The Great Escape (1963)

Director:

John Sturges

Writers:

Paul Brickhill (book)
James Clavell (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

4 July 1963 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Drama | History | Thriller | War

Tagline:

put a fence in front of these men...and they'll climb it...

Plot:

Allied POWs plan for several hundred of their number to escape from a German camp during World War II.

Plot Keywords:

Escape | Prisoner | Tunnel | Plan | Escape Attempt

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 3 wins & 4 nominations

Cast

Steve McQueen	...	Capt. Hilts "The Cooler King"
James Garner	...	Flight Lt. Hendley "The Scrounger"
Richard Attenborough	...	Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett "Big X"
James Donald	...	Group Capt. Ramsey "The SBO"
Charles Bronson	...	Flight Lt. Danny Velinski "The Tunnel King"
Donald Pleasence	...	Flight Lt. Colin Blythe "The Forger"
James Coburn	...	Flying Officer Louis Sedgwick "The Manufacturer"
Hannes Messemer	...	Kommandant von Luger
David McCallum	...	Lt. Cmdr. Eric Ashley-Pitt "Dispersal"
Gordon Jackson	...	Flight Lt. Sandy MacDonald "Intelligence"
John Leyton	...	Flight Lt. William Dickes "The Tunneler"
Angus Lennie	...	Flying Officer Archibald Ives "The Mole"
Nigel Stock	...	Flight Lt. Denys Cavendish "The Surveyor"
Robert Graf	...	Werner 'The Ferret'
Jud Taylor	...	Goff

Runtime:

172 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | German | French | Russian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Iceland:12 | Canada:PG (Ontario) | USA:Approved (PCA #20399) | USA:Unrated (video release) | West Germany:12 (f) | South Korea:12 | Netherlands:12 | New Zealand:PG | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 | Portugal:M/12 | Sweden:15 | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

Bavaria Filmstudios, Geiselgasteig, Grünwald, Bavaria, Germany

Company:

Mirisch Corporation, The

Trivia:

One day, the police in the German town where the film was shot set up a speed trap near the set. Several members of the cast and crew were caught, including Steve McQueen. The Chief of Police told McQueen "Herr McQueen, we have caught several of your comrades today, but you have won the prize [for the highest speeding]." McQueen was arrested and briefly jailed.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: Sedgwick is shown reading "Liberation", a newspaper not published during the German occupation of France.

Quotes:

Hendley: Come on, Roger. We all know the score here, at least... most of us do. Your idea of this escape is to... start another front, to foul up the Germans behind the lines. All right, that's fine, that's fine. But once we get passed that barbed wire, once we have them looking all over Germany for us, that mission is accomplished. Afterwards, we have some ideas of our own.
Bartlett: You mean getting home? Back to your family and children?
Hendley: That's right.
Bartlett: Good God, man. Do you really believe I haven't thought about that, too?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes (1998)

Outstanding Entertainment

Credit should be given to the brilliant score by Elmer Bernstein. If you listen to it closely, it literally is a battle between the Allied Prisoners (flutes & woodwinds) and the Germans (tubas). The escape scenes with the little boat on the scenic german river is evocative of Wagner and his heroic Germanic Operas. The scenery of the German countryside and the Alps is breathtaking. I believe that the scriptwriters emphasized the heroism, humor, and character of the prisoners to make an uplifting statement of what is essentially a cruel and tragic story. As a child growing up in the seventies, our 7th grade glass was reading the Paul Brickhill book and we had the opportunity to meet a former (American) Stalag Luft III prisoner from that era. He had arrived at the camp after the Great Escape, but was placed on the monument detail for the 50 executed men. He said that few men seriously contemplated escape after this incident and the emphasis was on surviving the war and going home alive.