STALAG (17) Movie Review

1953 Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder's highly honored adaptation of the play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski really does not live up to its reputation. It's less a realistic look at life inside a German prison camp than an improbable suspense tale that depends on some clumsy contrivances. Worse yet, the moments of comic relief are appalling.

The opening overview of the camp, created through an intricate model, creates an impressive setting. After it, though, all of the important action takes place within one barracks. Stalag 17 houses 630 American airmen, all sergeants. It's a week before Christmas, 1944. The guys are tired, bored, and cold. One night, two of them attempt an escape. Sefton (William Holden), a loner who tries to turn a profit on any camp activity, bets two packs of cigarettes that the guys won't make it to the wire. When he is proved right, the others suspect that he might be a spy or a collaborator.

Their suspicions increase when a downed pilot, Lt. Dunbar (Don Taylor), is brought to their building. How do the Germans discover that he has been involved in an act of sabotage? Besides Sefton, the suspects are Price (Peter Graves), Hoffy (Richard Erdman), Blondie (Robert Shawley), “Animal” (Robert Strauss), and Shapiro (Harvey Lembeck). Someone is ratting to Sgt. Schultz (Sig Rumann) and the Commandant (Otto Preminger).

Strictly on a mechanical level, the construction and revelation of the suspense elements are handled competently, so as formula escapism, the film works well enough. But that side lacks real complexity and strong characters. To fill out the running time, Robert Strauss and Harvey Lembeck engage in ridiculous and interminable physical comedy routines. They bring to mind the worst excesses of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Strauss's purse-lipped mugging earned him a Supporting Actor nomination, showing how profoundly tastes in comedy have changed. In the same vein, Sig Rumann is clearly the inspiration for John Banner's Sgt. Schultz on television's Hogan's Heroes.

Holden won the Best Actor Academy Award for his performance, but that's a case of belated Hollywood payback for his being overlooked three years before in 1950 when he had been nominated for Sunset Boulevard and lost to Jose Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac. (When Holden won in '53, he displaced Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity, a much stronger performance judged by any criteria.)

In the end, Stalag 17 is really more a Cold War film than a World War II film. Its questions about informants, loyalty, and the tyranny of the group over the individual are concerns of the 1950s, not the 1940s.

Cast: William Holden (Sefton), Don Taylor (Lt. Dunbar), Peter Graves (Price), Otto Preminger (Oberst Von Scherbach), Harvey Lembeck (Harry Shapiro), Robert Strauss (“Animal” Stosh), Sig Rumann (Sgt. Schultz), Richard Erdman (Hoffy), Neville Brand (Duke), Gil Stratton (Cookie/Narrator), Robinson Stone (Joey), Robert Shawley (Blondie), Jay Lawrence (Bagradian); Written by: Billy Wilder, Edwin Blum; Cinematography by: Ernest Laszlo; Music by: Franz Waxman. Producer: Billy Wilder, Paramount Pictures. Awards: Academy Awards '53: Best Actor (Holden); Nominations: Academy Awards '53: Best Director (Wilder), Best Supporting Actor (Strauss). Running Time: 120 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV.