The Seventh Cross

The Seventh Cross is a 1944 film starring Spencer Tracy, Hume Cronyn, Ray Collins and Jessica Tandy. Cronyn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. It was the first film in which Cronyn and Tandy, who were married, appeared together. This was among the first feature films directed by Fred Zinnemann, later noted for films such as High Noon. The movie was adapted from the novel of the same name by the German refugee writer Anna Seghers. Produced in the midst of the Second World War and released on 24 July 1944, it was one of the few films of the era to deal with the... existence of Nazi concentration camps. The year is 1936. The film is narrated by Wallau .Seven prisoners escape from the fictitious Westhofen concentration camp near Worms, Germany near the Rhine. They represent a cross-section of German society: a writer, a circus performer, a schoolmaster, a farmer, a Jewish grocery clerk, and two prisoners who are apparently political activists. One is George Heisler and the other his mentor Wallau , the leader of the group. The camp commandant erects a row of seven crosses and vows to "put a man on each.
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