Pretty Good POW Camp Mystery

Rating: 7/10 (22 February 2010)

The mystery in this starts right from the beginning. Two POWs attempt to escape from Stalag 17 (apparently, the toughest POW camp in Germany, with a perfect record.) POW Sefton (played by William Holden, in a role for which he won an Oscar) bets the others that they won't make it. They don't. Everyone suspects that there's a "stoolie" in Barracks 4 passing information on to the Germans. Sefton trades with the guards, and gets a lot of extra privileges from them, and so he becomes the prime suspect. From the viewer's point of view, it's pretty obvious that Sefton isn't the guy. First, it would have been way too obvious, and, second, if he had been the Germans wouldn't have made him such an obvious target. So the mystery revolves around who the stoolie actually is, and director Billy Wilder does a pretty good job of keeping us guessing. There's nothing that really gives it away until that mystery is finally revealed a little more than halfway through the movie with a rather devious question from Sefton (who's committed himself to finding out who the stoolie is) about Pearl Harbor, but the solution to one mystery leads to another - what are the POWs going to do with the real stoolie?
This is a pretty decent movie. Aside from a few brief moments, it's not especially exciting, but the mystery is well enough developed that it keeps you watching all the way through. It does have a lot of unnecessary material. Animal's obsession with Betty Grable is funny for a little while, but does get tired eventually, and the whole Christmas Party in the Barracks goes on a bit too long. I also thought the whole idea of female Russian prisoners in a separate compound of the same camp (who looked - shall we say - pretty healthy!) was a real stretch to the credibility of the movie. It seems to me that this is a bit over-rated, although the story is generally good, as are the performances - Holden's, I thought (while good) being somewhat understated for a Lead Actor win.
As an aside, it's interesting to note that this must have given birth to the later TV series Hogan's Heroes. There are too many similarities in the basic story to be coincidental (the toughest POW Camp in Germany from which no one escapes, the bald-headed Commandant - played here by Otto Preminger and in the series by Werner Klemperer, and even a character named Sgt. Schultz.)