The Great Escape (film)

The Great Escape is a 1963 film made by MGM Studios and produced and directed by John Sturges. Based on a novel by Paul Brickhill, it tells the real-life story of an attempt by Allied prisoners of war to execute a mass escape from a German POW camp during World War II. Brickhill had been a prisoner of the camp with his friend George Harsh and would later base the book on their memories of the experience. The film stars many well-known actors of the time, including Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, Gordon Jackson, and David McCallum.

Plot

Upset by the soldiers and resources wasted in recapturing escaped Allied prisoners of war (POWs), the German High Command concentrates the most-determined and successful of these prisoners to a new, high-security prisoner of war camp that the commandant, Colonel von Luger (Hannes Messemer), proclaims escape-proof.

The film opens as the Gestapo deliver to the camp the most dangerous prisoner of all, "Big X", Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (Richard Attenborough), warning him that he will be shot should he ever again escape. Locked up with "every escape artist in Germany", Bartlett immediately plans the greatest escape attempted—a tunnel system for exfiltrating 250 prisoners of war.

Teams of men are organised to survey, dig, hide soil, manufacture civilian clothing, forge documents, provide security and distractions, and procure contraband materials. The prisoners work on three escape tunnels ("Tom", "Dick", and "Harry") simultaneously. The worst of the work noise is covered from the men choir singing, and dirt from the tunnels is concealed in the mens' trousers and emptied in the gardens. Flight Lieutenant Hendley (James Garner), "the scrounger", finds ingeniously devious ways to get whatever the others need, from a camera to identity cards. Australian Flying Officer Louis Sedgwick (James Coburn), "the manufacturer", makes many of the tools they need, such as picks for digging and bellows for pumping breathable air into the tunnels. Flight Lieutenant Danny Velinski (Charles Bronson), "the tunnel king", is in charge of digging, despite having a fear of dark enclosed spaces. Forgery is handled by Flight Lieutenant Colin Blythe (Donald Pleasence), who is sent nearly blind from the highly intricate work by candlelight (progressive myopia); Hendley takes it upon himself to be Blythe's guide in the escape.

Meanwhile, USAAF Captain Virgil Hilts, "The Cooler King", irritates the guards with frequent escapes and irreverent behaviour. His first escape attempt, conceived whilst in the cooler, is a short tunnel with RAF Flying Officer Archibald Ives (Angus Lennie); they are caught and returned to the cooler.

While the three Americans in camp (Hendley, Hilts, and Goff) are celebrating American Independence Day with the other (mainly British) POWs, the guards discover tunnel "Tom". The depressed Ives snaps, and in a futile attempt to escape, climbs the barbed wire fence in full view of the tower guards. Hilts notices and runs to stop him, but is too late as Ives is machine-gunned dead on the wire. The prisoners abandon the second tunnel and put all their efforts into completing the third.

Bartlett persuades Hilts to reconnoiter the immediate vicinity of the PoW camp during one of his escapes, then allow his recapture, allowing the cartographers to create guide maps of the local area, including the nearest town and railway station.

The last part of the tunnel is completed on the night of the escape, but is found to be twenty feet short of the woods that would provide cover. Nevertheless, seventy-six men escape before one is finally spotted coming out of the tunnel.

After various attempts to reach neutral Switzerland, Sweden, and Spain, almost all of the escaped PoWs are recaptured or killed: Hendley and Blythe steal a trainer aeroplane, intending to fly over the Swiss border; the engine fails and they are forced to crash-land en route. Soldiers arrive at the crash site, shooting Blythe dead while Hendley surrenders. Flight Lieutenant Cavendish (Nigel Stock), having hitched a lift in a truck, is captured at a checkpoint, discovering another fellow PoW, Haynes, captured in his German soldier disguise.

Bartlett, and Mac (Gordon Jackson), are recognised at a railroad station by a Gestapo agent, but manage to slip away after fellow PoW Eric Ashley-Pitt (David McCallum) sacrifices himself by killing the Gestapo agent and letting himself be chased and killed by soldiers. Bartlett and Mac attempt to board a bus in the town, but Mac is tricked into revealing his nationality with the same trick he had warned Haynes about before the escape — a German speaks to him in English and he responds in his native tongue. They both flee but Mac is caught shortly after; Bartlett having escaped over rooftops. However, after Bartlett fools some pursuing Gestapo, he is recognised by his previous captors. Lastly, Hilts attempts to jump the barbed wire Swiss-German border fence with a stolen Wehrmacht motorcycle but his petrol tank is hit and he becomes entangled in the wire.

