Stalag 17 [Special Collector's Edition]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

The scene is a German POW camp, sometime during the mid-1940s. Stalag 17, exclusively populated by American sergeants, is overseen by sadistic commandant Oberst Von Schernbach (Otto Preminger) and the deceptively avuncular sergeant Schultz (Sig Ruman). The inmates spend their waking hours circumventing the boredom of prison life; at night, they attempt to arrange escapes. When two of the escapees, Johnson and Manfredi, are shot down like dogs by the Nazi guards, Stalag 17's resident wiseguy Sefton (William Holden) callously collects the bets he'd placed concerning the fugitives' success. No doubt about it: there's a security leak in the barracks, and everybody suspects the enterprising Sefton -- who manages to obtain all the creature comforts he wants -- of being a Nazi infiltrator. Things get particularly dicey when Lt. Dunbar (Don Taylor), temporarily billetted in Stalag 17 before being transferred to an officer's camp, tells his new bunkmates that he was responsible for the destruction of a German ammunition train. Sure enough, this information is leaked to the Commandant, and Dunbar is subjected to a brutal interrogation. Certain by now that Sefton is the "mole", the other inmates beat him to a pulp. But Sefton soon learns who the real spy is, and reveals that information on the night of Dunbar's planned escape. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Stalag 17 is as much comedy as wartime melodrama, with most of the laughs provided by Robert Strauss as the Betty Grable-obsessed "Animal" and Harvey Lembeck as Stosh's best buddy Harry. Other standouts in the all-male cast include Richard Erdman as prisoner spokesman Hoffy, Neville Brand as the scruffy Duke, Peter Graves as blonde-haired, blue-eyed "all American boy" Price, Gil Stratton as Sefton's sidekick Cookie (who also narrates the film) and Robinson Stone as the catatonic, shell-shocked Joey. Writer/producer/director Billy Wilder and coscenarist Edmund Blum remained faithful to the plot and mood the Donald Bevan/Edmund Trzcinski stage play Stalag 17, while changing virtually every line of dialogue-all to the better, as it turned out (Trzcinski, who like Bevan based the play on his own experiences as a POW, appears in the film as the ingenuous prisoner who "really believes" his wife's story about the baby abandoned on her doorstep). William Holden won an Academy Award for his hard-bitten portrayal of Sefton, which despite a hokey "I'm really a swell guy after all" gesture near the end of the film still retains its bite today. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Won Best Actor - 1953 (William Holden)
•     Nominated Best Director - 1953 (Billy Wilder)
•     Nominated Best Supporting Actor - 1953 (Robert Strauss)

• Directors Guild of America

•     Nominated Best Director - 1953 (Billy Wilder)

• National Board of Review

•     Nominated Best Picture - 1953

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       William Holden - Sefton
       Don Taylor - Lieutenant Dunbar
       Otto Preminger - Von Scherbach
       Robert Strauss - "Animal" Stosh
       Harvey Lembeck - Harry Shapiro
       Peter Graves - Price
       Sig Rumann - Schulz
       Neville Brand - Duke
       Richard Erdman - Hoffy
       Michael Moore - Manfredi
       Peter Baldwin - Johnson
       Robinson Stone - Joey
       Robert Shawley - Blondie
       William Pierson - Marko
       Gil Stratton - Cookie/Narrator
       Jay Lawrence - Bagradian
       Erwin Kalser - Geneva Man
       Alexander J. Wells

• Director:

  Billy Wilder

• Producer:

  Billy Wilder

• Screenwriter:

  Edwin Blum, Billy Wilder

• Play Author:

  Edmund Trzcinski, Donald Bevan

• Cinematographer:

  Ernest Laszlo

• Composer (Music Score):

  Franz Waxman

• Editor:

  Doane Harrison, George Tomasini

• Art Director:

  Franz Bachelin, Hal Pereira

• Set Designer:

  Ray Moyer, Sam Comer

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Harold Lewis, Gene Garvin

• Makeup:

  Wally Westmore

• Special Effects:

  Gordon Jennings

REVIEW:

• Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 was a new kind of war movie in 1953, a more realistic look at POW camp life than earlier POW movies (often British) had offered, featuring vivid depictions of larceny, betrayal, sadism, gallows humor, and a near-lynching of an innocent (though hardly guiltless) man. Wilder and his actors -- even though several are trapped in stock war-movie characterizations -- create a level of tension that forces the viewer to suspend disbelief, even as the movie seldom moves outside the confines of a single barrack. Stalag 17 helped William Holden establish his cynical, macho persona, a more hard-bitten descendant of the characters that Humphrey Bogart played in such 1940s movies as Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon; (ironically, Holden and Bogart would play brothers in Wilder's next movie, Sabrina). The success of Wilder's movie paved the way for more explorations of this subject and provided the blueprint for the TV series Hogan's Heroes, which emphasized the humorous elements first explored in Wilder's film. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi