There are some wildly popular movies I don’t get around to until it seems every other person on Earth has seen them. I still haven’t bothered watching Titanic, as I suspect I have seen the entire picture in piecemeal fashion through endless clips I’ve been exposed to over the decades. From what I’ve seen, I don’t think I will be much impressed by seeing the entirety of those clips in order in one sitting. If nothing else, I imagine it would be like watching Memento in chronological order, and I don’t care to do that, either.
So I came into 1963’s The Great Escape thinking I knew exactly what would happen in it at every step along the way. Having finally watching it, I was proven wrong at every point from beginning to end.
I had been expecting this to be a largely an action film, and it does have some great sequences, though these are all crammed near the end of its considerable runtime. I had also expected humor—something like Hogan’s Heroes, but more sophisticated. There is some humor here, but this is largely a serious drama. I probably was thinking of Stalag 17 and, even then, I’m probably going to be in for a shock when I finally see that film.
I also thought there would be more of Steve McQueen, given he’s top billed. Instead, the film has various groups of soldiers interned in the WWII German prisoner of war camp and sometimes they mix together, and other times they act independently. McQueen spends most of his time in solidary confinement, endlessly bouncing a baseball off a wall that is just a couple of feet away.
Third billed is Richard Attenborough, and I would consider him to be the real star of the picture. As a British military officer, he oversees an operation to tunnel out of the camp through the floor of one of the barracks. This operation seems to involve almost everybody in the camp. McQueen’s big assist in that effort is escaping, mapping out where the roads and train station are located, and then reporting back that info once he is inevitably captured.
But I don’t see a reason to focus on individual stars, when this feature is overflowing with actors you’ve seen before. Some are bigger stars such as James Garner, Charles Bronson and James Coburn. Others, such as David McCallum, were more popular then than today’s audiences might assume. Others still are just faces that fans of British film and TV of the time will recognize, such as Gordon Jackson. There’s William Russell, one of the first companions of Doctor Who, in a bit part. Inexplicably, there’s Donald Pleasance, as dependable as ever.
Each prisoner has their own specialty. There’s The Scrounger, there’s Intelligence, there’s The Surveyor, there’s The Manufacturer. Pleasance is The Forger, which feels right, for some reason. Perhaps it is due to the mischievous gleam in the eye of most of the characters he plays. There are two Tunnel Kings, when I’m pretty sure only one is allowed. McQueen spends so much time in solitary that the end credits dub him The Cooler King, which doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment.
Like most heist pictures, much of the runtime is spent in the planning of the operation. It is complex and very clever. McCallum devises a unique method of hiding the dirt from the excavation, and that is long, knit containers full of the stuff which is then worn under their clothing. Later, when the wearers step outside, they pull on concealed strings that evacuate the contents through the ends of their pant legs. Even the excavation through the concrete floor is obscured by timing the pickaxe strikes to those of prisoners outside driving spikes into the ground.
I especially like the fake concrete slab that makes the entrance to the tunnel appear to be simply a drain for the shower. There’s an amusing bit where Bronson jumps into that shower when there’s a surprise inspection of the barracks. When a soldier asks him what he’s doing, he says he’s showering. Inexplicably, Coburn is standing there watching Bronson and so, when he’s asked what he’s doing, he says, “Watching him. I’m the lifeguard.”
The final third of the film is outside the camp, as the escapees try to make their way to safe harbors. Using clothes fabricated inside the camp, some are dressed as soldiers, others as various types of civilians. There are many incredibly tense moments of suspense in scenes where they try to blend in with Germans. We end up following at different times a half dozen different groups or individuals, yet I never felt confused when the film switches its focus.
One of the most exciting of these threads follows Steve McQueen, who eventually gets hold of a soldier’s motorcycle and is pursued through fields and over hills by seemingly the entirety of the German forces. What is astounding is it is obvious the actor is doing most of the riding. Still, he didn’t do the most famous stunt from this picture and that is the jump over a tall barb-wire fence. But it doesn’t matter who it is, when it is stunning anybody did this jump, which is all the more astounding for being shown without an edit. In one continuous shot, a guy on a bike flies off the top of a hill on one side of the fence and, suddenly, he is on the other side. You just know that, if something like this was done today, it would have a dozen cameras filming it and be edited into as many cuts within a couple of seconds. And then it would be thoroughly drained of its impact.
But the greatest aspects of The Great Escape are things I didn’t anticipate, especially from what I thought would be a war movie. One overarching theme is sacrifice, and this picture packs some real gut punches. Remarkably, it doesn’t pull any of those punches. To do otherwise would be to cheapen the sacrifices these characters make. There are also remarkable displays of compassion, where a person might compromise their own success to help somebody who cannot help themselves. While this movie is still very popular, I would be happy if even more people saw it, as I think sacrifice and compassion are two virtues in short supply nowadays.
Dir: John Sturges
Starring a bunch of people, of whom some will recognize only a few and others will recognize a great many more. Just see the movie. Trust me.
Watched on blu-ray