Summary:
Allied prisoners of war plan an escape from a German camp during World War II.
My Thoughts:
I feel that as if no matter how big of a cinephile you are, there will always be some holes in your film viewing history. For whatever reason, I missed a lot of the big classic war movies from the fifties and sixties, (heck, I only watched “The Bridge on the River Kwai” for the first time last year) but lately I’ve found myself drawn to them. There’s a kind of infectious gung-ho-can-do attitude that permeates films from this era, and every time I watch a movie like this I can’t help but get swept up in the story and all of it’s characters. Movies like this are about adventure and camaraderie; men working together for a common cause, against a common enemy. The lines between good and evil are drawn and well established, and what we get to watch feels like a righteously justified battle. We know whom to root and cheer for, and the film encourages us to do so with its every scene.
“It is the Sworn Duty of All Officers to Try to Escape. If They Cannot Escape, Then it is Their Sworn Duty to Cause the Enemy to Use an Inordinate Number of Troops to Guard Them, and their Sworn Duty to Harass the Enemy to the Best of Their Ability.”
So, what I really like most about this film is the characters and the way that all of them are used in different ways. This film is based on a true story, and at the very beginning of the film there is a title screen that tells us that, while the timeline of events has been compressed to fit the narrative better, the events that happened actually did take place the way that they are portrayed. The story revolves around a group of escape artist types that are all transferred from different POW camps into a stronger, inescapable camp. Immediately after the allied officers settle, a German officer approaches “Big X” (Richard Attenborough, “Jurassic Park”) and tries to establish a kind of report. X however, informs him that the allied soldiers will do their best to make the Germans’ lives a living hell. It’s one of the best officer-to-officer meeting/faceoff scenes I’ve witnessed on screen. It’s right up there with Alec Guiness and Sessue Hayakawa’s meeting in “Kwai”. It’s powerful, it sets the stage for what’s to come, and it establishes both characters perfectly.
From there we move into the different barracks, as the characters work together to establish a coordinated system to dig tunnels. Their plan: to get hundreds of the soldiers out, all at once. Almost immediately, the sense of adventure begins to ramp up. It feels as if we’re right there with these men, feeling downhearted with them as they try to work through the little difficulties, and celebrating with them when they have little triumphs. The writing is great in that it brings out little characteristics for each of the men- everyone has something in which they specialize, and something that they need to accomplish in order for their plan to succeed, but at the same time, as we watch these men get closer to their goals, they get closer to each other as well.
(SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW)
The escape itself happens a little more than halfway through the film, and most of the rest of the movie focuses on the allied trying to evade capture. The men are mostly spread out at this point, and some of them are captured almost immediately, while others give way to a much better chase. As these scenes played out, I kept thinking back to the first meeting between Attenborough and the German officer, and how Attenborough insists that it’s their duty to make the German’s lives hell. That’s what this movie is really about. Even though some of the prisoners do escape, that wasn’t the entire point. The point was to make the German soldiers hate every waking moment of their lives, and in that, the allied soldiers succeeded admirably. I think that’s why I liked this movie more than even “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, the only other comparable POW camp movie I’ve seen. “Bridge” is a fantastic film filled with wonderful high adventure, but this film isn’t about blowing up a bridge or accomplishing some great task (though if they’d all escaped that would’ve been something great indeed), this movie is just about sticking it to the oppressive powers with everything you have; it’s about fighting what’s evil even if the only thing you can do in the long run is irritate it and make it more angry.
Verdict:
You know, sometimes it takes writing your thoughts about a movie to really know how you felt about it. Last night, when I finished this movie, I thought to myself: that was really good! This morning, the more that I thought about it and ran over the story in my head, the more I realized how much I loved it. This might turn out to be one of my favorite World War II movies in the long run; it’s certainly a film that I want sitting on my shelf so I can always watch it.
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