Only three evade capture and make it to safety. Velinski and Flight Lieutenant Willy Dickes (the tunnel kings) steal a rowboat and proceed downriver to the Baltic coast, where they successfully board a Swedish merchant ship. Sedgewick hides in a boxcar and makes it all the way to France, and while resting in a café the local Resistance stages a drive-by shooting of some German officers. After realising he is an Allied PoW, the Resistance enlist the help of a guide to get Sedgewick into Spain.

As for the others, 48 of the re-captured PoWs, including Bartlett, Mac, Cavendish and Haynes, are shot dead execution-style after they are told to get out of the truck transporting them and "stretch their legs" in a field - this brings the total of those shot dead to 50 (including Ashley-Pitt and Blythe). Meanwhile, Hendley and Sorren and a small group of others are returned to the stalag. The Senior British Officer, Grp Cpt Ramsey (James Donald) hears of the massacre of the 50 dead from von Luger, who has been relieved of command and is swiftly driven away to face the consequences of failing to stop the breakout.

Hilts is brought back alone to the camp, and subsequently to the cooler. His fellow American officer Goff throws him his baseball and glove as he walks into solitary confinement. As the guard locks him in his cell and walks away, he hears the familiar sound of Hilts bouncing his baseball against the cell walls. The film ends with this scene under the caption "This picture is dedicated to the 50."

Cast

Production

Adaptation

Main article: The Great Escape (film) fact versus fiction

Casting

• This film shares three of its stars (Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn), its director and producer (John Sturges), its composer (Elmer Bernstein), a screenwriter Walter Newman (uncredited), and its editor (Ferris Webster) with The Magnificent Seven. Both films also feature one of the stars of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: David McCallum appears in this film while Robert Vaughn appears in the earlier one.

• Donald Pleasence had served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. He was shot down and spent a year in a German prisoner-of-war camp. Screenwriter James Clavell served in the Royal Artillery and was captured by the Japanese. He was interned in Java and later the notorious Changi Prison camp in Singapore. In an archival interview in the DVD special, Pleasence said the prison camp was sufficiently realistic and that it was upsetting at first. Hannes Messemer was also a real-life World War II prisoner of war, a German soldier captured by the Soviets.

• Steve McQueen, an expert motorbiker, did most of his own motorbike stunts, but some of the more dangerous stunts required a double. Bud Ekins, a friend and fellow motorbike enthusiast, happened to resemble McQueen sufficiently from a distance to do the stunts without detecting the double. Ekins was only on-screen for a few seconds and his few shots were edited with the many individual shots of McQueen riding alongside and between the fences. Ekins performed the 60-foot (≈18 m) jump over the inner Austrian/Swiss border fence. He also did the scene sliding his bike into the outer fence. According to the DVD extra, McQueen did much of the bike work, even doubling twice-once as one of his own helmeted German pursuers-and once as the "rider" whom Hilts hijacks to get the motorcycle. Ekins also later doubled for McQueen in Bullitt.

Location and set design

• As noted by David McCallum in the DVD extra, the "barbed wire" that Hilts (Steve McQueen) crashed into in the scene above was actually made of little strips of rubber tied around normal wire, and was made by the cast and crew during their free time.

Reception

Though the film is considered a classic, it was largely ignored at the 1963 Academy Awards. Ferris Webster's editing received the only nomination, though he lost to Harold F. Kress for How the West Was Won. Upon its theatrical release in 1963, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther was disdainful of it: "But for much longer than is artful or essential, "The Great Escape" grinds out its tormenting story without a peek beneath the surface of any man, without a real sense of human involvement. It's a strictly mechanical adventure with make-believe men."^[1] British film critic Leslie Halliwell described it as "pretty good but overlong POW adventure with a tragic ending".^[2]

Historical inaccuracies

Many elements of the film are factual, but the events and characters are condensed. See The Great Escape (film) fact versus fiction for comparisons between the film and the real-life events.

Sequels and remakes

A highly fictionalized, made-for-television sequel, The Great Escape II: The Untold Story, appeared many years later. It starred Christopher Reeve with Donald Pleasence as an SS villain.

The Bollywood film Deewar: Let's Bring Our Heroes Back is based loosely on the same plot, although it involves a prisoner's (Amitabh Bachchan) son (Akshay Khanna) aiding the escape from within.

Several video games were based on the movie, including one in 1986, and one in 2003, which explained more previous escapes of the main prisoners in previous camps and followed the film's main storyline, but altered the prisoner's fates.

