The Great Escape (1963)

User Rating:

8.4/10   

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:

Several hundred Allied POWs plan a mass escape from a German POW camp.

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

Colour:

Colour

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:

James Garner developed his "Scrounger" character from his own personal experiences in the military during the Korean War.

Goofs:

Continuity: On their first day in camp, Hilts throws his baseball to the wire to check the Germans' lines of sight. When he is finally stopped and the commandant comes over and Hilts is explaining what he was doing, the position of his hands change in differently angled shots.

Quotes:

Ramsey: Did the Gestapo give you a rough time?
Bartlett: Not nearly as rough as I now intend to give them.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Married with Children: The Great Escape (#2.18)" (1988)

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.