The Seventh Cross

A wartime film set in Germany. The year is 1936. Seven men escape from a concentration camp. The camp commandant has something done. Seven trees are planted in the yard, their branches cut, each made into a cross. Every escapee caught will be tied to one. Six are caught quickly. The seventh is George Heisler. He gets to the city and looks for somewhere to hide. From there the film is a story about doors. George goes to people he used to know and the same question is at each: will this person turn me in. Some do. Some are too frightened to open the door. A woman takes him in. Then a doctor dresses a wound. Then a waiter gives him an address. Everyone who helps is an ordinary person. None of them is in the resistance and all of them are very frightened. What the narrative is interested in is not escape but a reckoning: its idea is that the question of whether people in a country can trust each other has been destroyed by the regime itself. George does not trust anyone either. He lost that in the camp and the narrative places the real change in him. The narrator is a dead escapee. One of the friends who was caught speaks to the film from outside it. The seventh cross stays empty to the end and the men in the camp see it. The source is Anna Seghers's novel; the writer was an exile who had fled Germany and the book was published while the war went on. The film was made in 1944, with the war still running. Hume Cronyn was nominated for the supporting actor Oscar for his part. This is Fred Zinnemann's first significant film at a major studio. Spencer Tracy, Signe Hasso, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy and Agnes Moorehead are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1940s Hollywood and films that build tension without speech. Who it is not for: anyone expecting realism; Germany is built on a soundstage and everyone speaks English.