Cillian Murphy in Anthropoid (2016)
Vitals
Cillian Murphy as Jozef Gabčík, Czechoslovak Army soldier and SOE agent
Prague, Spring 1942
Film: Anthropoid
Release Date: September 9, 2016
Director: Sean Ellis
Costume Designer: Josef Cechota
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
This week in 1942, one of the most evil officials of the Third Reich (and that’s saying something!) finally succumbed to injuries received after he was ambushed by two Czechoslovak Army soldiers operating on behalf of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
The SOE had collaborated with Czechoslovak intelligence to plan “Operation Anthropoid”—the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi security chief who helped organize Kristallnacht and was considered a principal architect of the Holocaust. As Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich’s brutality earned him nicknames like the “Butcher of Prague”, making him a strategic target for the exiled Czechoslovak government. From among nearly 2,000 Czechoslovak Army personnel now exiled to England, Czechoslovak intelligence chief František Moravec selected two dozen—including paratroopers Jozef Gabčík, Jan Kubiš, and Karel Svoboda—to be trained by the SOE in Scotland for the dangerous mission to remove Heydrich. The two principal assassins would be Gabčík and Kubiš, the latter replacing Svoboda after he was decommissioned by a head injury during training.
“They were first-class soldiers, deeply patriotic and expert in the handling of guns and explosives,” writes Callum MacDonald in The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. “Their courage and patriotism had been proved to the full in France, where they were amongst the last to retreat when the Czech Division fell back from the Marne. Although aware of the difficulties and dangers of underground work, both men immediately volunteered when interviewed by a member of Moravec’s staff.”
The real Jan Kubiš (1913-1942) and Jozef Gabčík (1912-1942) in their Czechoslovak Army uniforms in late 1941, around the time they were selected and trained for Operation Anthropoid.
Months after they arrived in Prague and worked within their local resistance network, Gabčík and Kubiš carried out their plan on the morning of Wednesday, May 27, 1942, intercepting Heydrich’s open-top Mercedes 320 Cabriolet B in Prague’s Libeň district as he was being chauffeured from his home to headquarters at Prague Castle.
Gabčík made the first move, dropping his raincoat to reveal a Sten gun… but the gun jammed, giving Heydrich the opportunity to realize what was happening and draw his own Luger. Heydrich’s choice to fight rather than flee actually gave Gabčík’s fellow operative Kubiš the opportunity to carry out his own part of the attack, throwing an anti-tank grenade that severely wounded Heydrich when it exploded against the Mercedes’ rear left wheel, damaging several of Heydrich’s organs and thrusting some of the car’s upholstery into him—with some later theorizing that the horsehair in his upholstery caused an infection that sped up his death. During the subsequent gunfight, Gabčík also wounded badly wounded Heydrich’s driver, SS-Oberscharführer Johannes Klein. Without realizing how effectively they realized their objective, Gabčík and Kubiš reached a safe house that would be the first of several stops as the pair sought escape from the Nazi dragnet.
Incensed over the attack about the brutal ally he considered “the man with the iron heart”, Hitler immediately ordered reprisals against the region that included an estimated 13,000 arrests and 5,000 murders—reduced from Hitler’s intended 10,000 deaths as fellow monster Himmler advised him that such drastic measures may impact productivity in this area of industrial significance.
The badly wounded Heydrich languished under the care of SS physicians for more than a week, finally dying of sepsis in the early morning hours of June 4, 1942. Six days later, the Nazis continued their brutal reprisals with their complete destruction of the village of Lidice that included the execution of any male residents over the age of 15 while the remaining women and children were sent to concentration camps.
Czechoslovak resistance leaders had feared that the Nazis would respond in kind, but this degree of brutality was unforeseen and made it difficult for Gabčík and Kubiš to rely on shelter from an increasingly nervous populace. On June 18, the deadline issued by the Nazis to arrest the gunmen or more blood would be spilled, a tip from Karel Čurda led the Waffen-SS to Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral, where Gabčík and Kubiš and their five fellow operatives held off an hours-long attack from over 750 SS soldiers, refusing to be taken alive and reportedly killing 14 Germans while wounding 21 others. All seven men died in the church during the siege, including Gabčík and four cohorts who took their own lives in the church crypt.
Sean Ellis’ fact-based account of the assassination and its aftermath, Anthropoid, premiered on July 1, 2016 during the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic, widely released in the United States the following month. Appropriate for such a Czech story, Anthropoid had been filmed entirely in Prague, with Ellis striving for exact accuracy in representing the real-time movements of all involved in the original locations or painstakingly replicated sets.
Anthropoid depicts Josef Gabčík (Cillian Murphy) stepping out in front of Heydrich’s open Mercedes driven by Klein, pulling the Sten submachine gun from under his coat as he did in real life.
Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan portrayed Gabčík and Kubiš, respectively, with the cool-headed and taciturn Jozef Gabčík depicted as the group’s ostensible leader. When one of the women providing refuge before the operation correctly guesses the nature of their mission, Gabčík corrects her suggestion that the two plan to murder the Nazi official: “No, no, no, assassinate Heydrich. ‘Murder’ implies he has a life worth living.”
What’d He Wear?
Costume designer Josef Cechota rotates Cillian Murphy’s Jozef Gabčík through a wardrobe of brown suits, occasionally wearing all three matching pieces but often also mixing them as he does with the striped waistcoat and trousers and solid-colored jacket for the morning of May 27, 1942. The cut and cloth represent fine period-correct attire, aligned more with the accuracy of Eastern European tailoring during World War II rather than a modern translation of it.
Gabčík and Kubiš finalize their preparations while anticipating Heydrich’s Mercedes, including Gabčík assembling his Sten gun under his coat without looking. Though the weapon would eventually fail to fire at the precise moment of attack, this was likely not a result of Gabčík’s skillful assembly but more one of the many failure-to-feed issues cited by resistance members of British-made weapons like the portable but unreliable Sten.
Callum MacDonald writes in The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich that Gabčík and Kubiš “wore caps to conceal the colour of their hair and, despite the fine weather, Gabčík carried a light-coloured raincoat borrowed from a neighbour,” though Anthropoid keeps its stars Murphy and Dornan hatless for the attack.
Anthropoid also doesn’t go into the provenance of Gabčík’s beige gabardine cotton raincoat, but the fact that he wears it throughout their time in Prague suggests more than it’s meant to be his own coat rather than a borrowed one. The coat provides tactical significance on the morning of May 27th, covering the Sten submachine gun that Gabčík plans to use for the attack—both while he assembles the weapon while awaiting the car and again to keep it concealed until the moment of the ambush.
The knee-length coat follows typical raincoat design with an ulster-style collar, long single vent, and raglan sleeves that ease pulling the coat on over tailored layers like his suit jackets. The covered front fly covers the four light-brown mixed plastic buttons, matching the single button that closes the short rectangular semi-tab positioned high on each cuff. The coat also has straight set-in hip pockets, each covered with a flap.
Gabčík orphans the single-breasted suit jacket from one of his suits, made from a brown mini-checked flannel wool. The cut follows the rest of his tailored-wear, with then-fashionable short and wide peak lapels that end high over the three-button closure that he keeps open. The ventless jacket has straight shoulders out to the roped sleeveheads, and each sleeve is finished with three-button cuffs. The jacket also features straight jetted hip pockets and a welted breast pocket.
Gabčík keeps his raincoat draped over his right shoulder to conceal his Sten gun as he steps out into the street ahead of Heydrich’s Mercedes.
Gabčík wears the matching waistcoat (vest) and trousers from another of his brown suits, this one a cooler-toned dark chocolate brown with a distinctive stripe pattern alternating between a narrow pinstripe and a bolder chalk-stripe.
Leaving the matching peak-lapel suit jacket at the safe house, Gabčík wears the high-fastening six-button waistcoat which has a brown satin-finished back, notched bottom, and asymmetrical three-pocket layout of a single low-positioned welted pocket on the right side opposite a welted breast pocket and lower welted pocket on the left.
Cillian Murphy on the Anthropoid set in Prague during the summer of 2015, in costume but with a stylish pair of his personal Ray-Ban sunglasses added.
The double-reverse pleated trouser rise appropriately high enough to keep the waistband correctly covered under his matching waistcoat. Though we can’t see it in these scenes, he likely keeps the trousers up with his usual suspenders (braces), the traditional preference for holding up trousers with a three-piece suit to avoid the bulge of a belt buckle under the waistcoat.
In addition to the straight side pockets, the only back pocket is set-in on the right side and covered by a scalloped flap that closes through a single button. The bottoms are finished with turn-ups (cuffs).
Note the suit’s matching jacket draped over the back of a chair.
Gabčík’s pale-beige shirt presents a softer, more coordinated contrast against the brown suit than if he was wearing a stark white shirt. The shirt also has white track-stripes, consisting of a narrow white stripe bordered by a narrower hairline-width stripe on each side. Especially along the large point collar, these stripes attract a degree of crimping that implies he attempts he keep the collar pressed and presentable.
Although he always wears a tie, in this case a maroon knit tie fastened in a Windsor knot, Gabčík always keeps the top button of his shirt undone and his tie loosened. The shirt also has button cuffs and probably a front placket like his other shirts.
Gabčík wears brown leather derby-laced plain-toe boots that cover his ankles.
Though behind-the-scenes photos (as seen above) more clearly show the open-lacing of derby-style boots, the motion and angle of the boots seen on screen as Gabčík walks to the assassination site on the morning of May 27th makes them look more like closed-laced oxford boots.
