***SPOILERS*** Tense drama with a number-7-of prisoners escaping from a Nazi concentration camp circa 1936 who are being tracked down by the Gestapo and when captured crucified for their "crimes" against the state. One of them the saintly George Heister, Spencer Tracy, goes through the ringer in what he's confronted with in finding among his friends on the outside world who was willing to help him and, if arrested, suffer the consequences. As the film progresses George finds out just who his friends are by them willing to risk their lives and safety of themselves and their families in getting him out of the country before the Gestapo gets their hands on him.
It's a tough grind for George with almost all those who try to help him end up getting arrested and sent to the local Nazi concentration camp in many cases being both beaten and executed. But as for George, who ends up with a nasty cut on his right hand, he if anything else learns that standing up, or in his case running away, to the Nazis is far better then giving into them and makes one, dead or alive, a much better person. All this running and hiding and in one case having the love of his life Leni, Karren Verne,who besides finding out that she's already married kicking him out of her house, she had since become a fanatical Nazi, and threatens to call the police on him soon starts to get to George. George finally gets help from his friend factory worker Paul Roder, Hume Cronyn, who after finding out he's an escapee from a concentration camp does everything to help him get legal papers and a passport, from the local anti-Nazi movement, to ship him out of Nazi Germany. This has Paul being ratted on by his landlady who after being arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo is let loose in telling and convincing them that he knows absolutely nothing.
***SPOILERS**** Hold up in a local bed & breakfast in the port city of Mainz George uses his boyhood charms as well as inner and heart felt, women always go for that, hurt feelings in being hunted down like an animal by the Gestapo to get the maid Toni, Signe Hasso, to help him out in his plight. It was Toni who at first, before she got to really know him better, was about to turn him over to the police for a 5,000 mark reward. Beside escaping from a Nazi concentration camp what was the reason he was there in the first place for the Nazis to offer that much money or marks to have him captured? The movie never tells us why! George finally makes his escape from Nazi Germany via a Dutch freighter in the dead of night to start a new life in free Holland. That's until four years later-May 1940-when the German Army occupied it.
P.S Based on Anna Segnes best selling novel of the same name-"The Seventh Cross"-that was to to later inspire Hans Werner Henz's 9th Symphony.
It's a tough grind for George with almost all those who try to help him end up getting arrested and sent to the local Nazi concentration camp in many cases being both beaten and executed. But as for George, who ends up with a nasty cut on his right hand, he if anything else learns that standing up, or in his case running away, to the Nazis is far better then giving into them and makes one, dead or alive, a much better person. All this running and hiding and in one case having the love of his life Leni, Karren Verne,who besides finding out that she's already married kicking him out of her house, she had since become a fanatical Nazi, and threatens to call the police on him soon starts to get to George. George finally gets help from his friend factory worker Paul Roder, Hume Cronyn, who after finding out he's an escapee from a concentration camp does everything to help him get legal papers and a passport, from the local anti-Nazi movement, to ship him out of Nazi Germany. This has Paul being ratted on by his landlady who after being arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo is let loose in telling and convincing them that he knows absolutely nothing.
***SPOILERS**** Hold up in a local bed & breakfast in the port city of Mainz George uses his boyhood charms as well as inner and heart felt, women always go for that, hurt feelings in being hunted down like an animal by the Gestapo to get the maid Toni, Signe Hasso, to help him out in his plight. It was Toni who at first, before she got to really know him better, was about to turn him over to the police for a 5,000 mark reward. Beside escaping from a Nazi concentration camp what was the reason he was there in the first place for the Nazis to offer that much money or marks to have him captured? The movie never tells us why! George finally makes his escape from Nazi Germany via a Dutch freighter in the dead of night to start a new life in free Holland. That's until four years later-May 1940-when the German Army occupied it.
P.S Based on Anna Segnes best selling novel of the same name-"The Seventh Cross"-that was to to later inspire Hans Werner Henz's 9th Symphony.