The Great Escape (1963)
Put a fence in front of these men, and they’ll climb it.
THE SUMMARY: A band of allied World War II POWs secretly plot and attempt an escape from a German camp through digging a trio of underground tunnels, only to be killed or recaptured in a classic movie presented at the actual pace of the tunnel digging itself. Some broad themes I can appreciate, packaged needlessly in a marathon of tedious unnecessaries and borings. It’s a 3-hour investment just to see Steve McQueen’s stunt-double do an okay motorcycle jump, the supposed history of which is completely made up.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER TOM N: Based on real events, The Great Escape tells the story of allied soldiers attempting to escape from a German POW camp. It has an allstar cast including Charles Bronson, Richard Attenborough, and Steve McQueen. With an infamous soundtrack and beautiful scenery filmed in Germany and Switzerland, this movie is a must-watch for anyone who loves WWII history and action movies.
THE BEST:
Where there’s a will, there’s a way: The movie is a demonstration of that classic lesson. If you commit yourself to a goal, you’ll see it through, or die trying. In theory, the idea of excavating a prison break with a coffee can seems impossible, but if the can scoops, the only limit is your will for scooping. An optimistic attitude despite overwhelming obstacles and struggle ensures the chance to overcome them. A pessimistic attitude is a prison itself.
Even losing fights are often worth fighting: That said, ‘victory or death’ necessarily means the risk of death, which is a risk realized for a majority of the escapees. The most meaningful moment of the movie to me is the return of several prisoners to the camp, and one asks the other, ‘do you think it was worth the price?’ The other replies, ‘depends on your point of view’ (sorry - I couldn’t find the video clip).
My only dispute with the exchange is the response - it doesn’t depend on perspective. It depends on the objective calculation that there are fates worse than death, among them, a prison camp. It is in fact better to die fighting for freedom than to submit to slavery, a noble fight that our country has revisited several times.
For that reason, even losing fights should not be viewed with regret, so long as they are for the right reasons. There’s nothing regrettable about paying the ultimate price for the ultimate values. There is something regrettable about surrendering your life to the absence of them.
A very loosely accurate historical story: Depending on the framing, this point could be either praise or criticism. For a movie that boasts its historical accuracy at the start, there are plenty of ways in which it isn’t: there was no plane stealing, there was no motorcycle jumping, and no Americans were even involved in the escape at all.
Still, many of the points of substance are actually true: 76 men made it through the tunnel, only three ultimately escaped, and 50 men who were recaptured were executed on Hitler’s orders.
If I appreciate some broad philosophical points previously mentioned, I can appreciate the historical story that illustrates them, even if I don’t enjoy this particular presentation of it.
Fine - the motorcyling is okay too, even if a little indulgent in stunt work. It’s not a true ‘great escape’ unless there are a few donuts.
THE WORST:
How long are you gonna talk?: It takes nearly two hours to get to any actual escaping, at which point the movie finally picks up with action, tension, and intrigue. Show me a half hour of prep, and an hour of escape, and it’s a far more enjoyable movie. Instead it’s nearly two hours of mostly dialogue among a mess of boring, forgettable characters that will have you snoring long before it gets at all interesting.
Too many guys, too few characters: I understand there’s some aim for historical accuracy, and the work for the real escape was done by some 600 men, so it’s a story that demands a lot of characters inherently. However, the lack of focus on primary characters makes it difficult to follow who’s who, and no particular character develops much depth.
Without distinguishing features, remembering which character has which role is a chore to keep track of, and by the time you have it figured out, none of it really matters anyway. Just get to the other side of the tunnel.
Accents are difficult to understand: I actually do appreciate that the movie opted for all characters speaking English instead of using subtitles, but some of the thick German accents are very difficult to understand. For a dialogue-driven movie, at least early on, the dialogue needs to be clearly understandable. Several times I had to rewind to understand conversation correctly, making this needless marathon even longer.
This is the least Nazi security I’ve ever seen: Yes, I understand that the camp commander Von Luger is anti-Nazi, and very sympathetic with the prisoners. However, this entire camp is established on the premise of containing the most difficult, escape-prone prisoners, in service to a regime known for its rigid adherence to the rules.
The prisoners’ near-commercial scale moonshine production is silly. In fairness, moonshine really was secretly produced and consumed at these camps, but with emphasis on secretly. Pouring jugs of it out in the open, everyone consuming it openly at a Fourth of July party that wouldn’t happen anyway because there were no Americans - this presentation makes no sense in the context of a camp established to be on lockdown.
Likewise, it seems impossible that German camp officials would find an escape tunnel, and respond with zero curiosity or discipline. No sweep of the camp to find other potential methods of escape, no punishment for the prisoners in the barracks where this escape tunnel was discovered - in fact, the prisoners increased their efforts after the tunnel discovery, pledging to dig ‘around the clock.’ I can believe in a large amount of incompetence and even sympathy for the prisoners, but this lack of concern over discovering the exact sort of escape plot the camp is built to prevent is too silly to be believed.
The Fourth of July moonshine
The ‘Tom’ tunnel is discovered
THE RATING: 2/5 Wickies. An extremely boring and drawn-out way to learn a few mediocre history and philosophy lessons.
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NEXT WEEK: Rear Window (1954)
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