HITLER'S MADMAN (1943) B/W 85m dir: Douglas Sirk

w/John Carradine, Patricia Morison, Alan Curtis, Ralph Morgan, Howard Freeman, Ludwig Stossel, Edgar Kennedy, Jimmy Conlon, Blanche Yurka, Jorja Rollins, Al Shean, Elizabeth Russell, Victor Kilian, Johanna Hofer, Wolfgang Zilzer, Tully Marshall, Ava Gardner

After emigrating from Germany (and a successful stage and screen directing career there), Douglas Sirk shot his first American film in about a week with incomparable visual style. The narrative of the determined Czech resistance to the barbarities of Reinhard Heydrich is compelling.

From the Turner Classic Movies website, www.tcm.com, this article about the film by Lang Thompson: "When Douglas Sirk left Germany shortly after the Nazis came to power, he was one of that country's better-known directors, having made several well-received films with top stars. He arrived in the U.S. late in 1937 and because he was an unknown talent in Hollywood, he had to rebuild his career from the ground up, writing screenplays for Columbia and making low-budget films for small studios. A good example of the latter is his first American movie, Hitler's Madman (1943). A fascinating factual drama, it not only succeeds as a superior B-movie but also shows how Sirk could exploit a low budget to his advantage.

"Hitler's Madman is the story of determined Czech resistance fighters trying to free their country from Nazi occupation. During an assassination attempt they succeed in fatally wounding the region's governor, Reinhardt Heydrich (portrayed by John Carradine) who was also in actuality a key Nazi leader and architect of the Final Solution. As a result of his death SS Chief Heinrich Himmler orders the Czech town of Lidice destroyed with its men murdered and the women and children sent to concentration camps. (In real life, the Nazis even killed every dog they could find in the village.)

"If nothing else, Hitler's Madman was an effective and timely reaction to the front page news headlines of its day. Heydrich's death occurred in June 1942 and the film was in theatres a year later. (Sirk claimed to have actually met Heydrich during a UFA party in the early 1930s.) There is also a key scene in the film that references a renowned American poet. Shortly after the notorious massacre in Lidice, the Writer's War Board asked Edna St. Vincent Millay for a poem about the incident. The resulting work - 'The Murder of Lidice' - appeared as a radio broadcast heard across the country on NBC's network and was sent by short-wave to Europe.

"Hitler's Madman was produced by the infamous 'Poverty Row' studio PRC with some additional independent funding from Sirk and other German expatriates. One of the producers, for instance, was Seymour Nebenzal who in Germany had produced key works by Fritz Lang (M, 1931) and Georg Wilhelm Pabst (Pandora's Box, 1929) among others. The filming of Hitler's Madman took place in the summer of 1942 and lasted a week, the usual shooting schedule for a PRC film. Sirk used key German cinematographer Eugen Schufftan to shoot the film, but since Schufftan wasn't supposed to be working in the U.S. at that time B-Western vet Jack Greenhalgh (he had made 100 films during the preceding seven years!) got the credit. Another famous German who contributed, also uncredited, was director Edgar Ulmer (Detour, 1945) who worked on the script and the art design. Sirk didn't have a high opinion of Carradine as a film actor but thought he was perfect for the role of Heydrich, stating that Carradine's theatrical style (derived from his background in Shakespearean productions) captured the way real Nazis acted. Eagle-eyed viewers can also spot a nineteen-year-old Ava Gardner in one of her earliest film appearances.

"When Hitler's Madman was finished, MGM mogul Louis Mayer saw it and liked it so much he bought it for his studio, making it one of the few, if not the first, outside films to be distributed by MGM. At Mayer's insistence, Sirk reshot material in October and November of 1942 though Sirk felt that this somewhat compromised the documentary nature of his film. Yet, despite the film's timely nature and Mayer's enthusiasm, Hitler's Madman sat on the MGM shelves until July of 1943 when it was finally released, though under a different title than planned. Originally it was called Hitler's Hangman because Heydrich had been nicknamed 'Hangman Heydrich.' However, Fritz Lang's film Hangmen Also Die, also about the Heydrich assassination, had already been released so the Sirk film was changed to Hitler's Madman to avoid confusion. (The 1976 film Operation Daybreak would also deal with the same events.)"

From Jon Halliday's book Sirk on Sirk:

"[Halliday]: How did you get assigned to Hitler's Madman --- not a Columbia picture at all?

