Man Hunt (1941)

Featured Audience Ratings

• jay n

  
  Compact well directed drama of the dawning realization of the Nazi threat in Europe. A noir before that was a popular genre. Pidgeon handles his role well, moving from the lighter tone at the start of the film to the serious one later on. Joan Bennett is a breezy delight as a… More
  Compact well directed drama of the dawning realization of the Nazi threat in Europe. A noir before that was a popular genre. Pidgeon handles his role well, moving from the lighter tone at the start of the film to the serious one later on. Joan Bennett is a breezy delight as a practitioner of the world's oldest profession. She did some of her best work in Lang films, he was a tough director but she was herself a straight shooter who had no problem giving as good as she got enabling them to work well together through four films.

• Michael G

  
  Man Hunt is an earlier American Fritz Lang film that I'm also guessing is one of his most personal. Walter Pidgeon plays a famous British big game hunter who could have easily taken out Hitler. He's captured and his escape escalates, leaving the possibility of international… More
  Man Hunt is an earlier American Fritz Lang film that I'm also guessing is one of his most personal. Walter Pidgeon plays a famous British big game hunter who could have easily taken out Hitler. He's captured and his escape escalates, leaving the possibility of international ramifications almost imminent. Walter Pidgeon plays the man on the run and George Sanders is his adversary. Both are great here as is a baby Roddy McDowell. Joan Bennett's definitely easy on the eyes but her cockney accent made me want to forcibly remove my eardrums from my goddamned head, almost driving me as nuts as the dynamic between Pidgeon and Bennett. It's Joan Bennett! You ask if you can drink her bath water, you don't talk to her like she's your sister's kid! What the hell's wrong with you!?!? Lang's direction is often eerie and noirish and was a nice precursor to the other films he'd make with Bennett, Scarlett Street and Woman in the Window.

• Stella D

  
  cool plot about a british big game hunter gunning for hitler. he's captured, escapes and is hunted back to london. george sanders, one of my favorite villains, makes a terrific nazi. bit of a soapy love story involving joan bennet but otherwise really suspenseful. one thing… More
  cool plot about a british big game hunter gunning for hitler. he's captured, escapes and is hunted back to london. george sanders, one of my favorite villains, makes a terrific nazi. bit of a soapy love story involving joan bennet but otherwise really suspenseful. one thing bothered me: our hero walter pidgeon is the only character without a british accent but i suppose a bad one might be more distracting than none

• Eric B

  
  What's most interesting about "Man Hunt" is that it's an anti-Hitler film made in <i>1941</i>. It's also fun to see a short appearance by the 12-year-old Roddy McDowall -- so young, yet he already has all the familiar mannerisms. The wide eyes, the… More
  What's most interesting about "Man Hunt" is that it's an anti-Hitler film made in <i>1941</i>. It's also fun to see a short appearance by the 12-year-old Roddy McDowall -- so young, yet he already has all the familiar mannerisms. The wide eyes, the wounded looks of concern.... The final confrontation between Thorndike and his Nazi adversary is tensely exciting, but the corny, "patriotic" denouement plays like the film was taken out of Fritz Lang's hands and given to a more commercial-minded director.

• Walter M

  
  "Man Hunt" starts with hunter Alan Thorndike(Walter Pidgeon) taking aim on a mountain ridge in July 1939 at his target which turns out to be Adolf Hitler. He loads a bullet and is about to pull the trigger when a German soldier tackles him to the ground. When tortured and… More
  "Man Hunt" starts with hunter Alan Thorndike(Walter Pidgeon) taking aim on a mountain ridge in July 1939 at his target which turns out to be Adolf Hitler. He loads a bullet and is about to pull the trigger when a German soldier tackles him to the ground. When tortured and interrogated by a Nazi officer(George Sanders, replete with monocle), he claims, evidence to the contrary, that he was just stalking his prey with no intent to actually shoot. The officer says that he will let him go free if he will just sign a confession to the attempted assasination under orders from the British government. No dice and Thorndike is left for dead but manages to survive, as the hunter becomes the hunted... "Man Hunt" is an atmospheric, provocative and entertaining thriller that centers around a bit of speculation, imagining the possibility of Hitler being stopped before the beginning of World War II and the Nazi war engines could be unleashed on an unsuspecting world. So, I guess you could say that this movie might fit in with director Fritz Lang's continuing examination of civic responsibility but on a much larger scale this time around. Of course, that's up for debate, as Thorndike wants to kill Hitler not for what he has done, but for what he will do. However, as evil as Hitler was, he was just one man and there were many more Nazis willing to do his bidding, as Thorndike finds out the hard way as he has to duck Nazi agents both home and abroad.