Line #28 Film/TheManWithTheIronHeart


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hhhh.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:300:''"You know what the Führer calls him? The Man with the Iron Heart."'']]
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4	''The Man with the Iron Heart'' (French title ''[=HHhH=]'') is a French historical war thriller and drama released in 2017, directed and written by Cédric Jimenez, and also written by David Farr and Audrey Diwan. It is [[TheFilmOfTheBook based on French writer Laurent Binet's novel]] ''[=HHhH=]'' and focuses on UsefulNotes/ReinhardHeydrich, his rise as one of the most influent and sinister leading figures of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany and his assassination in German-Occupied [[UsefulNotes/CzechRepublic Prague]] during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII by a British-trained Czechoslovak commando.
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6	The film's and novel's French title, ''[=HHhH=]'', is an acronym that means "Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich" ("Himmler's brain is called Heydrich"), a joke said to have circulated in Germany at the time.
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8	The film stars Creator/JasonClarke as Reinhard Heydrich, Creator/RosamundPike as Lina Heydrich, Creator/JackOConnell as Jan Kubiš, Jack Reynor as Jozef Gabčík, Creator/MiaWasikowska as Anna Novak and Creator/StephenGraham as UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler. It was shot in Prague and Budapest from September 2015 until February 2016.
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10	See also and compare ''Film/HangmenAlsoDie'' (1943), ''Film/HitlersMadman'' (1943), ''Film/{{Atentat}}'' (1964), ''Film/OperationDaybreak'' (1975) and ''Film/{{Anthropoid}}'' (2016), all about the same historical events. The latter [[DuelingWorks was shot at the same time and released a few months prior to it]] and only covers the operation and aftermath from the point of view of the Czechoslovak commando.
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12	Not to be confused with [[Literature/TheManWithTheIronHeart the Harry Turtledove novel]]. Both works share Heydrich's moniker as title, but the novel is AlternateHistory fiction while the film follows historical events.
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14	!! This movie contains examples of:
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16	* ArtisticLicenceHistory:
17	** Heinrich Mueller is presented as a Nazi Party member who joined Heydrich's intelligence agency under Hitler's direct orders. Mueller didn't actually join the party until 1939 and was [[MyCountryRightOrWrong blindly obedient to the state]] instead, suppressing communist movements while also urging the Bavarian government to retaliate against the Nazis before they seized power. Heydrich mainly recruited Mueller because the latter's actions had made him politically vulnerable (and thus, dependent on Heydrich's patronage) and because he saw an advantage to keeping the SS independent of the party.
18	** While the climaxes of ''Atentát'' (1964), ''Film/OperationDaybreak'' (1975) and ''Film/{{Anthropoid}}'' (2016) were filmed at the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ss._Cyril_and_Methodius_Cathedral Orthodox church]] where the LastStand of Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš happened, the climax of ''The Man with the Iron Heart'' has been filmed at a different church, and a Catholic one in [[invoked]][[CaliforniaDoubling Budapest]] at that.
19	** German soldiers being killed during the LastStand at the church, with automatic weapons. The commando had only pistols when the assault happened, and the German force sent to catch/kill them only suffered five lightly wounded.
20	** The village of Lidice wasn't just burned down by the Germans as reprisals for the death of Heydrich like it is in the film. That village was ''razed to the ground'', erased from existence. Roads leading to it were diverted, the ground was levelled and the cemetery was emptied of its dead and looted.
21	* AssassinationAttempt: A reenactment of the most famous assassination attempt of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII (with perhaps the exception of the July 20, 1944 plot against UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, although Anthropoid was successful, if costly in lives).
22	* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: Every resistance member who doesn't get killed by Germans in the aftermath of the attack dies with either a CyanidePill or a [[BoomHeadshot self-shot bullet in the head]].
23	* {{Biopic}}: Starts like one about Heydrich's life up until he is appointed Reichsprotektor of Bohemia-Moravia mid-way through the movie, then the movie focuses on the Czechoslovak resistants. Then focuses on Heydrich again as he is dying.
24	* {{Blackmail}}: Heydrich uses a general's weakness for prostitutes to blackmail him.
25	* BritishNazis: British actors Rosamund Pike and Stephen Graham as Lina Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler.