'[Sirk]: I was approach with the project by an old friend, Rudi Joseph. Rudi's brother, Al Joseph, had been working with Emil Ludwig, ... who was a well-known German émigré, and they had a treatment on Heydrich, who had just been killed. The picture was set up entirely by a group of German émigrés: Brettauer, a man who had financed many important pictures in Germany (including M), provided the backing; and Seymour Nebenzal produced it, with Rudi Joseph.

"I was offered the picture, which was to be shot at some speed: I was given one week's shooting time. It was specifically presented to me as a very low-budget film, not even a B-feature, but a C- or D- feature. I realized that it was both a chance and a danger. It could be useful and it might launch me. Or it could stick me as a B-feature director. And when this happens to you, no matter how good you are, you can just get stuck. [Edgar G.] Ulmer, for example, I think is a v very good director, but he got stuck with B-features all his time in Hollywood.

"Now, Cahiers [du Cinema, the French film journal] have a note there saying something about how John Carradine must have been strange as Heydrich. Well, I can tell you he wasn't strange at all, because I had met Heydrich, and he and Carradine were very alike. In fact John Carradine was Heydrich.

"How on earth did you meet Heydrich?

"I met him at a party --- but I'll come back to that in a minute. ... Carradine was a stage actor and, more particularly, a Shakespearian stage actor, with a reputation of going overboard. A lot of Nazis behaved like Shakespearian actors. I did not know Heydrich well, but I had met him at a party in Berlin. It must have been one of the awful parties [German film studio] Ufa were always throwing. ... Anyway, I didn't know who the heck he was, but being a very optical man, I got a good impression of his face, and it was very interesting. The thing was that Heydrich had been in the German Navy --- and now I have to tell you something else about myself, which is that I started out at the German Naval Academy at Murwik, in North Germany. I went there when I was drafted towards the end of the First World War. I hated the idea of being a foot-soldier, and I think my father knew some people and he pulled a few strings to get me into Murwik. You can imagine what it was like in 1917-18. ... Anyway, it was better than being a foot-soldier. Heydrich had been there, too --- but I think he was younger than I was. The point was that anyone who'd been there was considered a colleague of anyone else who'd been there. He must have heard I'd been to Murwik, and so he came over to me at this party. He was in mufti, but he had the Nazi button and, as I said, he looked and behaved just like Carradine. He had the same edginess of speech. Now, Carradine was not a very good movie actor, but he was excellent for the part. He had a certain dry theatricality, which is just what I wanted. And Pat Morison is very good, too. ... Have you seen the picture?

"No, unfortunately, I haven't. What is the confusion about the title: Hitler's Madman/Hitler's Hangman?

"I think the original idea was to call it Hitler's Hangman, but this title had to be scrapped because of the [Fritz] Lang picture (Hangmen Also Die). My picture was started before the Lang went into production. I shot the film in a week, on schedule --- this must have been late summer 1942: we would never have taken on the picture if we'd known about the Lang project. Now, I had shot the film almost like a documentary, since this seemed the style best suited to the theme, and given the very limited shooting time. Louis B. Mayer saw the picture and liked it very much, and he bought it. This was the first outside picture that MGM ever bought. And on the strength of it Metro hired Seymour Nebenzal, the producer, and they wanted to hire me as well, but [Columbia studio head] Harry Cohn refused to allow it. However, when Mayer bought the film for distribution, he asked me if I would shoot some re-takes he wanted done, and for this I was given plenty of time, and the MGM facilities. But my feeling is that these re-takes detracted from the documentary character of the movie. It was an unsuccessful attempt to convert it into another kind of picture. For various reasons, the picture got stuck in Metro's ... it was lying around for a very long time, and it wasn't released until 1943, after the Lang had come out, and it was then re-titled Hitler's Madman. I remember when I was shooting the re-takes on the Metro lot a man came up to me and asked me if I was Douglas Sirk, the guy who made Hitler's Hangman. I said I was, and he said, 'My name is King Vidor, and I liked your picture very much. You know about composition and lighting, and I hope you won't let yourself get demoralized, because I think you could have a future in store if you just persevere.' I tell you this was encouragement --- and I needed it, mainly because of my situation at Columbia.

"You know, the most demoralizing thing was being prevented from working. I went to Harry Cohn and asked him to let me make a picture, but he refused. He told me to my face that because I was under contract, he was the man who would decide what --- and if --- I would do.

"I've just looked at the filmography here, and I must add in one thing, which is the name of Eugen Schufftan. I brought him in on the picture, but he wasn't allowed to work in America because of the guild, so we had to bring in [director of photography Jack] Greenhalgh who, I see here, had the credit. On Hitler's Madman it didn't matter too much, because it was a movie shot the way I told you. But on Summer Storm, my next picture, where I had Schufftan again, it did."