The Great Escape (1963)

The detailed extras on this Blu-ray (nearly all of which have appeared previously) provide multiple perspectives and support hours of consideration by viewers of all backgrounds. But one point emerges from these materials that would be hard to dispute: While The Great Escape may be based on actual events, the film bears the unmistakable stamp of producer-director John Sturges, whose singular determination to bring this story to the screen brooked no obstacles.

It was Sturges who overcame the reluctance of author Paul Brickhill, himself a survivor of the Nazi POW camp designated as Stalag Luft III, to allow his non-fiction account to be transformed into a screenplay. It was Sturges who persuaded United Artists and the Mirisch Company to put up $4 million (a modest amount for a film of this scale, even in 1963), when all of the major studios had already passed. It was Sturges who assembled the peerless ensemble cast for which the film is rightly remembered, steered them through a lengthy shoot without a finished script, and bucked up their spirits when many of them became convinced they were making a flop. And it was Sturges who successfully wrangled the film's temperamental "star" Steve McQueen—who wasn't really its star, but had to be made to feel like he was—thereby preserving McQueen's iconic flight on a motorcycle as the film's defining image.

Sturges didn't win awards for The Great Escape, but he didn't make it for that purpose. His real satisfaction came, as he made clear in remarks recorded in 1974 and reproduced on the commentary track, when men who were there at Stalag Luft III and participated in the events depicted in the film told him he'd done a good job capturing the spirit of their story.

After a panoramic opening in which a fleet of trucks deposit their human cargo at the newly opened POW camp—reconstructed by the production crew in the Bavarian woods so accurately that the set gave nightmares to technical advisor Wally Floody, a former inmate at Stalag Luft III—the essential plot is outlined in a tense, formal meeting between the two commanding officers, German Luftwaffe Colonel Von Luger (Hannes Messemer) and British Group Captain Ramsey (James Donald). Von Luger explains that the Nazis are tired of expending resources chasing after escaped Allied prisoners. They have gathered all of the "bad eggs" in one maximum security "basket". Since all of the prisoners in the camp are officers, they will be treated with dignity and afforded appropriate privileges, but they should resign themselves to sitting out the war.

Captain Ramsey responds that it is the duty of every officer to attempt escape, to force the enemy to consume maximum resources to contain him, and generally to harass the enemy to the fullest extent possible. The battle lines have been drawn.

Detailed planning begins with the arrival of Squadron Leader Bartlett (a youthful Richard Attenborough), after harsh interrogation by the Gestapo and SS. Warned that he'll be shot if he attempts another escape, Bartlett immediately commences an ambitious undertaking on a scale never before conceived: a mass exodus of 250 men involving three tunnels (code-named "Tom", "Dick" and "Harry"), disguises, forged papers, maps and compasses. The entire camp is transformed into a surreptitious escape factory under a carefully maintained cover of normalcy.

One can imagine how studio executives balked at Sturges' notion of dwelling at length on the minutia of escape preparations, but then as now the results are enthralling. No director has surpassed (and few have equaled) Sturges' ability to present complex logistics with such apparently effortless clarity. Distances are surveyed and measured; tools are created from stolen parts; ground is broken (the sounds disguised by various ingenious methods); tunnel entrances are concealed; digging, tailoring and document forging continue 'round the clock. A highlight is the development of a simple but ingenious system by Eric Ashley-Pitt of the Royal Navy (David McCallum) for dispersing the copious quantities of dirt removed from the three tunnels.

A major reason these scenes work is that they aren't just about mechanics. They're also about the relationships forged among men working toward a common purpose. An obvious example is the close coordination between the two principal diggers, a/k/a "the Tunnel Kings", Flight Lieutenant Danny Velinski (Charles Bronson), a native Pole who escaped to England, and Willie Dickes (John Leyton). But perhaps the most unlikely friendship is that between Flight Lieutenant Robert Hendley (James Garner), an American in the RAF dubbed "the Scrounger", and an interpreter of aerial photographs named Colin Blythe (Donald Pleasance), who made the mistake of tagging along on a routine flight just for the experience. Shot down over Europe and captured by the enemy, Blythe now works as the team's document forger. He and Hendley bond over trivia such as Hendley's ability to secure milk for Blythe's tea and weightier matters such as the urgent need to secure exemplars of critical German papers for Blythe to forge. When Blythe encounters difficulties during the escape, there is never any doubt that Hendley will risk his own life to assist his friend and partner.

Hendley is not the only American in the camp. (In real life, all Americans were transferred out of Stalag Luft III several months before the escape.) An American flyer, Captain Virgil Hilts (McQueen), is sent to solitary confinement in "the cooler" on his first day for testing out a blind spot in the barbed wire perimeter. A defiant Scot, Archibald Ives of the RAF (Angus Lennie), is sent there with him. It's the first of many stretches in the cooler for Hilts, who is defiance incarnate. Every time he heads back to the cooler, another American, Goff (Jud Taylor), throws him a baseball and glove to help pass the time.

McQueen is off-screen for much of The Great Escape (a point that did not sit well with the insecure star), but the defiant tone he so effectively strikes in his early appearance reverberates throughout the film and is reinforced every time Hilts emerges from the cooler newly emboldened to attempt another escape. Initially wary of Squadron Leader Bartlett's effort to coordinate a massive flight, Hilts ultimately agrees to play a key role in order to settle a personal score against the camp authorities. When the escape finally occurs, it's appropriately Hilts who leads the German army on the grandest and most spectacular of all the chases. (In reality, no escapee rode a motorcycle. It was McQueen's idea, and he happened to be good at it.)

The final act of The Great Escape is a directorial juggling act, as the fugitives scatter in all directions, fleeing their pursuers by truck, train, boat, bicycle and on foot. The film's sole Oscar nomination was for Ferris Webster's crisp editing, but here, too, much credit belongs to Sturges, who began his career in Hollywood as an editor. Sturges understood how to shoot these sequences to maintain the sense of men pursuing a common purpose, even as they become separated by distance. He also managed the tricky balance of retaining a sense of hope while not downplaying the truth of what the escapees' efforts cost them. There were many casualties of The Great Escape, and the film is dedicated to their memory.