Saturday, March 20, 2010

Stalag 17 **Spoiler**

What a great movie!!  Another that I watch every time I find it on TV.  And I own it on DVD,

This movie was made in 1953and is in black & white  and is set in a WW II German POW camp.  The all male cast play a camp of sergeants trying to survive the war and fight back in their own way.  William Holden, Harvey Lembeck, Neville Brand & Peter Graves play prisoners in a camp run by Otto Preminger.  William Holden won an Oscar for the role of his career, J J Sefton, a cynical grifter who deals with the Germans for creature comforts and irritates his fellow prisoners by not careing to fit in and by discouraging their hopes of escape.  When the Germans begin to learn everything that goes on in the barracks, Sefton is the 1st suspect.  But, things are not always as the seem.


Humor abounds amidst the misery, with Lembeck and Robert Strauss providing the comic relief.  And the ingenuity of the American prisoners makes me proud. 

I always think of this movie when I hear 'When Johnny Comes Marching Home'

This movie was the model for Hogan's Heroes.

At Ease.






 

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