Anthropoid provides great close-ups of both men’s wristwatches, but—while we clearly see Kubiš wears an early 1950s Swiss-made Doxa—the maker of Gabčík’s dress watch is less clear. Fastened to a black edge-stitched leather strap, the stainless steel case encircles a plain beige dial, with the Arabic numeral hour indices printed outside an outer ring.
By Gabčík’s watch, it’s a few minutes past eight as he scribbles plans for the assassination.
The Guns
As in real life, the SOE operatives are issued Sten submachine guns for the assassination of Heydrich, with Gabčík expertly preparing his Sten Mk II under the folds of his raincoat while waiting for the German to appear.
“Gabčík knelt down, opened his briefcase, and put the Sten together under cover of his coat,” writes Callum MacDonald. “He did not have to see what he was doing. Assembling guns blindfold was a standard part of weapons training, a drill he had taught many times to the soldiers of the Czech Brigade.”
The Sten gun emerged early during World War II, when England was defending its homeland during the Battle of Britain. Needing to replace many weapons lost during the Dunkirk evacuation and unable to cover the cost for the expensive Thompson submachine gun, RSAF Enfield was commissioned with developing an alternative. Major Reginald V. Shepherd, OBE, and Harold J. Turpin are credited with designing the resulting Sten gun, a simplified version of the Lancaster submachine gun, which the English had essentially copied from the German MP 28. All three of these are blowback-operated, open-bolt submachine guns, visually characterized by their side-loading magazines that feed 9×19 mm Parabellum rounds.
At an average cost of $11 per weapon (compared to $70 for the M1 Thompson), Sten guns met the requirements for mass production with a low production cost and relatively simple design, though this resulted in many reliability issues like the failure-to-feed malfunction that Gabčík faced at the critical moment when stepping in front of Heydrich’s Mercedes-Benz with his Sten Mk II at the ready.
Gabčík’s Sten fails him.
Luckily for our Czech heroes, part of the plan involved Kubiš throwing his briefcase-concealed anti-tank grenade… which he had enough time to launch at the Mercedes-Benz when Heydrich demanded his driver Klein halt rather than flee the scene. The blast has been credited with the mortal wounds that eventually killed Heydrich just over a week later, though he’s depicted with enough energy to still draw his 7.65mm Walther PP and trade shots with the assassins.
Both Gabčík and Kubiš are armed with the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless semi-automatic pistol, as they had been in real life and continued to carry with them until they were fatally cornered among their comrades at the Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral three weeks later.
Gabčík’s Colt would never fail him.
The blowback-operated Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless was one of the earliest successful semi-automatic pistols, introduced by Colt in 1903 (go figure!) The Colt Model 1903 was first chambered for .32 ACP (7.65×17 mm) before a .380 ACP (9×17 mm) variant was introduced five years later, fed from magazines loaded with up to eight and seven rounds, respectively.
The “Hammerless” nomenclature actually referred to the fact that the slide extended rearward to totally shroud the very-existent hammer, allowing the pistol to be smoothly drawn from pockets without the possibility of an external hammer snagging on clothing. This degree of easy concealment as well as Colt’s well-earned reputation for reliability made the Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless a favorite for everyone from cops, crooks, and civilians to soldiers and spies.
Gabčík loads a magazine into his Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless. Note the checked walnut grip panels rather than the black checked hard rubber found on older models (like mine, which was produced in 1917.)
How to Get the Look
Cillian Murphy on set of Anthropoid (2016) in Prague.
Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of Jozef Gabčík pulls from a wardrobe of primarily brown suits, which he mixes pieces from to wear a matching striped waistcoat and trousers with his solid suit jacket and tactically informed raincoat during the fateful morning of May 27, 1942.
- Beige (with white track-stripes) cotton shirt with point collar, front placket, and button cuffs
- Maroon knit tie
- Brown mini-check flannel single-breasted 3-button suit jacket with short, wide peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
- Brown alternating-striped wool single-breasted 6-button suit waistcoat with three welted pockets, notched bottom, and mid-brown satin-finished back lining
- Brown alternating-striped wool double reverse-pleated long-rise suit trousers with side pockets, set-in back-right pocket (with single-button scalloped flap), and turn-ups/cuffs
- Brown calfskin leather plain-toe derby-laced ankle boots
- Beige cotton gabardine knee-length raincoat with ulster-style collar, 4-button covered fly front, straight flapped hip pockets, raglan sleeves with single-button half-tab cuffs, and long single vent
- Stainless steel dress watch with light beige dial (with Arabic numeral hour indices outside outer ring) on black edge-stitched leather strap
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The post Anthropoid: Cillian Murphy’s Brown Striped Suit and Raincoat as Jozef Gabčík appeared first on BAMF Style.