We’re outta here!
Being the king of overthinking, I’ve just written a whole review of another 1963 movie, How the West Was Won, and all I could think about was the dark subtext of American history that undermines the movie’s bravado.
Not so The Great Escape! Give me these Americans any day.
Here’s a conversation the German commander has with Steve McQueen, playing a captured pilot, as prisoners of several Allied nations are first herded into a new, unescapeable POW camp.
"Unfortunately, you were shot down, so we are both grounded for the duration of the war.”
“Well, you speak for yourself, colonel.”
“You have other plans?”
“I haven’t seen Berlin yet, from the ground or from the air, and I plan on doing both before the war is over.”
“Are all American officers so ill-mannered?”
“About 99 percent."
(I’m going to take a moment right here to acknowledge the one complaint some people have about this movie, which is that most of the real prison-breakers were British and the movie made many of them American. Noted. Good show. I’m enjoying it anyway.)
Country: United States.
Running time: 172 minutes.
Director: John Sturges.
Writer: James Clavell, W.R. Burnett.
Based on: the book The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill.
Cast includes: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn.
Links: Wikipedia, IMDB
#16, US box office
#162, IMDB top 250
Academy Awards:
Editing (nominated)
Golden Globes:
Best drama (nominated)
Keywords: nazis, prison, escape.
Set in era: historical.
Is it well known? very.
How did I see it? home.
Had I seen this before? long ago on video.
Compared to book: haven’t read it.
The movie tells the slightly movie-fied but mostly realistic story of a 1944 escape from Stalag Luft III prisoner of war camp in Lower Silesia in wartime Germany (now Żagań, Poland). The prisoners were able to dig three tunnels to freedom through a meticulous operation involving a cart and pulley system, a dirt disposal strategy, a noise-masking strategy, fake German garb and identification — pretty much every detail the men could think of. One commentary suggested the Germans made a mistake by creating a camp they thought would inescapable — and then putting all their most incorrigible escape artists in it together.
According to audio commentary by director John Sturges, the production team duplicated the camp as precisely as possible at a location outside Munich. One of their consultants, Wally Floody, had actually been a participant in the escape, and crawled into the tunnel as the crew dug it.
“And he would say, ‘It’s rubbing against my shoulders — it didn’t quite do that,’ so we would make it a little bit bigger. And he’d say, ‘No, that’s too big,’ and we’d make it a little bit smaller,” Sturges said. “And he came out one day and said, ‘You’re getting close now because I had nightmares last night.'"
I said in a previous article that the hardest reviews to write are those of very good movies because there isn’t that much to analyze — they’re just good. The Great Escape is just good. I can’t pick it apart. It will be hard to write in an interesting way from this point forward.
But let me say a few things I appreciate — which are all part of the same thing. It has to do with the ensemble, and what’s special about that.
Point one is, this is the third “movie with too many stars” that I’ve seen from the year 1963 (the others being How the West Was Won and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World), and it still works. Some were early in their careers, but the amount of talent is impressive: Steve McQueen, James Garner, James Coburn, Richard Attenborough (director of Gandhi and Chaplin), Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasance (later Blofeld from James Bond) and more.
The reason this works is point two: It’s about a team, which means two things. First (2a, I guess), everybody has a personality.
- Richard Attenborough is an efficient British officer who organizes the escape effort.
- James Garner’s character is a wheeler-dealer who can get whatever you need. (The Milo Minderbinder of this story.)
- Steve McQueen is a lone wolf who can escape easily on his own and doesn’t feel a need to cooperate with his compatriots’ scheme — but maybe they do need each other.
- Donald Pleasance is a quiet, mild-mannered forger with his own personal crises.
- British theater actor James Donald plays the fellas’ very upright commanding officer, who represents them in a memorable exchange before the German commander.
- Charles Bronson plays a claustrophobic Polish officer who nonetheless leads the underground digging operation.
The great thing about a team in real life is also great for storytelling, which is when you look at the people around you, you recognize their talents and quirks, right? Everybody is different and everybody is interesting.
And then (2b), we get our view of the grand plan through each of these team members doing their parts. The action keeps moving because we’re always moving, from the dig itself to the forgery to the black market of stuff that’s needed to the sewing of uniforms to the planning, and let’s not forget Steve McQueen with his own lone-wolf escape attempts, which eventually become crucial to the overall plan too. And that’s not all — each of these activities has a coverup activity too, like gardening and drawing classes. Whatever it is we like about a brilliant and intricate Oceans-11-type caper movie, we can enjoy it twice as much in this story that really happened.
It’s not often that I really like a plain old heroic story of good guys doing good stuff, but this is one. It’s morally uncomplicated but the proceedings are wonderfully complex and watchable and the movie hasn’t suffered a bit from the intervening (say it ain’t so) six decades.
Notes
Director John Sturges has many more recollections in the DVD commentary from Criterion, including these:
"I had just directed The Magnificent Seven, and I think if I had wanted to direct the telephone book they would at least have given me a hearing."
"This is almost a dead ringer for the real camp. I think that there shouldn’t be any confusion over realism — realism doesn’t necessarily make a good picture. But if it can be real and a good picture at the same time, then you can more honestly say, this is a true story."
"Most of the people playing German soldiers and officers were German soldiers and officers, which is the easy way to direct a picture."
"[The book’s author Paul Brickhill] was a POW himself. He liked the idea of this being a movie, but he didn’t feel he had the right to sell it as a movie. He had a right to write the book, but the picture represented all these men. Should he or shouldn’t he do this? I convinced him he should."
Country: United States.
Running time: 172 minutes.
Director: John Sturges.
Writer: James Clavell, W.R. Burnett.
Based on: the book The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill.
Cast includes: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn.
Links: Wikipedia, IMDB
#16, US box office
#162, IMDB top 250
Academy Awards:
Editing (nominated)
Golden Globes:
Best drama (nominated)
Keywords: nazis, prison, escape.
Set in era: historical.
Is it well known? very.
How did I see it? home.
Had I seen this before? long ago on video.
Compared to book: haven’t read it.