seen on 24 March 2019
The escape on which this film is based took place on 24 March 1944, so, in honour of the RAF Benevolent Fund, a special 75th anniversary screening, preceded by live interviews with various people connected with the film and its memorabilia, or with the escape itself, was streamed from the Apollo Hammersmith and hosted by the TV history buff Dan Snow.
The film stars Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough, with other well-known and not so well-known actors, and presents a glamorised and not entirely accurate account of the escape of some 76 prisoners of war from Stalag Luft 3, a prisoner-of-war camp specially constructed to inhibit escapes (a project which was obviously not successful). Reprisals for the distractions the escape caused included the murder of fifty of the escapees (rather than their return to the camp), apparently a reduction from Hitler's incensed demand that all the prisoners be shot.
The film, made in 1963, holds up well in its depiction of escape as an adventure story, even for many of those concerned, with glancing references to the ethical problems of encouraging escape when the consequences of recapture could be dire (not that any of the men anticipated summary 'execution'), and attention paid to a number of personal issues such as incipient myopia, uncontrollable claustrophobia, and general psychological breakdown. The sheer physical difficulty of tunnel construction is apparent but not fully realised; the prisoners' clothes in particular remain on the whole presentable and not particularly dirty. Prolonged consignment to 'the cooler', a series of solitary confinement punishment cells, would have resulted in a far more filthy appearance than the glamorous Steve McQueen could ever countenance - there was no evidence of an ablutions block for such prisoners but the general tone of heroics overwhelmed gritty realism. Only the variety of ways by which many of the prisoners were detected and apprehended while on the run prepared for the more sober denouement, while the hints of the jockeying for influence of the various Nazi groups (principally Luftwaffe or Gestapo) in running the camp were only glancingly referred to, but with sufficient menace to cause some disquiet. The trope of officers of honour on both sides was well represented by the frosty respect between the senior RAF prisoner and the camp commander who is appalled at the fifty deaths and is ultimately relieved of his command.
Fascinating to see a Hollywood war movie from the unsophisticated days when military subjects could still be treated with respect rather than cynicism, even though it is slightly compromised by the daredevil stunts deemed necessary for entertainment, and the inclusion of American prisoners of war when there were none in fact involved in that particular escape (to say nothing of employing James Coburn to attempt an unconvincing Australian accent).
