Lang collaborated with Bertolt Brecht on this fictionalized account of the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Reichsprotektor of occupied Czechoslovakia whose brutal rule earned him the nickname "Hitler's Hangman." Brian Donlevy as the fugitive assassin is one of several characters who struggle for survival after Heydrich's death, as the Gestapo mounts an increasingly vicious campaign of terror. Brecht's contribution is apparent in the film's emphasis on the solidarity of the Czech people and in the vehemently antifascist dialogue-although Communist catchwords like "masses" and "comrades" were expunged from the script: after all, this was Hollywood. Meanwhile, composer Hanns Eisler managed to smuggle the tune of the 1929 "Comintern Song" into his score, which was nominated for an Oscar by an unsuspecting Academy. But Lang's preoccupations with the psychology of guilt and justice and his aggressive visual style complicate the film's political agenda. The ominous shadows of James Wong Howe's cinematography create a creeping paranoia. And the denouement, in which a betrayer is in turn betrayed, introduces a queasy moral ambiguity to the otherwise ennobling story of loyalty and resistance.-Juliet Clark