Hitler's Madman (1943) * 1/2 (out of 4) Douglas Sirk's first American film was also filmed by Fritz Lang as Hangmen Also Die the very same year. War propaganda at its highest as the Czech people stick together to assassinate Nazi Richard Heydrich (John Carradine). This thing here gets mixed reviews but I found it incredibly slow, boring and just not all that interesting. Carradine delivers a good performance but outside of that everyone else is pretty boring and while the direction shines in a few spots it never really comes full circle. The ending with "we should all rise up" might have packed a punch in 1943 but today it comes off very, very stupid.

Although it was overshadowed by Lang's "Hangmen also die" , "Hitler's madman" seems closer to Borzage's "the mortal storm" ,with its depiction of life in an occupied town.But the finale was probably borrowed from Abel Gance's "J'accuse" (1919 and 1937) and its "wake of the dead" sequences.Great sequences: the professor of philosophy resuming his lecture in front of the Nazis (there is a similar sequence in "the mortal storm");the female student,refusing to be treated as a beast ;the admirable scene where the mayor's wife,reading that her sons are dead, and cursing the "Fuhrer" (a famous lullaby the name of which I cannot remember ,makes a very moving score, as she remembers her boys' childhood).The hangman, in his bed and begging for morphine,as he too realizes that the Third Reich means nothing when you're dying.Probably Sirk's best forties film .In the fifties,he would come back to WW2 and the Nazi barbarity with a work I consider his masterpiece : "A time to love and a time to die" (1958),from the great German pacifist writer Erich Maria Remarque's novel.

Although the history portrayed in this little cheapie is not 100% accurate, the power and style of the great director Douglas Sirk shines through all the way. Carradine's death-bed scene is superbly acted, photographed and directed, and the climax, propaganda or not, is unforgettable. It is well worth your time!

This film story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (titled by the Nazis as Reichs Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, by the Czechs as "The Hangman", and also one of the architects of "The Final Solution")and of the subsequent annihilation of the village of Lidice by the Nazis, really does not do justice to the subject. Although released by MGM, it was actually produced by poverty row Producer Releasing Corporation (PRC). Some of the cast members are old familiars and rather good, but none give a feeling that these are Czechs being murdered by Hitler's minions. As war propaganda, it is a success, and it at least gives the spirit of the tragedy of Lidice, if not historically detailed facts. John Carradine is effective as Heydrich, especially in his deathbed scene.The facts about the assassination briefly are that two Czech partisans were parachuted into Czechoslovakia from an RAF plane. They managed to ambush Heydrich's open Mercedes, throw a bomb under it, and escape to a church. Heydrich died a few days later from complications arising from the penetration of his spleen by bomb fragments and debris from the car upholstery. Using torture, the Nazis discovered the whereabouts of the two partisans and the SS killed them at once. Lidice was picked more or less at random from among villages known to have anti-German leanings. On Hitler's orders, the men were shot and the women and children removed to camps, while the buildings of the site were levelled. When it became known in the allied world, this made excellent anti-Nazi propaganda, and more than one film was made of the subject. It may be that the massive retaliation backfired somewhat on the Nazis also by stiffening Czech resistance to the occupation.