Fritz Lang, one of the masters of the German expressionist cinema, turns his sinister imagination and shadowy techniques to a web like take of wartime espionage. Set in Czechoslovakia during the Nazi occupation, the film depicts an Eastern Europe populated by spies, traitors and revolutionaries, a deadly funhouse of political intrigue in which every personal encounter brings with it the threat of betrayal. Much of the nightmarish quality of Hangmen Also Die is attributable to playwright Bertolt Brecht, who co-scripted the film with Lang, and legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe, who cloaks every corner in shadow and endows the film with a tangible sense of claustrophobia.