Stalag 17
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- This is about the Film. For the punk band, see Stalag 17(band).
The movie was adapted by Billy Wilder and Edwin Blum from a Broadway play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski. The play began its run in May, 1951, continued for 472 performances and was based on the experiences of its authors, both of whom were POWs in Stalag 17B in Austria. The storyline is dramatic, skillfully interspersed with ironic and comedic references to 1940s American wartime culture which serve to develop the characters and realistic setting.
In reality, today the site of Stalag XVII-B is in Austria just east of a small village called Gneixendorf, about 3 kilometers north of the town of Krems on the Danube. As of 1997, nothing remains of the physical camp and its location was being used as agricultural land, as it clearly had been for a long period of time. The physical location is not marked in any way on the ground or on published maps. [Stalag XVII-B - Google Maps]
It won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role (William Holden) and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Robert Strauss) and Best Director.
Holden's acceptance speech for his Academy Award was the shortest on record: "Thank you."
The film was well received, and along with The Great Escape, it is considered one of the greatest World War II Prisoner of War films. Both Bevan and Trzcinski appear in the film as prisoners.
The film is currently available on VHS and DVD, and a Special Edition DVD was released on March 21, 2006.
Plot synopsis
Although the date is never stated, Stalag 17 begins on "the longest night of the year" in 1944 which would make it Friday, Dec. 22nd 1944 - the Winter Solstice that year [1]. The prisoner-of-war camp is located somewhere along the Danube River. The story of a Nazi spy in Barracks Four is narrated by Clarence Harvey "Cookie" Cook (Gil Stratton).
One night, prisoners Manfredi and Johnson try to escape through a tunnel the inmates have dug under the barbed wire. They are immediately shot as they emerge from the other end. The prisoners believe there is a spy in their midst since the Germans obviously knew about the tunnel, but the barracks security officer, Price (Peter Graves) fails to uncover his identity.
Sefton (William Holden) is the main suspect; he barters openly with the German guards for eggs, silk stockings, blankets and other luxuries. He also organizes rat races and various other profitable enterprises. The other prisoners are suspicious of his fraternization with the enemy, as well as envious of his success. Sefton himself is rather cynical, cold, and impersonal; he bets on whether Manfredi and Johnson will actually escape, then trades the cigarettes he wins to the Germans for an egg the next morning.
The lives of the prisoners are depicted, although in a somewhat sanitized way. They receive mail, eat terrible food, wash in the latrine sinks, and collectively do their best to keep sane and defy the camp's cruel and ruthless commandant, von Scherbach (Otto Preminger). They use a clandestine radio (shared by all the barracks) to pick up the BBC and the war news. (The antenna is their volleyball net.) Their "supervisor", Sergeant Schulz (Sig Ruman), confiscates the radio, another success for the "stoolie", whoever he is.
Sefton bribes the guards to let him spend a night in the women's barracks in the Russian section of the camp. The other prisoners spot him through Sefton's telescope, and conclude that this is his reward for informing the Germans about the radio. When he returns, he is accused of being a spy. At that moment, von Scherbach pays a visit to the barracks to apprehend new prisoner Lieutenant James Dunbar (Don Taylor), who the Germans correctly suspect of blowing up a German ammunition train while he was being transported to the camp. The men are now convinced that Sefton is the spy and viciously beat him, after which he is ostracized. Sefton decides to investigate and uncover the identity of the spy himself.
On Christmas Day, the men find out that SS men are coming to take Dunbar to Berlin, to be executed for his act of sabotage. The entire camp creates a distraction and Dunbar is taken from the SS and hidden. The guards search the camp thoroughly, but can't find him. Later, the men of Barracks Four, excluding Sefton, plan to draw a name from a hat to see who will try to get Dunbar out of the camp, but Price volunteers first. At this point, Sefton reveals that the spy is Price. Sefton shows how messages were passed between Price and Schulz, then asks him, "When was Pearl Harbor?" Price knows the date of course, but Sefton traps him by quickly asking what time he heard the news. Without thinking, he betrays himself by answering 6 p.m. — the correct time in Germany.
With his fellow POWs convinced, Sefton decides to take Dunbar out himself, for the reward he can expect from Dunbar's rich family. The men give Sefton enough time to get Dunbar out of his hiding place, the water tower. To distract the guards in the gun towers, they throw Price out into the yard with tin cans tied to his legs. The ruse works: Price is killed in a hail of bullets (to the great annoyance of von Scherbach and Schulz) while Dunbar and Sefton cut through the wire and make their escape.
External links
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