The Great Escape in popular culture

• An ad for Shell (Australia) in the early '90s used a Canadian lookalike to reshoot the famous Steve McQueen chase on the motorcycle. Using the music from the movie, and an uncannily well shot sequence, they amended the end as he races to the fence.
• An ad for beer was made in the early 1990s and shown on British TV. It featured some of McQueen's scenes from the film and included additional surreal footage with Griff Rhys Jones.
• Some ads for the Hummer H3 in the fall of 2006 played the tune, as the employees of a nondescript company plot a "Great escape" to drive their Hummers, with a parking lot booth attendant mimicking throwing a baseball against the wall like Steve McQueen. The attendant was portrayed by Chad McQueen, who resembles his late father.
• The animated film Chicken Run (2000) contains many references. The film also references Stalag 17, considered (along with "Escape") to be one of the greatest World War II prisoner-of-war movies.
• British stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard's 1997 "Dress to Kill" performance included an 8-minute segment about "The Great Escape" in which Izzard humorously questioned the plausibility of the movie's plot and the demoralizing fact that all the British characters ended tragically despite all their cunning and planning while the Americans--notably Steve McQueen--survive. Known for his surrealist, stream-of-consciousness type of stand-up comedy, Izzard would digress often during this particular routine as he tried to remember all the characters and actors. This is exemplified best on the CD version of "Dress To Kill" where Izzard gets heckled by a fan during the Great Escape bit, demanding that Izzard "moves on".
• The opening scene of Reservoir Dogs features Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino) explaining the premise of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and referring to a man as being similar to Charles Bronson in The Great Escape stating, "he's digging tunnels".
• In The Parent Trap (1998), Lindsay Lohan's characters are led to an isolated camp cabin with the Great Escape march playing over the scene.
• In an episode of The Simpsons where Maggie tries twice to escape from a Baby sitter school-the theme music from "The Great Escape" is used. in another scene in the same episode, Maggie is placed in "The Pen" after a failed escape and in shown bouncing a ball off the wall, similar to the cooler scenes in the movie.
• The video game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which takes place a year after the movie was released, references The Great Escape in a Codec transmission early in the game. Major Zero, who at the time was using the code name Major Tom, discloses in a conversation to Naked Snake that he chose the name based on what he thought was the tunnels from The Great Escape the prisoners used to escape. He later on learned that he chose the wrong one; the tunnel used in the escape was in fact Harry, not Tom.
• In the episode Precipice from the reimagined series of Battlestar Galactica there is an ending scene where prisoners are loaded off trucks to be shot by a Cylon firing squad, much like a similar sequence in The Great Escape. Audio commentary for the episode revealed that the scene was in fact inspired by The Great Escape.
• In the Doctor Who serial The Mind of Evil Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart whistles the theme tune while helping to break the Doctor and Jo Grant out of prison.
• The theme tune is often adopted by football fans, particularly in England, when their team is fighting to avoid relegation against the odds.
• Steve McQueen and his character "Hilts" have also been referenced several times on the television series "Supernatural", specifically in the episodes "The Usual Suspects" and "Folsom Prison Blues". The Winchester brothers have been known to use the names to indicate an escape from police custody.
• In the Red Dwarf episode "Queeg", Cat and Lister whistle the theme tune as they are forced to scrub the floor.

References

Bibliography

• The Great Escape, Paul Brickhill.
• The Tunnel King, The True Story of Wally Floody & the Great Escape, Barbara Hehner. Publ.: Harper Trophy Canada 2004.
• The Longest Tunnel, Alan Burgess.
• "Tre kom tilbake" (Three returned)", the Norwegian book by surviving escapee Jens Müller. Publ.: Gyldendal 1946.
• Exemplary Justice, Allen Andrews. Details the manhunt by the Royal Air Force's special investigations unit after the war to find and bring to trial the perpetrators of the "Sagan murders".
• Project Lessons from the Great Escape (Stalag Luft III), Mark Kozak-Holland. The prisoners formally structured their work as a project. This book analyzes their efforts using modern project management methods.
• 'Wings' Day, Sydney Smith, story of Wing Commander Harry "Wings" Day Pan Books 1968 ISBN 0330024949

External links

• The Great Escape at the Internet Movie Database
• The Great Escape at the TCM Movie Database
• The Great Escape at Allmovie
• The Real Great Escape
• Great Escape (PBS Nova)
• Detailed information about the real event
• Exhibition about this and other escapes at the Imperial War Museum, London (until 31 July 2006)
• First hand account of Stalag Luft III by Wing Commander Ken Rees
• Pivotal Games site for the computer game version of The Great Escape
• World of Spectrum entry for the 1986 video game
• Project Management lessons from the Great Escape
• Interactive map of Tunnel Harry
• James Garner Interview on the Charlie Rose Show
• James Garner interview at Archive of American Television
• Death of Eric Dowling, one if the escape planners

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