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The Great Escape
1963 · Film · 173 min
Directed by John Sturges
The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.
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14 comments on Hacker News
If it's the famous Great Escape about which the movie was made, only three men who escaped made it to freedom, and just eleven more were recaptured and survived to the end of the war— the rest of the 77 were shot. Of those 14 survivors, most passed away in the 1990s, so if you actually did get to meet one, that's pretty neat!
Certainly the depiction in the movie is that it was absolutely worth it to the men; maybe in practical terms it resulted in greater loss of life than just cooperating with the confinement, but there is value to the spirit in resisting evil that goes beyond the simple imperative to stay alive.
The screenwriters could simply insert American characters into the story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_(film)
I was given "The Great Escape" by Paul Brickhill as a teenager (long ago) and fascinated by the Prisoners Of War resourcefulness in not being controlled by their environment. Some innovations included stealing electric wiring to light the long tunnels, making forged `official' documents without a typewriter and hiding the tunnel `tailings' in plain sight. The movie doesn't do justice to the true story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_(book)
Lovely article. But I have my doubts. Were these prisoners really outwitting their guards, or might it have been the other way around?
Is not instructing their captors in engineering subjects, navigation and astronomy, which all have substantial military applications, clearly disloyalty to the Allies at the time?
Is this not just a story about how the Japanese were able to gain military intelligence on Western manufacturing and machine shop techniques from these brilliant craftsmen with their "secret" lathe?
We have all seen the movie The Great Escape and various other prisoner/POW movies, but that's not how things were. Assuming that the bunkhouses were separate from the workshop facilities, and fully under Japanese control, I assume that the Japanese were able to inspect each and any of these marvelous technical works in progress at their leisure.
The most cynical take is that it appears no effort was spared in sharing decades or even centuries of technological progress and advancement in various technologies with the Japanese, who at the time were at war with the Allies.
In other words, you can be pretty smart, but pretty stupid. Or, as a POW you just need to do what you can to survive, and you're also smart enough to rescue yourself from court martial at the end.
The Great Escape movie made it seem quite upbeat.
Peter Parker for one. > Hey guys, you ever see that really old movie, The Empire Strikes Back
As a kid I watched many films from my parent's generation. Mary Poppins (1964) or Great Escape (1963) come to mind as being staples every christmas -- Great Escape on boxing day especially
A generation before that people watched "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) for much the same reason.
I've subjected my kids to a few old films from well before they were born, but they were films from my youth -- Bill and Ted, Back to the Future, Men in Black, Muppet Christmas Carol etc. And yes they've seen Star Wars, which was from before I was born (just), but that's an ongoing franchise.
I don't see them watching films from the 1960s like I did though, and I doubt they'll make their kids sit through films from the 90s.
No issue with movie product placements in general, though they are sometimes a little bit absurd. Film makers should be a little bit more discerning. But i think to revise old movies is unacceptable. For one thing, the actors/ directors may not have agreed with the ethos of the products they are "advertising". And i think it would be plain vandalism almost revisionism. I don't particularly want to watch the great escape and be forced to see a great big "drink heineken" sign, or a billboard promoting Amazon Prime. It's a no from me.
Great Escape is a Christmas movie to me, it was always on around Christmas or new year as a kid.
Also mentioned in "The Colditz Story" by Pat Reid, a good book similar to the movie "The Great Escape".
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Colditz_Story.html?id=HYPWAwAAQBAJ
This is the whole point of the movie the Great Escape. The allied prisoners know they won't be tortured since they're in a Luftwaffe camp and not a Gestapo one. After the escape, the ones who are recaptured are handed over to the Gestapo and are executed. Even in a 1963 film set in a Nazi POW camp, it was understood that there were rules. Sic transit.
Reminded me of the movie the Great Escape. There's a scene in which they make potato moonshine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md2GFtBCIh8
For some of the younger people here, I highly recommend The Great Escape [1] if you're in a mood for a great WWII movie.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057115/
From the movie "The Great Escape": "Ex-POWs asked filmmakers to exclude details about the help they received from their home countries, such as maps, papers, and tools hidden in gift packages, lest it jeopardize future POW escapes. The filmmakers complied." src: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_%28film%29#Adaptation
This has happened to British Agents before in WWII. I remember seeing a documentary about training British agents to infiltrate France. While in France one agent got caught out by asking for a black coffee. This was the default coffee at the time in France, people would just ask for a coffee and expect a black coffee. This made him stand out.
There are similar stories like this in movies, such as the Great Escape, when one of the escaping prisoners is dressed as a civilian and is boarding a bus in town. A German Officer says in English "Good luck", the prisoner replies in English "thank you" and is caught.