Hitler's Madman
Hitler's Madman is a 1943 World War II film about the assassination of the Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich and the Lidice massacre which the Germans committed in revenge for it. The picture was produced by Seymour Nebenzal for PRC[1] and Angelus Pictures, Inc.[2] It starred Patricia Morison and featured John Carradine as Reinhard Heydrich.
Hitler's Madman | |
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![]() Hitler's Madman insert poster. | |
Directed by | Douglas Sirk |
Produced by | Seymour Nebenzal |
Screenplay by | Peretz Hirschbein Melvin Levy Doris Malloy Edgar G. Ulmer (uncredited) |
Story by | Albrecht Joseph Emil Ludwig |
Based on | Hangman's Village 1943 novel by Bart Lytton |
Starring | Patricia Morison John Carradine Alan Curtis |
Music by | Karl Hajos |
Cinematography | Jack Greenhalgh Eugen Schüfftan (uncredited) |
Edited by | Dan Milner |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Loew's Inc. |
Release date |
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Running time | 84 minutes |
Country | USA |
Language | English |
The movie's opening credits say that Edna St. Vincent Millay's 1942 poem, Murder of Lidice[3] was the inspiration for this movie and parts of the poem are read at the beginning of the film in order to introduce the audience to the doomed village.[4]
The shooting of Hitler's Madman took place in late 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 for shooting was given to Jack Greenhalgh.[1]
When the production of 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 to be distributed by MGM even though it was originally produced by another company.[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 under the command of Reinhard Heydrich who rules the country with an iron fist, arbitrarily arresting innocents and charging them with fictitious crimes. When Heydrich dies from wounds received in a roadside attack, SS chief Heinrich 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
- Patricia Morison as Jarmilla Hanka
- John Carradine as Reinhard Heydrich
- Alan Curtis as Karel Vavra
- Howard Freeman as Heinrich Himmler
- Ralph Morgan as Jan Hanka based on Jan Kubiš
- Edgar Kennedy as Nepomuk
- Ludwig Stössel as Herman Bauer
- Al Shean as Father Cemlanek
- Elizabeth Russell as Maria Bartonek
- Jimmy Conlin as Dvorak
- Louis V. Arco (uncredited) as German Sergeant
- Richard Ryen (uncredited) as Gestapo
- Ava Gardner (uncredited) as Franciska Pritric
See also
Other films on the same subject:
- Hangmen Also Die! (1943)
- The Silent Village (1943)
- Atentát (1964)
- Operation Daybreak (1975)
- Lidice (2011) (aka Fall of the Innocent in the UK; aka Butcher of Prague in US)
- Anthropoid (2016)
- The Man with the Iron Heart (2016)
Notes
- Hitler's Madman Archived 2010-11-14 at the Wayback Machine, Turner Classic Movies page
- Hitler's Madman, TCM overview page
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3193672-the-murder-of-lidice
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036005/?ref_=tttr_tr_tt
External links
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