Classic Prison Camp Drama

Rating: 9/10 (15 February 2013)

As a boy, one of my favourite books was Pat Reid's "The Colditz Story" (my father owned a copy). Reid's classic wartime memoir tells the story of how he, and the other Allied prisoners of war held in Colditz, attempted to outwit their German captors and escape from captivity. I was enthralled not only by the courage of these men but also by their resourcefulness in plotting their escape attempts and in manufacturing or procuring all those items they would need- food, civilian clothing, forged papers, German money, etc. Resourceful though the men of Colditz were, they only ever attempted to break out of the camp in small groups of, at most, three or four. Paul Brickhill's "The Great Escape" tells the story of an even more audacious deed, the mass escape from Stalag Luft III in March 1944.
War films were a staple of the cinema, both in America and Britain, during the fifties and sixties, and films about life in POW camps were a popular sub-genre; other examples include "The Colditz Story", "The Wooden Horse" (also based on an escape from Stalag Luft III) and "Danger Within" in which the villains are, unusually, Italian rather than German. Such films, at least those set in Europe, generally have a fairly light-hearted, patriotic tone, and usually end with the prisoners putting one over on the nasty Nazis by pulling off a daring escape. (POW films set in the Far East, such as "Bridge on the River Kwai" or "King Rat", are often darker in tone).
This film tells a fictionalised version of the Stalag Luft III breakout. Names are changed, but some of the characters are based on real men; Richard Attenborough's character, for example, referred to as "Roger Bartlett", is based on the real-life Roger Bushell. The greatest change made is perhaps the introduction of a number of American characters; in real life no Americans participated in the escape- they had all been moved to a separate camp- but here no fewer than four big Hollywood stars- Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson and James Coburn- were brought in. This was doubtless done for commercial reasons; unlike "The Colditz Story" or "The Wooden Horse" the film was made by an American company, and the days were long gone when American audiences would flock to see a film without any home-grown stars. Even the trick of casting American actors as Canadians to disguise their accents, as was done with Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen" or Gregory Peck in "The Purple Plain", was starting to wear a bit thin by the sixties.
Some critics tend to get very hot under the collar about what they see as Hollywood's attempts to claim the credit for the British war-effort, but I feel that in this case the distortion was justified. World War II was, after all, a joint enterprise, and the introduction of American stars highlights this theme of Allied co-operation against a common enemy. Moreover, had the film been made with an all-British cast we would have been deprived of one of McQueen's greatest performances as Captain Virgil Hilts, known as "The Cooler King" because of the amount of time he spends in the "cooler", or punishment cells. (This would later be inverted to produce McQueen's own nickname, "The King of Cool"). McQueen also provides the film's most iconic moment, namely his attempt to escape to Switzerland on a stolen motor-bike. There are too many other good contributions from the ensemble case to single them all out, but I should mention Attenborough as Bartlett, the organiser of the escape, and Donald Pleasence (himself a former POW) as Colin Blythe, the skilled forger whose intricate work by candlelight damages his eyesight.
The first half of the film has a similar light-hearted tone to POW films like "The Colditz Story", as the prisoners set about the task of constructing their three escape tunnels and putting together their stocks of escape equipment under the noses of their captors. And then, about halfway through, the tone starts to darken. One of the tunnels is discovered by the Germans and a prisoner is shot dead during a breakout attempt. Undaunted, the prisoners press ahead with the planned "Great Escape". The original idea is for some 250 prisoners to break out of the camp through one of the remaining tunnels, and although the plan has to be aborted when the guards spot one prisoner leaving the tunnel, 76 men succeed in getting clear of the camp. The film then traces the progress of some of these men as they try to make their way to freedom across German-occupied Europe.
We know, of course, that only a handful of the "Great Escapers" succeeded in making their way to neutral countries; the great majority of them were recaptured and many of them were shot on Hitler's express orders. The film does not shy away from recounting these tragic events, which makes it something of an exception to the normal conventions of the prisoner-of-war film. Yet this does not make it depressing. Despite its tragic ending, the film, which ends with the caption "This picture is dedicated to the fifty,"- a reference to the number of recaptured prisoners murdered by the Nazis- comes across as an inspiring tribute to the men involved in the "Great Escape", an impression strengthened by the jaunty, defiant march which forms the basis of the famous musical score. This is one of the classic prison camp films of all time- my favourite apart from "Bridge on the River Kwai". 9/10