In the fall of 1936, the Germans are purging the rebels and sending them to the Concentration Camp of Westhofen. One day, there is a break out and the prisoners Pelzer, Bellani, Aldinger, Beutler, Fuellgrabe, George Heisler (Spencer Tracy) and the leader Ernst Wallau escape. They are hunted down by the soldiers and the camp commandant builds seven crosses to put each escapee on each cross. The bitter George Heisler heads to his hometown Mainz without any help and loses his faith in the German people. Meanwhile one by one of the prisoners are captured by the German soldiers. Once in Mainz, George seeks out his former girlfriend Leni (Karen Verne) that said that would wait for him but she is married and refuses to help him. Then he witnesses the suicide of Bellani and he meets his friend Mme. Marelli (Agnes Moorehead) that gives clothes and some money that she was keeping for Bellani to him. When George finally arrives at the address of his contact, he discovers that he had been arrested by Gestapo. Without any alternative, George decides to risk and visit his friend Paul Roeder (Hume Cronyn) and Liesel Roeder (Jessica Tandy). Meanwhile there are friends of George that want to help him but do not know where he is. Paul decides to help George with the support of his friend Fiedler (Paul Guilfoyle) and they bring George to an inn. But the waitress Toni (Signe Hasso) recognizes George and there is a reward of five thousand-Marc on him. What will happen to George?"The Seventh Cross" is a dramatic and emotional movie with a great story of lost and regain of faith in the mankind. The story follows George Heisler and is anguishing, especially because the characters live in a dark period where it is not possible to know who is reliable or not. The conclusion is another plus in this great feature. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "A Sétima Cruz" ("The Seventh Cross")

As I watched this rather dull, plodding film with its strange narration I began to have a sense of fright beginning to build up. The work-a-day folks, the villagers and laughing children-very home-like, very much like here. The occasional scenes of brutish Nazi's were not to terrifying as the everyday citizen's acceptance of the new order. The movie portrayed this so well in the almost blank faces of the extras as they witnessed people being taken away and that awful suicide from the rooftop. Watching this film made me realize that-yes-it could happen here. Kudos to those faceless extras that brought home the real atmosphere of such an awful time.

Spencer Tracy in an earnestly pensive performance, playing one of seven concentration camp escapees in 1936 Germany who are hunted by Nazi soldiers. Dream-like ambiance and a harrowing undermining makes the film a relatively gripping experience, yet the writing is a bit timid (it's hard to discern why some of these men were incarcerated in the first place when others, such as Hume Cronyn's factory worker, roam free). Director Fred Zinnemann makes an attempt to show that not all of Nazi-era Germany was populated by "slaughter-happy butchers", and the fear and paranoia seems accurate enough, but not many of these characters convince--not Agnes Moorehead's dress designer nor Steven Geray's Jewish doctor. They're just placards in the story, and screenwriter Helen Deutsch, working from a book by Anna Seghers, hasn't given them any depth. A last-act romance between Tracy and a pretty barmaid feels tacked on, and the upbeat ending is most likely another writer's convenience...one would be wise to assume events didn't quite transpire this way in actuality. **1/2 from ****

The Seventh Cross is a film based on a novel by Communist author Anna Seghers. It's this kind of material that later got folks in trouble during the blacklist. Of course there were no Fifth Amendment problems for Ms. Seghers as she was an unabashed Marxist and proud citizen of the German Democratic Republic.For a Marxist author, she used religious symbols a lot. Before the days of the mass exterminations with the gas and the ovens, the Nazis used more traditional methods of extermination individually at least in the pre-World War II days of 1936. Modern day crucifixions were the order and that's what they have in store for Spencer Tracy and six other escapees.Tracy of course proves the toughest to catch. During his escape he meets up with all kinds of people, some who help and some who are ready to turn him in. By his wits and with a lot of luck Tracy survives to tell his tale. The Seventh Cross is quite the triumph for Tracy. Usually an actor who eschewed make up of any kind, he made an exception here as he had to be shown weak and with a bad pallor as a result of his hardships. Director Fred Zinneman, a refugee from Austria in fact, was given his first A picture assignment and got great critical acclaim and was well on the way to a two Best Director Oscar career.Zinneman assembled a good group of character players to support Tracy. Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy got their first notice in The Seventh Cross. And this has to be one of the only films where Kurt Katch was not a Nazi, but a member of the underground.Two things always stood out about The Seventh Cross. It seems to anticipate The Diary of Anne Frank in its message. Although they were certainly being rapidly rounded up, in 1936 there apparently were still enough decent folks around to help Tracy. At the end of the film a kind of roll call is read to the audience. And wasn't that Anne Frank's message, that people were essentially decent if you could reach that spark of it left in them?Also besides using religious symbolism, the author went on to live in another police state, this one of the making of her ideological companeros. And where be East Germany now?