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 ...
LOL, Douglas Bader had him beat, they took away his legs!
“because in both cases he was acting like someone who was not like himself.”
I thought a great acting performance was someone playing a part really well that is totally different from their personality.
There’s a word for a movie that attempts to present a completely factual account of a historical event: ‘documentary’. As far as I know, no one ever claimed “The Great Escape” was a documentary.
The Gestapo dragged in a lot of low-level SS agents and forced them to execute 2 to 3 prisoners. Sinners don’t like to do their dirty work alone. The one that did the actual shooting of the two senior officers was hunted down after the war and executed. I think it was in “The True Story of Stalag III”. The officers that tracked him down didn’t feel a lot of satisfaction. It was really quite sad as the shooter was just a shoe salesman before the war and had three young daughters and was really a bit of a wimp. He had been ordered to shoot and had an officer with him. It was a good book.
I would argue that Hilts motorcycle escape scenes are the greatest “manly” scenes of all time. I could watch them everyday.
Modern day movies are dreck compared to this.
LOL, I have to admit, I nearly found it funny to see movies made that couldn’t have a muslim being the bad guys. No problem making Christians the bad guys though. Or guys from some former Soviet state.
But not Arabs or Persians!
Every one of them, especially McQueen, Pleasance and Garner, gave an entirely memorable performance. I remember scenes like it was yesterday, even though I haven't seen it since it opened in the movie theater.
Ping!
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.
The song from The Bridge on the River Kwai was not written for the film. So you actually don't even need to suppose that the songs may have been mixed up. The Great Escape theme song was the only one written for the film.
The "Colonel Bogey March" is a British march that was composed in 1914 by Lieutenant F. J. Ricketts (1881–1945) (pen name Kenneth J. Alford), a British Army bandmaster who later became the director of music for the Royal Marines at Plymouth. The march is often whistled.
Dude obviously never memorized the Code of Conduct, or went through SERE training. There is a duty to escape! Article III reads, “If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.”
I don’t know exactly what the WWII British equivalent of the Code of Conduct was, but I’m pretty certain that it wasn’t, “Once you’re captured, you just give up and sit there.”
Hollywood cannot make movies like this and the other classics.
The best possible outcome would be to escape, return to your command, and get your ass back in the fight. It makes no difference whether anyone took the time to write them down, all of these are consistent with a personal commitment to doing everything in your power to see your side victorious.
Point of fact, all WWII POWs who escaped and returned to the Allies were given a document to sign swearing not to divulge the details of their escape on the odd chance that other Allied POWs might use the same methods, routes or confederates. This was effectively promoting escape efforts and by promoting it they also effectively were endorsing it as policy.
In 1955, Ike created the "Code of Conduct" for US servicemen, which did specifically state it was their duty to try to escape, but that in no wise means that the servicemen didn't already know it was their responsibility before that.
I got to watch Hogan’s Heroes every day after school. Often my old man would come in and change out of his work boots and watch a few minutes of it while doing so. Then he would get up, shake his head with a smile and say “Oh those crazy guys!” as he left the room.
As a WWII vet, I’m glad he never said anything more and thus ruin the show for me.
Read James Nick Rowe’s book “Five Years to Freedom” about his POW life in the hands of the VC in the Mekong Delta of So. Vietnam. He was the only POW in his group that survived years of a cruel captivity.
Nick, a friend of mine, was assassinated by the communists in the Philippines while serving as an American military advisor.
The congressional testimony of pilot Dietrich Dengler who was captured in Laos is also hard reading about a brave man who finally escaped communist I’m imprisonment
Too funny!
This miniseries was shown on NBC in November 1988...
Thanks. I have read so many escape books it is hard to keep track. WWI had a few escape books as well. I could see why there were fewer because many wouldn’t want to escape and be sent back to the trenches.
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