Man Hunt | |
---|---|
Directed by | Fritz Lang |
Written by | Dudley Nichols Lamar Trotti |
Based on | Rogue Male 1939 novel by Geoffrey Household |
Produced by | Kenneth Macgowan Darryl F. Zanuck |
Starring | Walter Pidgeon Joan Bennett George Sanders |
Cinematography | Arthur C. Miller |
Edited by | Allen McNeil |
Music by | Alfred Newman |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Twentieth Century-Fox |
Release date |
|
Running time | 105 minutes |
Country | United States |
Languages | English German |
Man Hunt is a 1941 American political thriller film, directed by Fritz Lang and starring Walter Pidgeon and Joan Bennett.[1][2] It is based on the 1939 novel Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household and is set in Europe just prior to the Second World War. Lang had fled Germany into exile in 1933 and this was the first of his four anti-Nazi films, which include Ministry of Fear, Hangmen Also Die!, and Cloak and Dagger. It was Roddy McDowall's first Hollywood film after escaping London following the Blitz.[3] Man Hunt was one of many films released in 1941 that were considered so pro-British that they influenced neutral members of the U.S. public to sympathize with the British side in World War II.[4]
The film portrays Britain's pre-war policy of appeasement with Germany in its willingness to extradite one of its own citizens without any defense, and its depiction of Nazi agents freely walking about London, impersonating police, and terrorizing civilians.
The story was filmed again under its original title, Rogue Male (1976), by the BBC in a version starring Peter O'Toole.