TinsHeadline Touches You

Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Leofwine_draca STALAG 17 is one of the granddaddies of the prisoner of war genre and stands out from having a lightness of touch which comes to the production courtesy of director Billy Wilder. Certainly Wilder skirts the more depressing aspects of life in a Nazi prisoner of war camp and instead concentrates on presenting the larger than life characters who occupy one of the buildings. There's a lot of incidental character humour inserted into the movie, particularly with the antics of a couple of losers who spend their days boozing and dreaming about women.Thankfully the comic hijinks don't retreat from the thrills of the main storyline, which is about one of the men being a secret informer who keeps telling the German camp commanders all of the prisoners's secrets. Poor old William Holden - a likable everyman hero - is suspected thanks to his wheeling and dealing ways, but of course he's innocent so he has to try to figure out the identity of the man for himself.This is a breezy movie with little material to offend or bore. The acting is exemplary and the pacing, although slow, is sufficient enough to keep you intrigued throughout. There are some good actors in support including Neville Brand, Peter Graves, Otto Preminger, and Robert Strauss. Some of the set-piece scenes, particularly towards the climax, are particularly thrilling. STALAG 17 is a lot of fun.

Prismark10 Stalag 17 is directed by the legendary Billy Wilder. It is an adaptation of a stage play and was filmed just seven years after the end of the Second World War.Its an uneasy mixture of drama, suspense and broad comedy. Given how some British movies made in the 1960s were so pompous about the war its refreshing to see an anarchic take of the war few years after the end of hostilities.Stalag 17 is a Prisoner of War camp inside Germany with captured American personnel. The film opens with two men trying to escape who are soon captured and killed. The prisoners think that one of them is a rat and suspicion falls on Sefton (William Holden) the resident black marketeer and hence not the most popular person in the hut. Sefton's character is similar to George Segal's character in King Rat, a man who knows how to live on his wits and his mission is to survive, preferably in some comfort.Some of the comedy did not work for me, I found it irritating. It focuses on Animal who is infatuated with Betty Grable and wants to break into the nearby compound which holds Russian female POWs and his friend Shapiro. The film would had been better if they were the two characters trying to escape at the beginning of the film and shot.Yet there are some serious aspects to the film. The men are held in filthy conditions given new blankets for a few hours when the man from Geneva arrives to inspect the camp for human man rights breaches and are then quickly taken away. They receive letters from back home and find out that they are behind on their rental payments or their spouses might be cheating on them.However it looks not all of the men are American. One of them is a German inside man, placed there to find out all manner of information that could be important to the Germans. Sergeant Schultz who regularly comes into the hut and takes part in the buffoonery with the prisoners is also exchanging messages with the insider. This plot only unfolds as Sefton realises he needs to clear his name quickly and sets about to unravel the rat.I did feel that bit of the plot was not very strong. No one in that hut played chess, yet the chessboard was always out and no one seems to have noticed the knotted/unknotted cord. Also with Sefton now the prime suspect, we see the real insider asking one of the new men for information on a sabotage event that took place. Its clear that the men would eventually realise that Sefton was not the rat, especially if they managed to get Sefton out of the way like kill him.I class Stalag 17 as a curious war film which was sold as a comedy. It is neither a comedy nor a straight drama. It inspired the television series Hogan's Heroes and William Holden won a best actor Oscar for his role.

TheLittleSongbird Billy Wilder was a truly great director, whose best work was up there with the best films ever made (i.e. Sunset Boulevard) and even lesser films like The Emperor Waltz were still worth watching. Stalag 17 is not quite one of my favourites from Wilder but that doesn't stop it from being a classic.As always with Wilder's films, Stalag 17 visually is a very well-made film, and German PoW camp life is very effectively and accurately depicted as claustrophobic. It's beautifully photographed and atmospherically lit, still managing to look aesthetically pleasing while still making the claustrophobic setting as evocative as possible and never looking too flashy or static. As always, there is nothing really to fault Wilder's direction, his visual and writing always shines and he doesn't fail to make the story or characters interesting. Franz Waxman's score is another winner from him, stirring, luscious and haunting while always being appropriate to the film's mood and not being too syrupy.Stalag 17 has a very compelling story, with a good mix of the hilarious, the poignant and the foreboding, emotions are never forced, the pacing is both controlled and exciting, for me the comedy didn't get too much or too goofy and the suspense and tension reach nail-biting heights. The script superbly balances comedy, drama and even satire, what the film tried to be and do not once coming into question. The comedy, a lot of it deliciously dark, is genuinely funny and quite endearing, it may be too much or too goofy for some viewers (depending on whether the antics of Animal and Harry are to your tastes or not) but it appealed to me just fine, and Animal and Harry's antics were appropriately light-hearted and gave the film its heart. The drama doesn't fall into clichés and doesn't slow the film at all, also avoiding the mistake of some comedy-dramas seen of jarring with the comedy to the extent the film feels like two different ones. It's also very charming and poignant. The satire is sharp and biting without falling into attacking or bitterness, never does it feel like it's too much.The performances are spot-on from a top notch, and they are advantaged by the fact that the characters are interesting and their situation relatable without falling into stereotypes (even when more stylised that's even including the Germans). William Holden got a well-deserved Oscar for his powerful performance in a somewhat unsympathetic role, while Robert Strauss is funny and moving as Animal, the character that can be seen as the heart of the story, and Otto Preminger (in a surprise piece of casting, considering I know him better as a director) mesmerises as a particularly nasty character, looking like he was having a whale of a time. Harvey Lembeck, like Strauss, was part of the original Broadway run, and it's easy to see why in a fine performance that endears far more than it annoys. Sig Ruman gives a character that could have easily been a buffoonish caricature some welcome subtlety and genuine menace while clearly having a ball.Overall, another Billy Wilder classic. 10/10 Bethany Cox

SnoopyStyle It's the end of 1944. Sgt. J.J. Sefton (William Holden) is a cynic and an opportunist who bets against fellow prisoners escaping. They're American POWs in Stalag 17. The prison commandant Oberst von Scherbach (Otto Preminger) seems to have an informer in Barrack 4. Sgt. Frank Price (Peter Graves) is the prisoners' security chief. Animal (Robert Strauss) is the barrack's loud wild man. Duke (Neville Brand) is the hothead. For some, the obvious leak is Sefton who trades with the guards. After some more setbacks, the men beat up Sefton. Sefton figures that he needs to find the real leak.I don't really like the broad comedy coming from Animal and Harry. They just take the seriousness out of darker POW story. The two different tones keep stepping on each other. I really don't like the broad comedy. The secret informer is quite compelling although I would have made Dunbar fake the sabotage story. That would have worked even better especially considering Sefton talking about how his mother buying his way out of trouble.