Manhunt" movie edition...not even close. folks.

Man Hunt by Fritz Lang was a great Noir with Walter Pidgeon, John Carradine, George Sanders, Joan Bennett. It takes place during WW2 - Walter Pidgeon is being hunted by Germans (headed by George Sanders) to have him sign a paper admitting he tried to kill Hitler during a hunt for fun/sport moment. This has some great chase scenes all around London, & a really good love interest. It was a great subplot. This has great direction by Fritz Lang; I loved the scenes where there is no sound or music while Pidgeon tries to escape the Germans. George Sanders is great in this. Watch for a young Roddy McDowall. With its great acting, a great story, atmospheric,this is an all around great film that I very much recommend. The DVD transfer is crisp and sharp.
To be honest, I bought this without seeing it first because I heard so many great things about this title. Now I can stand behind all those opinions.

The attitude "One shouldn't speak ill of the dead" seems to inform much of "classic" movie criticism, but it's hard not to be massively disappointed by Man Hunt, no matter what Leonard Maltin and his friends might think. Fritz Lang - director of silent colossi such as Metropolis and M, manages to show only how much talking can spoil a perfectly good art form.

Parts of Man Hunt are beautifully framed, but they tend to be static scenes: Thorndike and Jerry on a bridge with a trail of street lights fading into the London fog; a darkly framed underground station wherein a limping German with a black trencher and a cane - a prototype for Herr Flick of the Gestapo if ever there was one - pursues our hero.

Here, I confess, I am scrabbling around for something positive to say. If we forget the artful cinematography, what we are left with is low grade melodrama.

The plot is quite absurd: In 1939, a famous British huntsman Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon, making no attempt at all to affect a British accent) is apprehended in Austria taking aim at Hitler with a high-powered rifle. He is relieved of his passport and ordered to sign a confession that he is an assassin in the employ of her Majesty's Government, which is presumed to be likely to spark an international diplomatic incident (on the eve of Germany's invasion of Poland!).

Absurd enough, but then Thorndike escapes on a ship back to London, thanks to a Roger-the-Cabin-Boy performance from a 10-year-old Roddy McDowall. Losing your prisoner, you would think, would entirely blow the value of any confession. But no, the hun are determined, and pursue Thorndike back to and then around London and its underground and even deep into the delightful Dorsetshire countryside of Lyme Regis.

Along the way Thorndike meets the unfortunately named Jerry, a working girl (Joan Bennett, toting a cockney accent that would have made Dick Van Dyke wince), for whom the film grinds to a halt for thirty minutes to allow Thorndike to gratuitously patronise her, and Jerry to pine winsomely for Thorndike whilst all the while mangling the traditional London dialect to the horror of onlooking rich folk such as Lord and Lady Risborough, who had no apparent function in the screenplay other than to reinforce social stereotypes. Of course, being pre war Britain there's no intimacy, let alone sex, to liven proceedings but amusingly Lang does have Thorndike stretch out suggestively on a couch in Jerry's apartment while a well-placed tower rises magnificently on a sheet behind him, Austin Powers style. Fnarr Fnarr.

Eventually the action gets going again, and we quickly find Thorndike holed up in a muddy cave with a monocle-endowed kraut outside still imploring him to sign the confession (Germany by now having rolled into the Sudetenland, annexed Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland, making the putative diplomatic embarrassment to Her Majesty yet more questionable) and declaring, po-faced, things like "Today Europe, tomorrow ze WORLD!" and from there the film rolls to its dramatic, implausible conclusion, backed by the same shrill and melodramatic music which has been assaulting the senses fro the outset.

At the end of the day it is Fritz Lang, so my critical brethren will feel obliged to give Man Hunt the benefit of the doubt (though surely there are limits: bizarrely Time-Out described it as "bleak, complex and nightmarish", which if true I missed completely), but it is really hard to see a modern audience of ordinary folk (assuming no interest in this as a cultural artefact) having much time for this at all. You would hardly say that of Metropolis.

Indeed, if ever there were an demonstration of precisely what cinema lost when it added sound, then watching this back to back with Metropolis would make alles klar.

Olly Buxton

A memorable suspense film, with great directing and quite powerful.
I saw this film many years ago on very late night TV. I never forgot it.
Strong anti-fascist statement, as I recall.
Also featuring the tune "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square."
Cannot wait for the re-release on modern media.

To Staff Sergeant SARNO, USMC: ROGUE MALE was published, in the UK, in 1939, it was published in the US in 1942 as MAN HUNT, with great succes. Its author GEOFFREY HOUSEHOLD served in the British Intelligence Corps, from 1939 to 1945, ending as a Lt Colonel. He wrote from 1938 to 1988, dying that same year. Having worked and travelled abroad before WWII, he probably had some kind of connection with the SIS.

MAN HUNT (1941) has one of the most unforgettable opening sequences in movie history.

The year is 1939. Renowned British big game hunter Walter Pidgeon moves quietly, swiftly through a Bavarian forest, avoiding sentries. Soon, he reaches the edge of a cliff, assembles his long-range rifle and takes careful aim at his prey.

In his cross-hairs is Adolph Hitler.

Naturally, Pidgeon is thwarted before he can pull the trigger. He is beaten and taken before Gestapo leader George Sanders, who promises him freedom if he will confess to being an assassin, sent to kill Hitler for the British Government.

Almost by accident, Pidgeon escapes and is able to make his way back to England. He is followed by Sanders and several of his henchmen, including John Carradine, who still want him to sign the false confession that will embarrass the Brits and put the country in a difficult political position.

One of the few people willing to help Pidgeon is Joan Bennett, a "street waif". [She was probably really a prostitute, but that would go against the strict 1941 Production Code.]

Adapted from a novel by Geoffrey Household and directed by Fritz Lang, MAN HUNT is a taut thriller that plays like an urban version of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. It is filled with the director's signature images of foreboding dark corners and shadowy streets.

The sharp black-and-white release from 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment has audio commentary by author Patrick McGilligan and a "Making of" featurette.

© Michael B. Druxman

A taut, fascinating adaptation of Geoffrey Household's prewar thriller "Rogue Male," Pidgeon stars as a big-game hunter with the chance to take out Hitler on the eve of World War II. He is thwarted, but now is the subject of a man-hunt which takes him back to London, and danger around every corner. Low-budget and dark, Fritz Lang made the film quickly to raise his standing in the Hollywood community, and it succeeded. Lang went on to bigger projects in the US, and this film did quite well, released during 1941. Pidgeon is quite good as the hunter, and his scenes with Roddy McDowell, his son in "How Green Was My Valley," resonate. Joan Bennett is lovely in what was her first major role, and George Sanders is the perfect Nazi villain. Well worth the time, and the documentary which accompanies the film sets it beautifully in its time period, and shows how important this film was to Lang and Lang's career.