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Poster for Shake Hands with the Devil
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Released
1959 · FILM

Shake Hands with the Devil

A story of love and hate...and the sudden sound of guns!

ActionDramaHistory

Synopsis

In 1921 Dublin, the IRA battles the "Black & Tans," special British forces given to harsh measures. Irish-American medical student Kerry O'Shea hopes to stay aloof, but saving a wounded friend gets him outlawed, and inexorably drawn into the rebel organization by his former professor Sean Lenihan, who has "shaken hands with the devil" and begun to think of fighting as an end in itself. Complications arise when Kerry falls for a beautiful English hostage, and the British offer a peace treaty that is not enough to satisfy Lenihan.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 20

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Gordon PilkingtonShot by Erwin HillierScored by William Alwyn

Also known as

  • Ein Händedruck des Teufelsde
  • Luces de rebeldíaes
  • L'Épopée dans l'ombrefr
  • Il fronte della violenzait

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