Man Hunt (1941) on Netflix
Passed19411h 45mDramaRomanceThriller
British big-game hunter Alan Thorndike stalks Adolf Hitler near the Berghof with an unloaded rifle and is caught. Held by a Nazi officer who demands a confession, he must escape Germany.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.1/107,257 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes87%
Trailer
Plot summary
On July 29, 1939, Captain Alan Thorndike, a British big-game hunter, stalks Adolf Hitler near the Berghof and puts the dictator in his telescopic sight. He fires an unloaded rifle and waves; then he loads a live round, a guard spots him, and the shot goes wide. Brought before Major Quive-Smith, a fellow hunter, Thorndike calls the stalk sport, not an attempt to kill, and refuses to sign a confession that he worked for the British government. Tortured, he warns that his brother, the diplomat Lord Risborough, will ask questions, and his captors throw him off a cliff. He survives, reaches a German port, and hides aboard a Danish ship bound for London with help from Vaner, the cabin boy. In London he is spotted and takes shelter with Jerry Stokes, who helps him with money.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Man Hunt (1941)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Man Hunt was the first war film to attract the attention of the Hays Office in the neutral United States, where Joseph Breen called the script a "hate film" and ruled that the film could pass only if brutality was indicated rather than shown.
- Darryl F. Zanuck, worried about Fritz Lang's anti-Nazi enthusiasm, banned the director from the editing room, so Lang and his associate Gene Fowler Jr. secretly edited Man Hunt without Zanuck's approval.
- Man Hunt was the first of Fritz Lang's four anti-Nazi films, after he fled Germany in 1933; the others were Ministry of Fear, Hangmen Also Die! and Cloak and Dagger. It was also Roddy McDowall's first Hollywood film after he escaped London following the Blitz.
- Man Hunt was one of a group of 1941 films considered so pro-British that they swayed neutral American public opinion toward the British side in World War II.
