Hitler's Madman

Hitler's Madman

Hitler's Madman insert poster.
Directed by Douglas Sirk
Produced by Seymour Nebenzal
Written by Edna St. Vincent Millay (poem)
Albrecht Joseph (story)
Emil Ludwig (story)
Screenplay by Peretz Hirschbein
Melvin Levy
Doris Malloy
Edgar G. Ulmer (uncredited)
Based on Hangman's Village
1943 novel
by Bart Lytton
Starring Patricia Morison
John Carradine
Alan Curtis
Music by Karl Hajos
Edited by Dan Milner
Production
company
PRC
Angelus Pictures
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Distributed by Loew's Inc.
Release dates
 27 Aug 1943
Running time
 84 minutes
Country USA
Language English

Hitler's Madman is a 1943 World War II film about the assassination of Nazi Reinhard Heydrich and the Lidice massacre revenge taken by the Germans. The picture was produced by Seymour Nebenzal for PRC[1] and Angelus Pictures, Inc.[2] The shooting of Hitler's Madman took place late in 1942 and early 1943.[2] Sirk hired German cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan to shoot the film, but since he was not allowed in the United States at the time, the credit was instead given to Jack Greenhalgh.[1]

When Hitler's Madman was finished, MGM's Louis B. Mayer bought the production (reshoots were made in MGM's own studios), making it one of the few, and possibly the first film originally from another company to be distributed by MGM.[1]

Plot summary

Somewhat fictionalized account of the destruction of the village of Lidice in Czechoslovakia and the events leading up to it. In 1942, the Allies parachuted a Czech resistance fighter into the area. He quickly reunites with his former girlfriend and many of the villagers who knew him from before the war. The Nazis are evil and under the command of Reinhardt Heydrich rule the country with an iron fist, arbitrarily arresting innocents and charging them with fictitious crimes. When Heydrich is severely wounded in a roadside attack - he dies three days later - Henrich Himmler orders the destruction of Lidice. The men are herded into a church which is set aflame and the women are sent to concentration camps. The town itself is leveled.

Cast

Reception

Paul Mavis, of DVD Drive-In, reviewing the Warner Archive Collection 2015 DVD release, wrote, "Hitler's Madman mixes director Sirk’s complex subtextual concerns with straight-ahead (for its time) horror, in a B shocker that still packs a considerable punch."[3]

See also

Other films on the same subject:

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Hitler's Madman, Turner Classic Movies page
  2. 1 2 Hitler's Madman, TCM overview page
  3. ↑ "Hitler's Madman (1943)". dvddrive-in.com.
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