The One That Got Away (1957)

A cocky German flight officer is shot down over England and makes numerous attempts to escape to fight again.

Director:

Roy Ward Baker (as Roy Baker)

Writers:

Howard Clewes (screenplay), Kendal Burt (book)

Stars:

Hardy Krüger, Colin Gordon, Michael Goodliffe

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Hardy Krüger	...	Franz Von Werra
Colin Gordon	...	Army Interrogator
Michael Goodliffe	...	R.A.F. Interrogator
Terence Alexander	...	R.A.F. Intelligence Officer
Jack Gwillim	...	Commandant, Grizedale
Andrew Faulds	...	Lieutenant, Grizedale
Julian Somers	...	Booking Clerk
Alec McCowen	...	Duty Officer, Hucknall
Harry Lockart	...	German Prisoner
Robert Crewdson	...	German Prisoner
George Mikell	...	German Prisoner
George Roubicek	...	German Prisoner
John Van Eyssen	...	German Prisoner
Frederick Jaeger	...	German Prisoner
Richard Marner	...	German Prisoner

Storyline

This is the true story of Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war to escape from imprisonment in Britain during the Second World War.

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Plot Keywords:

escape | german | dossier | hero | bravado | 

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Taglines:

He was daring, defiant and determined to escape.

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Genres:

Adventure | Drama | War

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

22 November 1957 (UK)

Also Known As:

Einer kam durch

Filming Locations:

Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Julian Wintle Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

106 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.75: 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Franz Von Werra may not have been the only German prisoner-of-war to escape from captivity and return to Germany. A U-Boat rating, Walter Kurt Reich, is said to have jumped from a Polish troopship (presumably the ex-liner Sobieski) into the St. Lawrence River in July 1940.

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Goofs

As stated early in the film Franz Von Werra had a straight forefinger on his right hand. However, at various stages during the film, Hardy Kruger had apparently forgotten this, as he continuously bends that finger.

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Quotes

Commandant, Grizedale: Something's hatching. Prisoners always have complaints, as a matter of principle. When they haven't - then you watch.

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Crazy Credits

Opening credits prologue: SEPTEMBER 5th 1940 WINCHET HILL, KENT.

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Connections

Referenced in Doing Time (1979)

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Soundtracks

Horch, was kommt von draußen rein
(uncredited)
Traditional

User Reviews

Giving the enemy his due

After the Cold War broke out, it was necessary to reconcile the newly democratic, Nazi-free West Germany to its former enemies. Hollywood did its bit with a sympathetic account of Erwin Rommel in "The Desert Fox". After "Frieda", the British movie business followed a spate of PoW escape films with one about a Luftwaffe pilot who had been as hard to hold as the heroes of "Albert RN" and "The Wooden Horse".

Early in the Second World War most Germans captured while bombing Britain did not try to escape: they thought the Wehrmacht would soon arrive to free them. "Baron" Franz von Werra was an exception. No Nazi, he was a Swiss boy who had been brought up by aristocratic German relations and felt he owed his adopted country his services; he was also a show-off who idolised von Richthofen and relished the glamour of being a flying ace.

Roy Baker (thus billed on screen) said he wished to get away from "beer-swilling krauts or homosexual Prussians". He saw von Werra as a maverick, and shot him moving from right to left across the screen whenever possible because typically film characters move in the other direction.

The film is pretty faithful to his story, as was established years later by a documentary called "Von Werra" (Werner Schweizer, 2002) which his impersonator, Hardy Kruger, presented. Kruger's own past was more Nazi than Franz's: he was at Sonthofen, the Party's "order castle" school for the future elite, and his blond good looks are said to have been admired by Dr Goebbels, fuhrer of the German film business.

Pitted against a string of barely differentiated British officer-class character actors, Kruger has a whale of a time in what is virtually a one-man show. It lets him display charm, cunning and endurance in buckets. First he outwits his interrogators, then he twice goes on the run in England (the second time almost taking off in a stolen Hurricane) and finally he flees from a Canadian train in below-zero temperatures. He zigzags 30 miles to the St Lawrence River and paddles through floes in pitch darkness into the neutral USA, arriving with badly frostbitten ears.

Concentrating on his time in captivity, the script neither pleads for sympathy for an enemy nor arraigns him, It does not give us any background on the man, and his second epic escape-- from the US extradition authorities, via Central and South America, the Atlantic and Italy back to the Reich-- is not covered either. True to his gentlemanly self-image, von Werra used his brief fame to compare conditions for the British in German camps unfavourably with those he had experienced-- even the primitive Grizedale Hall-- and got them improved. (The Canadian camp he avoided was luxurious.) He flew on the Eastern Front in the early days of 'Barbarossa', downing obsolete Soviet aircraft, but disappeared on a routine flight later in 1941.

Baker would soon make 'A Night to Remember', the film all true 'Titanic' buffs prefer to James Cameron's version. Here too the virtues of understatement are evident-- crisp monochrome photography, short scenes which always drive the story on, thrifty but credible art direction. Von Werra's ordeals in the rain-soaked Lake District and the icy Canada/USA border are gruelling, and the doughtiest British spectator will not begrudge him his cheeky postcard after completing his home run. Baker used a documentary cameraman, Eric Cross, and shot the St Lawrence scenes in Sweden.