Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett in Fritz Lang's “Man Hunt” (1941) -feat. John Carradine, Roddy McDowall

Just prior to the Second World War, English big-game hunter Captain Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) infiltrates Adolph Hitler’s (Carl Ekberg) retreat Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps, and takes aim at Hitler with his high-powered rifle. A German soldier surprises him, and his bullet goes astray. Thorndike is brought to Gestapo Major Quive-Smith (George Sanders), tortured by the Gestapo, and thrown off a cliff in what will look like an accident, but he falls into a river and survives.

The next day, the Gestapo searches for Thorndike but he eludes his pursuers and boards a boat bound for Britain. An intrepid cabin boy, Vaner (Roddy McDowall), hides him while one of Quive-Smith’s men, Mr. Jones (John Carradine), boards with Thorndike’s passport.

Once he is ashore, Thorndike realizes that Jones and other Gestapo agents are following him. He appeals to a young Cockney woman, Jerry Stokes (Joan Bennett), for aid, and she helps.

Thorndike’s brother, Lord Gerald Risborough (Frederick Worlock), is an ambassador, who warns him that the German embassy is looking for him, and that England must acquiesce if Germany demands his extradition.

The next morning, Jerry accompanies Thorndike to the office of his solicitor, Saul Farnsworthy (Holmes Herbert), and tries to give her five hundred pounds. She refuses the money, and an assistant announces Quive-Smith and Jones are on their way in. Thorndike and Jerry escape to the Underground, where Thorndike is chased by Jones. After a fight, Jones is electrocuted on the third rail, and, because he still carries Thorndike’s passport, his corpse is identified as the hunter.

Realizing that the British police are now after him as well, Thorndike instructs Jerry to write to him at Lyme Regis in three weeks with any news. After a tearful farewell, Jerry returns to her apartment, where Quive-Smith is waiting.

Three weeks later, Thorndike picks up Jerry’s letter, and discovers it’ s from Quive-Smith, who has followed him. Quive-Smith hands Thorndike Jerry’s tam-o’-shanter and says that she was found dead on the street after jumping out her window. Stalling for time, Thorndike constructs a bow while Quive-Smith opens the entrance to the cave, and shoots him with the arrow from Jerry’s hat. As he dies, Quive-Smith shoots Thorndike with a pistol.

Months pass as Thorndike recuperates and Europe is thrown into war. Once he has recovered, Thorndike joins the RAF, and on a reconnaissance mission over Germany, bails out with a high-powered rifle, intent on fulfilling his purpose this time.

A 1941 American Black & White political thriller film directed by Fritz Lang, produced by Kenneth Macgowan and Darryl F. Zanuck, screenplay by Dudley Nichols and Lamar Trotti (uncredited), based on Geoffrey Household’s novel” Rogue Male” (1939), cinematography by Arthur C. Miller, starring Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders, John Carradine, Roddy McDowall, Ludwig Stössel, Heather Thatcher, Frederick Worlock, Roger Imhof, Egon Brecher, Lester Matthews, Holmes Herbert, Eily Malyon, Arno Frey, Frederick Vogeding, Wilhelm von Brincken, Cyril Delevanti, and Olaf Hytten.

Queenie Leonard, acted as Joan Bennett’s Cockney dialect coach.

It was Roddy McDowall’s first Hollywood film after escaping London following the Blitz. The part of “Vaner,” who is an adult in Geoffrey Household’s book, was specifically re-written for him. Virginia McDowall was the elder sister of Roddy McDowall.

20th Century Fox had an impressive replica of a London tube station built on stage 9 with the aid of original blueprints.

The rifle, based on a British Enfield action, was custom made and is not a standard military rifle.

Lang had fled Germany into exile in 1933 and this was the first of his four anti-Nazi films, which include “Ministry of Fear” (1944), “Hangmen Also Die!” (1943), and “Cloak and Dagger” (1946).

When this plot to kill Hitler was made, America was not part of World War II. This was the first war film to attract the attention of the Hays Office in the neutral United States. Joseph Breen was alarmed by the script, calling it a “hate film”. It was one of several films mentioned in the September 1941 Senate subcommittee hearings on Propaganda in Motion Pictures, where isolationist senators Nye, Clark and Wheeler attacked Hollywood for warmongering.The subcommittee did not reconvene again due to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December.

The story was presented on Philip Morris Playhouse July 31, 1942, starring Robert Montgomery, and filmed again under its original title, “Rogue Male” (1976), by the BBC in a version starring Peter O’Toole.

This tense, well directed, wartime thriller is a perfectly made period film from right before U.S. entered WWII that holds its own to this day, and projects certain subtle psychological overtones with an edgy historical setting. An early top-drawer Lang noir ahead of its time in the complexity of its characters, with the timeless quality of a work of pure imagination.

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