Posted on 06/19/2023 8:36:51 AM PDT by DFG
89 Tom Fordy Mon, June 19, 2023 at 8:02 AM CDT Steve McQueen in The Great Escape Steve McQueen in The Great Escape - Alamy In the opening minutes of The Great Escape, “the Kommandant” (Hannes Messemer) of the Stalag Luft III prisoner-of-war camp warns Captain Ramsey (James Donald) against trying to escape. Ramsey’s rabble of captured Allied airmen are prolific, well-known escapers – but the Kommandant wants a quiet life. Ramsey, however, is having none of it. As the senior British POW, he tells the Kommandant straight: “It is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape.”
It’s those words that set the tally-ho, sticking-it-to-Jerry tone of The Great Escape – the indomitable spirit that bobs along to the sound of its much-whistled theme tune.
The film, now celebrating its 60th anniversary, is a tremendous, undisputed classic. It’s the stuff that bank holiday afternoons were made for – all machismo, schoolboy pluck, and belly-firing derring-do. The Great Escape is also well known for its flagrant, Hollywood-friendly fabrications, best personified by Steve McQueen’s Captain Virgil Hilts – a wholly invented motorcycle rebel. Starring alongside McQueen is in a line-up of based-loosely-on-fact or fictional POWs: Richard Attenborough’s mastermind; Donald Pleasence’s almost-blind forger; James Garner’s fast-talking scrounger; and Charles Bronson’s claustrophobic digger. The Great Escape plays as much like a heist as a prison break.
For the most part, however, it’s a broadly accurate retelling of how, in March 1944, 76 POWs tunnelled their way out of Stalag Luft III. According to historian Guy Walters, author of The Real Great Escape, it’s the tone that’s wrong.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Picky Picky.
Still one of the best films ever made.
I didn't think he was that good in The Sand Pebbles, or The Thomas Crown Affair, because in both cases he was acting like someone who was not like himself.
That’s a great article and worth reading beginning to end. Thanks for posting it.
He was great in Papillion....”Hey you bastards, I’m still here!”
I think the author is confusing 'The Great Escape' wit 'The Bridge over the River Kwai'.............
Consider th source. Had I noticed I wouldn’t have wasted my time.
But, remember, it was just a play acting movie, not real life.
Based of "real life events" is a wide open statement, so I can't get too excited about this good article.
A movie about white men doing heroic things would never be made these days.
Amazing film- i can watch it over and over and over again.
Ironic that two of the main characters went on to star in the greatest racing movies ever made- McQueen (LeMans) Garner (Grand Prix)
Think they’d ever write an article such as this about the movie “Hidden Figures?? Tend to doubt it. Great movie but, as the author states, “well known for its flagrant, Hollywood-friendly fabrications”
I loved the movie as a kid, and bought Paul Brickhill’s book at my grade-school book fair. That is where I learned about the far-more chilling reality of how the 50 recaptured prisoners were killed. I still love the movie knowing that it is the Hollywood version of what actually took place. I think it is important to also know the true history, so we don’t just glorify the actors playing a role and give the real prisoners their proper due.
By the way, The Wooden Horse is also an amazing escape book and movie, telling the story of a much smaller but no less thrilling escape from the same POW camp.
Flawless, inspirational movie that accurately captures the essentials of the real escape and aftermath. What Hollywood movie does not take license? It was minimal. It is breathtaking how little fictionalization was done in the movie.
Adding Americans, to a Hollywood movie meant for US audiences. What a crime!
Not a lot of ground breaking info in the article. Anybody who knows about the movie, knows that Steve McQueen was a self-centered primadonna who was a royal pain in the butt for everyone on set, which he was in every movie he ever was in. It was par for the course. If you know McQueen’s childhood, then you know why he was such a broken adult and his various personality flaws. Still a brilliant actor who left behind many wonderful movies.
The scene at the end is reminiscient of the Malmady massacre. So while the machine gunning of the captured prisoners was not historic to the event, it makes perfect sense to roll a Malmady style execution to end the film.
Calling the motorcycle chase scene an oded to McQueen’s ego is hilariously ridiculous. Who doesn’t feel that this is the most exciting and dramatic scene in the entire movie. Yes, it is pure Hollywood and adds nothing to the historic nature of the escape, but after seeingmoist everyone being captured, it provides that wonderful feel of “JUST MAYBE SOMEONE IS GOING TO MAKE IT!” You are heart broken when he is balled up in the barbed wire, but uplifted again when he remains unbroken back in the cooler, loudly bouncing that worn out baseball on the concrete walls. You know he is going to get home eventually.
It is a perfect movie and flawless. Not only is it first class entertainment, but it accurately portrays a historical event from WWII. It was a meaningless event, but the key is in the fighting spirit and refusal to give up, in the warriors who took part in digging the tunnels and escaping.
One of my Top Ten movies of all time. The music theme (by Elmer Bernstein I believe) still bounces around in my head occasionally.
I don't think so. As best I can muster...Though, they are different I don't recall the Great Escape theme being whistled like the Bridge tune. You might be right.
Charles Bronson - Danny the Tunnel King - actually had severe claustrophobia from his days as a kid working in the mines in Pennsylvania. His family was Lithuanian. He spoke four languages.
He was great in the “Twilight Zone” episode, “Two”. Also worth watching to see a young, hot Elizabeth Montgomery.
I like the film, always have. Never saw it as “fact”, always viewed it as entertainment. Nothing wrong with that.
But too many people don’t make that distinction. But I had read “Escape From Colditz” when I was 13, so I at least had some reality based knowledge to bounce off against it. (That is a remarkable story as well-they actually build a glider in a hidden attic to escape with, though it was never used)
As for escaping, I loved the story of Bob Hoover, who escaped from Stalag 1, made his way to an airfield, and stole a FW-190 which he flew as far as he could (wondering when an Allied fighter was going to blow him out of the sky!) until ditching it in a field in the Netherlands, and was saved by some British soldiers before the Dutch farmers could do him in, thinking he was a Nazi pilot!)
As for the “much whistled tune” I never did like the use of it in “The Great Escape”. It introduced a light-hearted aspect to the movie I never thought fit. (I think it was the fun, happy, upbeat tune they played every time they marched him off to solitary)
Just a few years ago, when they came out with the movie “The Monuments Men”, what had been a very slight irritation watching “The Great Escape” turned into a bitter anti-Hollywood BS that persists with me today.
I had read the book “The Monuments Men”, and I loved it. Great book. And when I heard they were going to make a movie on it, I did a fist pump! But boy, when it came out, what a piece of crap. All the Lefty movie stars making their appearances, and they put that same whimsical music in it that completely made it an un-serious movie.
That could have been a stellar movie, bringing to millions a story that hadn’t received much attention, but they made a silly, cartoonish abortion out of it, using it to serve as a vehicle for the likes of George Clooney.
I detest that movie!
Escape From Sobibor, with Alan Arkin, is also a good movie. It also adhered rather closely with reality.
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