Crashing Out.

Rating: 7/10 (21 October 2013)

"Stalag 17" betrays its stage origins. The director, Billy Wilder, has opened it up a bit to show the assembly area in the middle of a dismal continental winter in Germany but most of the action takes place inside Barracks Four, where about two dozen Air Force sergeants are kept as POWs.
William Holden gets the lead and is the pivotal figure but it's really an ensemble movie with memorable characters and some equally impressive scenes. It may seem a bit hokey now but when it ran on Broadway in 1951 and 1952, the war was only a few years behind us and still fresh in our memories, so what seems stilted now was news at the time.
Among the two dozen inmates of Barracks Four, Holden is the odd man out, a wheeler and dealer with a treasure chest of wine, cigarettes, silk stockings, and other delicacies. The sociologist, Erving Goffman, described such places as "total institutions" in which life was regimented. Part of any functioning total institution was what he called "the small reward system." And Holden is the savvy broker who seems to win every bet and whose prices for small rewards resemble usury. He was stuck in the role of operator for several other films, such as "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Sunset Boulevard," and he was good at it.
One of the better performances is Otto Preminger's as the camps commander, Colonel von Scherbach. His imperious mien is overdone to the point of hilarity. He struts about, making flippant remarks about dead bodies, has a subordinate put on his boots and then take them off again. As a director he was intimidating and authoritarian. One wonders how he took direction from Billy Wilder.
Amid all the jokes and improbable events there is one moment of genuine pathos. A complete slob of a POW, Robert Strauss, gets drunk on Christmas and convinces himself that his friend, Harvey Lembeck, is really his ideal woman, Betty Grable. The men dance with each other, Strauss whispers into Lembeck's ear how much he loves her, how he dreams about her every day. When Lembeck, stunned, brings him back to reality, Strauss breaks down into a torrent of convincing tears. It's the only moment in the movie that isn't undercut by irony, cynicism, or triteness.
It's a tightly written comedy/drama and not likely to be forgotten quickly.