"We Intend To Watch This Basket Very Closely."

Rating: 10/10 (17 September 2006)

The Great Escape tells the amazing story of a whole bunch of allied prisoners who accomplish a mass breakout during World War II, some of whom actually did make it to freedom and the allied armed forces once again. The film is so good that you do not mind the fact that some American players were tossed into the story as the real story was one accomplished by the British.
To insure that the American movie public would be buying tickets, several American players got into The Great Escape. Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and a pair of American TV cowboys just breaking into big screen star status, James Garner and Steve McQueen were put in the film. Director John Sturges had worked with McQueen, Coburn, and Bronson in his last film The Magnificent Seven. Sturges does a grand job in never letting his audiences attention flag for one minute in this almost three hour length film.
What the Nazis have done in this film is to build a brand new prison camp and have put all the perennial escape artists in this one. Of course by doing so a whole lot of talented escape artists in one place.
And the organized effort is led by Richard Attenborough. Without going overboard into a whole lot of flag waving, Sturges and Attenborough give us the portrayal of a deeply patriotic man who if he can't back into the fight himself, is going to do what he can from a POW camp to bedevil the people making war on his country. He leads the mass escape attempt with an almost corporate efficiency.
The opposite of course is Steve McQueen. I've always thought of Captain Virgil Hills as the ultimate Steve McQueen role of individualism. He and flight officer Angus Lennie are going to get out, no matter what, on their own or with the group. Angus Lennie is the former jockey now RAF flight officer and his death amidst a Fourth of July party that McQueen, Garner, and Jud Taylor have is one of the most moving scenes ever put on film. McQueen decides to play for the team after that.
The Great Escape allowed McQueen to indulge in one of his hobbies of motorcycling. His race through the German country side on a stolen Nazi uniform and motorcycle is a spectacular one, aided and abetted by Elmer Bernstein's magnificent film score.
James Garner bonds with Donald Pleasance in the film. Garner is an American in the RAF Eagle Squadron, Americans who couldn't wait for their own country to get into the war who enlisted in the RAF. A lot of Garner's TV character of Bret Maverick is in his role as Hendley the scrounger/con artist.
Pleasance is his room mate, the shy bird watcher who does the work of forging documents for the escaping prisoners. He's going blind as it turns out, my guess would be from untreated glaucoma. It's nice to see Donald Pleasance for once as a nice guy on the screen. His death due in part to his incipient blindness is also a moving one.
Charles Bronson is also another foreign volunteer for the RAF, from Poland as befitting Bronson who is of Polish origin. He's the tunnel digger who suffers from claustrophobia and his scenes are primarily with British teen idol John Leyton. This was another of a long series of great character roles for Bronson on his way to stardom.
James Coburn shows that like Robert Mitchum, he too had a good ear for accents. His Aussie speech pattern is as good as Mitchum's was in The Sundowners.
The Germans here are also portrayed three dimensionally. Robert Graf is the not too bright corporal who isn't exactly happy to be at war, but is grateful he ain't serving in Russia. He gets unmercifully conned by Garner. Hannes Messemer is the commandant of the POW camp, an officer in the Luftwaffe. The prisoners are nearly all RAF officers and enlisted men and the Luftwaffe is in charge of the camp. Messemer is as fearful of the S.S. and the Gestapo as his prisoners are. He's also as very conscious of the atrocities those worthy organizations are capable of and my favorite scene in the film is him having to tell of one to the Senior British officer in the camp, James Donald. Messemer is conscious also of his failure to watch the basket of rotten eggs put in his charge very closely.
The Great Escape does the one essential thing for a movie to do, it moves. Even in just the scenes of planning and preparation you are aware of movement. I mentioned Elmer Bernstein's film score. It's one of Bernstein's best, maybe one of the best known of any film in cinema history.
The Great Escape is one of those films you can watch dozens of times and never tire of. It's a wonderful film, a real tribute to the best in mankind under some of the worst circumstances.