Hangmen Also Die!

Hangmen Also Die!
1943 Theatrical Poster
Directed by	Fritz Lang
Produced by	Fritz Lang Arnold Pressburger
Written by	Story: Fritz Lang Bertolt Brecht As Bert Brecht Screenplay: John Wexley
Starring	Hans Heinrich von Twardowski Brian Donlevy Walter Brennan Arno Frey Anna Lee
Music by	Hanns Eisler
Cinematography	James Wong Howe
Edited by	Gene Fowler Jr.
Production company	Arnold Pressburger Films
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	23 March 1943 (NYC) 15 April (general)
Running time	134 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Hangmen Also Die! is a 1943 noir war film directed by the Austrian director Fritz Lang and written by John Wexley from a story by Bertolt Brecht (credited as Bert Brecht) and Lang. The film stars Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan, Alexander Granach and Anna Lee, and features Gene Lockhart and Dennis O'Keefe. The music is by Hanns Eisler and James Wong Howe served as cinematographer.

The film is loosely based on the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Reich Protector of German-occupied Prague, number-two man in the SS, and a chief architect of the Holocaust, who was known as "The Hangman of Prague." The real Heydrich was assassinated by Czech resistance fighters parachuted from a British plane in Operation Anthropoid, but in the movie, which was made during World War II before the full story had become public knowledge, Heydrich's killer is depicted as a member of the Czech resistance with ties to the Communist Party.

Hangmen Also Die! was Bertolt Brecht's only script for a Hollywood film: the money he earned from the project enabled him to write The Visions of Simone Machard, Schweik in the Second World War and an adaptation of Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. Hanns Eisler was nominated for an Academy Award for his musical score. The collaboration of three prominent refugees from Nazi Germany–Lang, Brecht and Eisler–is an example of the influence this generation of German exiles had in American culture.