Let This Be A Lesson To Take The First Available Shot At Hitler

Amongst the movies my dad passed along to me recently were Rogue Male and Man Hunt. Both are based on a story written Geoffrey Household. Both are set in 1939, starting in Germany, then moving to England. Both involve an Englishman on the run, not only from the Germans, but from the British because he dispatched one of the Nazis. The rest is a bit different.

Man Hunt is the older film, from 1941, and stars Walter Pidgeon (who I know primarily as Dr. Morbius from Forbidden Planet) as Alan Thorndike. Rogue Male is from 1977, with Peter O'Toole playing Thorndike. Both men are captured without successfully shooting der Fuhrer, and both claim that they had no intention of shooting, that it was a 'sporting stalk'. Thorndike is apparently a very successful big game hunter (to the extent he's written books on the subject), and he was merely seeing if he could slip past the security and get close enough.

Except the O'Toole version makes this a rather feeble lie. It's already indicated Thorndike lost someone he loved to a firing squad, so it's apparent he fully intended to kill Hitler. Pidgeon's version seems more genuine in his contention of innocence. I also find it interesting that O'Toole has already been tortured as part of his interrogation by the time we hear his claim (then he's tortured some more), but Pidgeon isn't tortured until after he refuses Major Quive-Smith's (George Sanders) offer. The offer is he'll be released as soon as he signs a paper confessing he tried to kill Hitler on the orders of the British government.

The O'Toole version was a TV movie, and about 20 minutes shorter to boot, so it's a bit more spare. The conversations Thorndike has are trimmed down to largely the essentials the plot requires. The Pidgeon version has more room, so it indulges itself in a bit more good-natured humor. His Thorndike really does take the whole situation, even the part where he finds himself pursued once he makes it back to London, very well. Meeting Jerry Stokes (Joan Bennett) probably helps, as she's a very cheery - if highly mercurial - sort. Also, he's from British upper society, she's, I think the implication is she might be a lady of the evening, or at least people keep thinking she is. At any rate, she's considerably further down the economic ladder than Thorndike.

I didn't get to see how Rogue Male ended. The DVD kind of crapped out on me in the last 10 minutes. Given its tone, and when it was made, I have a hard time picturing it ending the same way Man Hunt did. As for Man Hunt, its ending was pretty strange. As I mentioned, the film had been surprisingly upbeat throughout, as if the chase was all just great fun for Thorndike. Right at the end, things get ugly, and suddenly it's all seriousness and a revelation of Thorndike's true motives, which I found dodgy. I don't buy that he had, until the moment Quive-Smith forces it out of him, been that blind to why he did what he did. I'd find it more likely he was simply tired of living in a hole in the ground and wanted this damn German (who goes marching through the woods in a clean suit and a monocle) to shut the hell up and go away.