MAN HUNT (1941)

After immigrating to the U.S. in 1934,  Austrian director Fritz Lang got his first shot at one of his specialties, the spy thriller, when John Ford turned down this suspense film. Walter Pidgeon stars as a big game hunter whose failed attempt to hunt and kill Hitler puts him on the run. Back in his native London, he finds a city overrun with Nazi spies. That section draws on Lang’s background in Expressionism as he makes the city a place of dark shadows and lurking threats, anticipating the rise of film noir. It also features the film’s best-remembered performance with Joan Bennett as a Cockney streetwalker (though censors tried to make her a seamstress). She surprised critics and fans with her impressive range. MAN HUNT marked the start of her fruitful four-film collaboration with Lang that would include The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945).

d. Fritz Lang, 103m, DCP

DCP courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.