King Rat

Rating: 10/10 (15 November 2005)

As usual the sterling quality of Wilder's writing-direction was well able to withstand Bryan Forbes rip-off, King Rat, twelve years later. Of course novelist James Clavell who opted to write about a POW whose idea of coping was to become a Black Marketeer a la William Holden's Sefton has to shoulder some of the blame. King Rat wasn't a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination but teenagers and even twenty-somethings who saw it in 1965 may not have realized that Stalag 17 got there first in 1953. Wilder's touch is present in every frame and one of his tricks - he used it again notably in The Apartment - was to lull the audience into thinking 'comedy' and then subtly injecting drama into the proceedings, in this case drama that involves loss of life. Holden, who became a personal friend, was always at his best working with Wilder and his Best Actor Oscar for Sefton was well deserved and here, despite his own initial reservations and a wish to 'soften' the character, he excels as the morally dubious Sefton who can take the loathing of his fellow prisoners in his stride but is averse to being worked over for something he didn't do. Wilder invented the role of Cookie, the nearest thing to a friend/confidente Sefton has and significantly the Segal character in King Rat also befriends another prisoner, Robert Fox. Another brilliant Wilder film.