Too Much Inappropriate Humour

Rating: 6/10 (30 January 2017)

At the beginning of this film the narrator, Sergeant Clarence Cook, states that although there are plenty of films about World War II you don't see many about the experiences of prisoners of war. This is certainly one of the earliest war films to deal with this subject, although not the very earliest. The earliest I can think of is the British-made "The Wooden Horse" from 1950; this was to be followed by the likes of "The Colditz Story", "Bridge on the River Kwai", "Danger Within", "The Great Escape" and "King Rat". Strangely enough, "Stalag 17" was made in 1952 but not released in that year, apparently because Paramount believed that audiences would not be interested in its subject-matter. They changed their minds the following year because the end of the Korean War and the subsequent release of American prisoners had focused public attention on the problems facing POWs.
The action takes place during December 1944 in a German POW camp "somewhere along the Danube" and concentrates on the inmates of one particular hut in the camp, all of them sergeants in the U.S. Air Force. The film opens with two men from the hut attempting to escape through a tunnel, but when they emerge outside the barbed wire fence they are shot dead by the guards. (This is unusual but not impossible; German guards generally preferred to recapture escaping prisoners alive rather than shoot them, although there were exceptions). The inmates conclude (correctly) that one of their number must be an informer who is letting the Germans know about planned escape attempts. ("Danger Within" also had a plot involving an informer inside a POW camp).
The most obvious suspect is J J Sefton, an enterprising would-be capitalist who has a knack for turning any situation to his own profit. (He is in many ways similar to King in "King Rat"). Although the other prisoners are happy to take advantage of Sefton's illicit alcohol and gambling rackets, he is not a popular figure, partly because of his cynical attitude- he regards escape attempts as foolish- and partly because he has no qualms about doing deals with the German guards for luxuries such as eggs, silk stockings and cigarettes. Of course, Sefton is so unpopular and such an obvious suspect that the audience will immediately realise that he must be innocent- indeed, much of the film is taken up with Sefton's efforts to clear his name by exposing the real traitor.
When I reviewed "From Here to Eternity" I had not yet seen "Stalag 17", so said that I would reserve judgement on the justice of William Holden's Best Actor Oscar, an award which he won ahead of Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift. Holden, in fact, always felt that he did not deserve the award and, having now seen "Stalag 17", I am inclined to agree with him. Certainly, his performance here as Sefton is a good one, but I felt that both Lancaster and Clift were better.
The film as a whole has the potential to be a very good one; it has an exciting plot, some well-observed characterisation and some well-written dialogue. Like some other reviewers, however, I feel that it suffers from the defect of too much inappropriate humour. It is, of course, quite possible to write a comedy set in a POW camp – the television series "Hogan's Heroes" was an example- but "Stalag 17" is not really intended as a comedy. It is, for the most part, a serious drama- it opens with two men being shot dead, and towards the end another character finds himself in danger of his life. Against this backdrop the antics of the German Feldwebel Johann Sebastian Schulz- clearly a frustrated comedian in civilian life- and of the American Sergeant Stanislas "Animal" Kuzawa- equally clearly a congenital idiot- seem rather out-of-place. "Animal", in particular, seems so mentally defective that I could not imagine why the U.S. Air Force ever accepted him in the first place, let alone promoted him to sergeant. I have heard it said that director Billy Wilder, himself a Jewish refugee from Nazism, found himself psychologically unable to deal with the subject of the war unless he leavened his seriousness with humour. That may be so, but I nevertheless feel that "Stalag 17" would have been a better film had it concentrated on its serious main plot rather than on its would-be humorous sub-plots. 6/10