Stalag 17

Rating

Director
Billy Wilder
Screenplay
Billy Wilder, Edwin Blum (Play: Donald Bevan, Edmund Trzcinski)
Length
120 min.
Starring
William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Ricahrd Erdman, Peter Graves, Neville Brand, Sig Ruman, Michael Moore, Peter Baldwin, Robinson Stone, Robert Shawley, William Pierson, Gil Stratton Jr.,Jay Lawrence, Erwin Kalser, Edmund Trzcinski
MPAA Rating
Approved

Review
As I traverse the complex and diverse history of motion pictures, frequently through the assistance of my contributors or readers, I find myself asserting my appreciation of several directors while turning myself off to others. I’m not a huge Vincente Minnelli fan, but I can’t count how many George Cukor films I’ve fallen in love with. And while I still consider Stanley Kubrick one of my favorites, I’m beginning to think that Billy Wilder may well be my second choice on the list. His films have a certain humanity and realism that involve you with the intensity of his settings. They aren’t transparently jaded, preachy or egocentric. They are that astounding blend of revelatory, entertaining and riveting. Stalag 17 is yet another of his films I’ll add to my list of favorites.

The film surrounds the inhabitants of one of the myriad prisoner of war camps established by the Germans during World War II. They have hope, they have camaraderie, they have a spy. Suspicion obviously falls on master trader Sergeant Sefton (William Holden), a charismatic soldier capable of convincing a sheep that it won’t need its wool in the winter. And what a winter these soldiers must face. Harsh, cold and bitter, it’s a perpetual metaphor for their difficult situation. Of course, we’re certain from the beginning that Sefton isn’t the guilty party, but it’s how the barracks, a close-knit band of enlisted men, react to his constant scheming, ill-timed bets and mysterious stash of goods, that makes the bulk of the film.

Perhaps it was the distance (eight years) removed from World War II, but the propaganda has been virtually drained from the film. Had the film been made at the height of the conflict, the Germans would have been sneering, soulless, mirthless men inflicting constant pain and suffering on their prisoners. The film does a much better job painting a more likely portrait of these men, obeying orders while still treating the prisoners with as much slack as their military superiors will allow them. The performances are all above par with Holden unsurprisingly outshining them all. A young Peter Graves also does admirably as the cabin’s security chief; and Robert Strauss and Harvey Lembeck play the humor with just the right tone of joviality and bitter frustration.

Wilder’s films are so crisply invigorating and detailed that you feel as if you are right at home with his characters. From the cramped, sparse cabin in Stalag 17 to the claustrophobic interior of an alcoholic’s apartment in The Lost Weekend to the austerity of the courtroom in Witness for the Prosecution. His sets are as important to the understanding of his protagonists as the plot and performances are. Everything is in tune like only a master of his craft can create. If you add those three films to Sunset Blvd. and Some Like It Hot, you have such a wonderful career and that’s not including all the other films of his I have not yet seen.

Stalag 17 may not be the kind of anti-war polemic I find so fascinating, but it’s such a significant achievement that anyone who wants to see how prisoner of war films should be executed, they need look no further than Wilder’s Stalag 17 for inspiration, though catching The Bridge on the River Kwai might also help.
Review Written
November 1, 2010