not just a prison flick story...but a prison camp story tinctured with dark but entertaining humor

Rating: Null/10 (5 July 2006)

Stalag 17 is surely not a typical,usual prison-flick story.It's set at a prisoner of war camp which is muddy,desolate and oppressive.The movie opens with the men of the barracks,where six hundred American sergeants are held,plotting an escape. While the prisoners talk every little detail of the escape plan and send their friends Manfredi and Johnson to a tunnel they dug under a barbed wire one of the prisoners stands out and opens a bet that Manfredi and Jonson never make it through the forest surrounding camp. When Manfredi and Johnson are shot right way after they emerge from the other end of the tunnel the prisoners jump to conclusions that Sefton,who bets on the escape, is a stoolie. They actually have the wrong guy but Sefton is not someone liked around either. He is a cynical,cold guy who trades blatantly with the German soldiers for eggs, silk stockings, blankets and other luxuriousnesses for a POW in a camp. He also organizes rat races and and manages a portable distillery in the barracks.So just because he is not a straight-arrow it won't be easy for him to disprove the rash conclusions of the sergeants. The plot may sound a bit common maybe as I put it but the movie actually is not.Generally I do not like a genre being tilted towards another genre.If you are doing a war movie then take your job seriously but I feel like for the first time I did not frown upon the amount of humor in the movie.I read some viewers have been disappointed at the amount of dark-humour "in what should be a true war drama." But in an environment where they have no heating facilities (like even a simple stove),eat terrible foot,bathe in the latrine sinks,walk through the muddy walkways they try to keep sane thanks to that humor.By this way they really defy the cynical,cold,mocking air of von Scherbach (Otto Preminger) and their stupid supervisor Sergeant Schulz (Sig Ruman.)I do not like to tell anything controversial about IMDb's top 250 list again but I can't help it.There are many(and probably will be many more) movies that I'm disappointed by in this list but this one (as specifically not a usual,simple faded prison flick story) perfectly met my expectations.