26	* CoffinContraband: How Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík are supposed to be smuggled out of Prague after the assassination. Unfortunately, they are sold out by a {{Turncoat}} and the church they're hiding in is quickly besieged.
27	* DownerEnding: Heydrich dies, but so do pretty much every Czechoslovak character involved in the operation bar [[spoiler:Anna]]. And about 5000 Czech people were murdered in reprisals, with the village of Lidice practically wiped from the map most notably. And it was all TruthInTelevision.
28	* EverybodyDiesEnding: Nearly every member of the Czech resistance involved in the plot dies in the aftermath of Heydrich's assassination. A ForegoneConclusion, given that the film is about historical events.
29	* FromNobodyToNightmare:
30	** Heydrich, who goes from a young officer who gets fired from the German navy because of a sex scandal to one of the brains behind the industrial murder machine that was UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust.
31	** Same about Heinrich Himmler, who goes from chicken breeder to the head of the SS.
32	* TheGhost: UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler is mentioned a lot, and a speech of his is heard over the film's opening scene, but he doesn't show up in person. There's one scene where it appears that Heydrich is addressing Hitler directly, but it's set up from Hitler's point of view.
33	* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Reinhard Heydrich, obviously. Then also a lot of people gravitating around the events, from Heydrich's wife Lina to UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler and the Czechoslovak resistants who carried out the attack, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík most notably. Unlike ''Film/{{Anthropoid}}'' however, a number of resistants' names are fictional outside of Kubiš and Gabčík.
34	* HowWeGotHere: The film opens on the day of the attack on Heydrich, 27 May 1942. Then it cuts right at the moment Heydrich's car is attacked and we're back in 1929 to follow Heydrich's life.
35	* IfWeGetThroughThis: Kubiš and Gabčík dream to settle in America, provided they escape the Germans after the attack.
36	* IndustrializedEvil: Heydrich creates the Einsatzgruppen in 1941 in order to "cleanse" Eastern Europe of its Jews in the wake of the Wehrmacht, effectively industrializing murder. Then he proposes plans for the FinalSolution at the infamous Wannsee conference.
37	* JurisdictionFriction: Heydrich experiences resistance from at least one Wehrmacht general, who refuses to share information with the SS to apprise them of the army's movements. Heydrich resorts to blackmailing the man.
38	* LastStand: After the Germans discover the church where they're hiding, the last seven plotters hold off a vastly larger, vastly better-equipped German force for quite a while (in RealLife they did so for six hours), killing a number of them in the process. Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš end up the last two left alive, and they decide to [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled shoot themselves in the head]].
39	* MenDontCry: What Lina tells to Heydrich when he's desperate after being fired from the navy because of a sex scandal.
40	* NaziProtagonist: Obviously the case for the parts that focus on Heydrich's life. Most notably, it was his wife Lina who "converted" him to national-socialism.
41	* ThePurge: Heydrich is seen participating in the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, in which UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler had several leaders of the Sturmabteilung (SA, the Nazi party's brown-shirted core enforcers and militants) killed as [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness they were no longer needed]] and represented a potential threat to his power.
42	* RedBaron: Heinrich Himmler nicknames Heydrich "The Man with the Iron Heart" (which functions as a TitleDrop in the countries where the film has been released with that title).
43	* LaResistance: Operation Anthropoid aimed at "waking up" the Czech resistance to Nazi Germany.
44	* SceneryPorn: The snowy mountains where Kubiš Gabčík are parachuted.
45	* ScreamingBirth: Lina screams in pain while giving birth.
46	* StateSec: Heydrich proves himself ''very'' efficient at gathering intel and cleansing opposition to the nazi regime once he joins the SS and climbs the ranks in it in the early 1930s.
47	* ThoseWackyNazis: The movie naturally averts the trope since it's based on history, but there's still a little shade of it when Himmler makes a Nazi salute and grins out of respect for an (in his eyes) irreplaceable national-socialist peer as Heydrich passes away.
48	* TitleDrop: At one point, Himmler is talking with Lina and mentions the nickname Hitler gave to Heydrich, "The Man with the Iron Heart".
49	* VillainProtagonist: Heydrich's rise to power and subsequent crimes drive the plot forward.
50	* WickedCultured: As in real life, Heydrich practices fencing and plays violin.

Context Film / TheManWithTheIronHeart