The Seventh Cross (film)

Plot

The year is 1936. Seven prisoners escape from the fictitious Westhofen concentration camp near the Rhine. The escapes consist of a writer, a circus performer, a schoolmaster, a farmer, a Jewish grocery clerk, George Heisler (Spencer Tracy) and his friend Wallau (Ray Collins).

The camp commandant erects a row of seven crosses and vows to "put a man on each." The first to be apprehended is Wallau, who dies without giving up any information yet continues to narrate the film. With the dead Wallau narrating, the film follows Heisler as he makes his way across the German countryside, steals a jacket to cover his prison garb, and watches as the Nazis round up other escaped prisoners, where they are returned to the camp and hung on crosses, suspended by their arms tied behind their backs. Through it all, the local population seems largely indifferent.

Heisler first makes his way to his home city of Mainz where his former girl friend, Leni (Kaaren Verne), had promised to wait for him. But she has since married and refuses to help. He is given a suit of clothes by Mme. Marelli (Agnes Moorehead), and nearby one of his fellow escapees, the acrobat, leaps to death to avoid being captured. With his options running out, he goes to an old friend, Paul Roeder (Hume Cronyn). Though Roeder is a factory worker with a wife (Jessica Tandy), and young children, he still risks all to help Heisler.

Roeder gets in touch with the German underground, whose members risk their lives to get Heisler out of the country. Through his exposure to this courage and kindness, and with the help toward the end of a sympathetic waitress (Signe Hasso), Heisler regains his faith in humanity. He escapes via boat to an unknown destination that he identifies as "probably Holland."

Production

Anna Seghers, the author of the novel from which this movie was adapted, was a Communist, and Wallau and Heisler were Communists in the book. In the film, their political affiliation is not given. Refugees from Nazi Germany played many small roles, with the small uncredited bit part of a janitor played by Helene Weigel, the prominent German actress and wife of Bertolt Brecht.

MGM publicity played up the fleeting romantic element between Tracy's character and that of the Swedish actress, Signe Hasso, with the tagline: "The revealing novel of a hunted man's search for love!"

Box office

According to MGM records the film earned $2,082,000 in the US and Canada and $1,489,000 elsewhere resulting in a profit of $1,021,000.