Monday | April 1, 2002 9:30 pm

Man Hunt

Screening on Film

Directed by Fritz Lang .
With Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders.
US , 1941, 35mm, black & white, 105 min.

An adaptation of Geoffrey Household’s bestseller Rogue Male, Lang’s Man Hunt was among the director’s first anti-Nazi endeavors and a clear wake-up call for a still isolationist America. The story concerns an English sportsman (Pidgeon) who stalks Hitler, not quite certain whether he really intends to shoot the F¸hrer. Captured and tortured by the Nazis, he escapes and is pursued by German agents back to England. Lang builds the tension slowly and inexorably as the hunter becomes the hunted—a hero trapped in his own isolation, his only ally and source of solace a Cockney prostitute (Bennett). Despite a limited budget, the movie is a triumph of mise-en-scène.