The Seventh Cross (1944 film)
| The Seventh Cross | |
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| Directed by | Fred Zinnemann |
| Produced by | Pandro S. Berman |
| Written by | Helen Deutsch |
| Based on |
The Seventh Cross by Anna Seghers |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Roy Webb |
| Cinematography | Karl Freund |
| Edited by | Thomas Richards |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
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Release date
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Running time
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110 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.3 million |
| Box office | $3.6 million |
The Seventh Cross is a 1944 film starring Spencer Tracy, Hume Cronyn, Ray Collins and Jessica Tandy. Cronyn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. It was the first film in which Cronyn and Tandy, who were married, appeared together.
This was among the first feature films directed by Fred Zinnemann, later noted for films such as From Here to Eternity, High Noon, Julia, A Man for All Seasons, Oklahoma!, and The Nun's Story.
The movie was adapted from the novel of the same name by the German refugee writer Anna Seghers. Produced in the midst of the Second World War and released on 24 July 1944, it was one of the few films of the era to deal with the existence of Nazi concentration camps.
The year is 1936. Seven prisoners escape from the fictitious Westhofen concentration camp near Worms, Germany near the Rhine. They represent a cross-section of German society: a writer, a circus performer, a schoolmaster, a farmer, a Jewish grocery clerk, and two prisoners who are apparently political activists. One is George Heisler (Spencer Tracy) and the other his mentor Wallau (Ray Collins), the leader of the group.
The camp commandant erects a row of seven crosses and vows to "put a man on each." The first to be apprehended is Wallau, who dies without giving up any information yet continues to narrate the film. The film follows Heisler as he makes his way across the German countryside (Rhenish Hesse), steals a jacket to cover his prison garb, and watches out, as the Nazis round up every other escaped prisoner and puts them up on the crosses, and the local population remains largely indifferent.
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