The Great Escape ***** (1963, Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Donald Pleasence, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, David McCallum, Gordon Jackson, Nigel Stock, James Donald, John Leyton) – Classic Movie Review 201

One of everybody’s favourite war films, director John Sturges’s 1963 classic The Great Escape is one of the most famous and popular prison escape films of all time. The bold plan here is that several hundred prisoners should escape all at the same time. A tribute to old-fashioned heroism and bravery, this much loved movie is a guaranteed inspirational spirit-lifter.

Of course you know the story, because the film is on TV all the time. In 1943, Allied prisoners in Germany build three escape tunnels for a mass escape from the Nazis’ maximum security compound Stalag Luft III North, oddly the same prisoner-of-war camp where the escape in The Wooden Horse (1950) was being engineered simultaneously.

A marvellous roster of Sixties international stars is assembled to play the quirky characters planning the spectacular breakout from the German PoW camp. Playing Hilts the Cooler King, Steve McQueen makes his escape the most thrilling of all. His ride on a stolen Nazi motorbike certainly supplies the film’s most exciting and memorable sequence.

The famous 60ft-jump over the fence stunt was actually performed by McQueen’s buddy, Bud Ekins, then manager of an LA motorbike shop, who started a new career as McQueen’s stand-in. Otherwise McQueen did his own riding, all added at his suggestion.

But many other tense situations and great moments are staged throughout the movie. It is an epic of wartime suspense and adventure. The notable score is composed by Elmer Bernstein.

And the film is packed with fine portrayals, including Donald Pleasence at his best as Blythe, the semi-blind, mild-mannered English forger; James Garner as American RAF officer Flight Lieutenant Bob Hendley (‘The Scrounger’); Richard Attenborough as RAF officer Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (‘Big X’), ringleader of the escape committee; Charles Bronson as Polish RAF officer Flight Lieutenant Danny Welinski (‘Tunnel King’); and James Coburn as Australian officer Flying Officer Sedgwick (‘The Manufacturer’), who constructs tools for the escape.

Also important to the cast are David McCallum as Fleet Air Arm officer Lieutenant-Commander Eric Ashley-Pitt (‘Dispersal’) who devises a way to get rid of the tunnel dirt; Gordon Jackson as Bartlett’s second-in-command Flight Lieutenant Alexander MacDonald (‘Intelligence’); John Leyton as Flight Lieutenant Willie Dickes (‘Tunnel King’); Nigel Stock  as Flight Lieutenant Dennis Cavendish (‘The Surveyor’) who surveys the tunnel routes; and James Donald as Group Captain Ramsey (‘The SBO’), the most senior British and Allied officer in the camp who serves as an intermediary between the Germans and the POWs as their leader.

It is such a cool, cool cast, though McQueen is certainly king of the cool.

The comedic jokey tone of the first half effectively gives way to the perilous high adventure mood of the second. Director John Sturges shoots the movie in an intense, urgent style in a forest location in Germany, where the camp was reconstructed.

There is a fine, distinguished screenplay by James Clavell and W R Burnett, based on the 1950 true story book by Paul Brickhill, the author of The Dam Busters (1954) and Reach for the Sky (1956). Brickhill was shot down over Tunisia in 1943, taken to Stalag Luft III and assisted in escape work as a minor member of the X Organisation, acting as one of the ‘stooges’ who monitored German movements in the camp.

John Leyton as Flight Lieutenant Willie Dickes (‘Tunnel King’) in Von Ryan’s Express (1965).

John Leyton  (born 17 February 1936), who plays Willie the Tunnel King, was a former pop star, who rocketed to fame and number one in the UK with ‘Johnny Remember Me’ in 1961 despite its being banned for its death references by the BBC. His follow-up single ‘Wild Wind’ reached number two.

William Russell (born 19 November 1924) starred in the ITV series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956–1957) and in 1963, he became part of the lead cast of BBC1’s Doctor Who from the first episode until 1965.

Sequel: The Great Escape II: The Untold Story in 1988 with Donald Pleasence as a cast survivor from the original movie.

Also in the cast are Hannes Messemer as Oberst von Luger (‘The Kommandant’), Angus Lennie as Flying Officer Archie Ives (‘The Mole’), Robert Graf as Werner (‘The Ferret’), Jud Taylor as Second Lieutenant Goff, Hans Reiser as Kuhn, Harry Riebauer as Stabsfeldwebel Strachwitz, William Russell as British officer Sorren (‘Security’), Robert Freitag as Hauptmann Posen, Ulrich Beiger as Gestapo officer Preissen, George Mikell as SS officer SD Hauptsturmführer Dietrich, Lawrence Montaigne as Canadian officer Haynes (‘Diversions’), Robert Desmond as British officer Griffith (‘Tailor’), Til Kiwe as Frick, Heinz Weiss as Kramer, Tom Adams as Welsh officer Dai Nimmo (‘Diversions’), and Karl-Otto Alberty as SS officer SD Untersturmführer Steinach.

These are the top 10 wartime escape stories

1. The Great Escape (1963)
2. Escape to Victory [Victory] 1981)
3. Von Ryan’s Express **** (1965)
4. Schindler’s List (1995)
5. The Pianist (2001)
6. The Wooden Horse (1950)
7. Dunkirk (1958)
8. The Colditz Story (1954)
9. The One that Got Away (1957)
10. The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017)

James Garner, best known for his charming, wry anti-heroes in TV’s The Rockford Files and Maverick, died on 19 July 2014, aged 86. He recovered from a quintuple heart bypass in 1998 but suffered a stroke in 2008.

His cinema roles include The Thrill of It All (1963), Move Over, Darling (1963), The Great Escape (1963), The Americanization of Emily (1964), Grand Prix (1966), Support Your Local Sheriff!(1969), Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), Sunset, Victor/Victoria (1982), Murphy’s Romance (1985) which earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination, Tank, Twilight, Maverick (1994), My Fellow Americans (1996), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Notebook.

On TV, he received an Emmy nomination for best actor in Maverick in 1959 and won an Emmy as private investigator Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files in 1977.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. made David McCallum a sex symbol.

David McCallum: for ever Illya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. 

David McCallum (born in Glasgow on 19 September 1933) died at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on 25 September 2023, a week after his 90th birthday. He made his film debut in Ill Met by Moonlight in 1957. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. made McCallum a sex symbol and a huge TV star. Film spinoffs included To Trap a Spy (1964) and The Spy with My Face (1965).

McCallum’s wife Jill Ireland divorced him and married Charles Bronson after McCallum introduced them while the men were filming The Great Escape.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 201

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