For Summer Flicks, You Can’t Beat The 1953 POW Comedy ‘Stalag 17’ ‘Stalag 17’ is a weird name and a weird movie. You’re in for a great surprise: an Oscar-winning all-American movie utterly without imitation.By Titus Techera
July 3, 2017 In the summer of 1953, “Stalag 17” was released, and became one of the biggest successes of Billy Wilder, the most Oscar-nominated man in old Hollywood. It’s a weird name and it’s a weird movie.
It’s set during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, near the end of World War II, but it’s not about the war. It’s about a POW camp where Nazis torment American airmen—but it’s not a tragedy. I hope that gets your attention, because you’re in for a great surprise: an all-American movie utterly without imitation.
Moreover, it has a strange authenticity: It’s an adaptation of a Broadway play written by two former POWs in the camp of that name, Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski. It has the snappy dialogue and suspense of old American detective stories. “Stalag 17” is a strange combination of two elements that shouldn’t fit together, but which add up to a classic of American cinema. There is the comedy, ultimately made possible by American victory in WWII, and then there is the serious attempt to show that even in that POW camp, Americans remained American, with their particular virtues and vices.
The style of comedy hearkens back to screwball and slapstick. This might shock or bewilder audiences now, but it’s a gem. It is as lowbrow as it gets without profanity, which was not tolerated at the time, and rather crafty. Character actors, timing, and gags all rely on a long tradition of American movie-making now unfortunately lost. It also has a deep meaning to which I will get later.
A Story of Treachery and HeroismIt includes a dead-serious story of treachery in an American barracks. Among the 640 American airmen imprisoned in the POW camp in Austria after having been shot down, one is selling the others out to the Nazis. This brings up serious questions about justice and freedom, about moral conduct and intelligence. Even in the enslavement of the POW camp, with all the indignities and dangers, it is possible to be a hero or a villain, to do right by others or betray them. The human predicament, with all the modifications of this most unusual situation, unfolds.
Now, it’s hard to say why this movie touches greatness without giving away the game, and especially with mysteries we do not wish to have surprises ruined. I want you to go watch it, and I’m only writing to give you an opening into the wonderful world of Billy Wilder. So instead of taking you through the plot, I will talk about the problems the movie raises and what they are supposed to get the audience to think and talk about.
We are only introduced to the men of one of the barracks, including a couple of jokers whose antics remind us how lonely men get. They also show off Brooklyn wit, that comic defiance. They’re fools in a way that keeps them free.
One of the men, the care of the barracks, has been broken mentally, but is still able to accept the tenderness and protection of his fellow men. He takes to music. The story is set during Christmas 1944, so there are some carols, but the song that defines the picture is “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” It has a bit of the heroic touch and a longing for peace.
Social Conflict Over AuthorityWe know how the war ended, but there’s trouble before peace. The three men elected to run the barracks learn they have a spy in their midst. They lead the men into enmity again our protagonist because he has it so much better than they do and because he humiliates their claims to rule with the consent of the people—in short, he shows them up.
The twin principles of America, the justice of American equality and the freedom to do as one pleases so long as one does not harm others, come into conflict, and the possibility for tragedy arises rather too quickly for comfort. Funny as the story is, bracing as the heroism of the men is, they are far from perfect.
Different men deal with prison differently. Sefton has turned to satisfying the usual vices of men: booze, gambling, and ogling the woman side of the camp. He’s all about the pleasures of the body and does not have to moralize with anyone to get customers. He does it for a price, this humanist, and lives well off the proceeds! Is he not doing well by doing good, the very model of a capitalist entrepreneur?
He bribes the German guards to look the other way and spends his money on the foolish luxuries that are the only diversion in the camp. When life gives the POWs potato soup, they make a washbasin out of it. When life gives him potato shavings, he makes booze out of them. He does not respect the hierarchy of the prisoners: he reminds them, as soon as he arrives, his few possessions had been stolen, and where had all their professions of justice and brotherhood been then?
This man lives off his brains and has ideas about making a profit. He is a realist. He despises people who try to escape. They’re getting themselves killed and everyone worships them as heroes. For what? Even if they escape, they’d just be shipped back to war and end up in the same place, if not worse.
He stretches matters out of jealousy—they are, after all, admired and he is despised, if envied. When a new man is brought in who deserves the hero treatment he receives, our man has recourse to the basest class resentment. He consistently takes the low view of things. He has lots of stuff, but no class. Nobody likes him.
He dislikes them back. They’re suckers, for his business as much as for heroes. He does as all clever kids do, taking recourse to sarcasm. He cannot rule them because of their low opinion of him, but he wants to humiliate them for their stupid hopes. He will bring them down to his level.
He bets against their daring heroes, the last best hope of freedom, they think, and wins. Do they have recourse to more brains to improve their schemes? No, in their own resentment, they turn on him. He gets what he deserves: he treated them as fools and they live down to his expectations.
The Moral and Political Responsibilities of Freedom<..snip..>
http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/03/summer-flicks-cant-beat-1953-pow-comedy-stalag-17/
