[MEOW] Stalag 17

[Kyle]

This is the discussion thread for the Nerd Pride Radio Movie of the Every Other Week!

This thread is only for those who have seen the movie recently. Commentary from people who haven't seen it will be deleted.

This Every Other Week’s Movie: Stalag 17, selected by poorpete

WARNING- ALL SPOILERS FOR THIS MOVIE ARE ALLOWED! For real, if you haven't seen it, don't read any further!

Discuss!

[poorpete]

This movie has it all, by if all you include a complete and total failure of the Bechdel test. Made well after the truth of the Holocaust was known, you'd guess the worse thing about being a prisoner of Nazis was boredom. And most importantly, influenced the a widely-held-as-mediocre tv show Hogan's Heroes.

All that aside, it has top notch great ensemble acting from all, but especially from Robert Strauss as Animal, who would have his own spin-off if this came out today. Top notch writing and directing by Billy Wilder, whose confidence in comedy and camera I'll always love and be jealous of.

Watching this twice before in the 00s and 90s, I viewed William Holden's Sefton as a true good guy, but this time saw his unsavory sides add shade. Sure he wasn't the spy, sure he was falsely accused, sure he figured out the truth, and sure he escaped, but he still was introduced by betting on the deaths of his prisonmates. He's kinda a jerk. He was fine paling around with Nazis. Even in the end, he figured escaping with a rich man would lead to a hefty reward. He liked the odds, and he liked how it'd get him money as much as freedom. He also lit a match with a man's neck. Not cool. I mean cool, very cool. But not cool.

[Tahlvin]

I’ve seen this a couple times before as well, and I like it. I like the cast in general. Though the Sergeant Schultz-like character seems cliche, having watched this after having watched Hogan’s Heroes growing up. At least this one wasn’t as much of a schmutz as the TV show character, using his affability to disguise his dealings with the spy. Sefton is a good non-hero, and you want to like him for being wrongly accused, but he’s definitely shady and opportunistic. But hey, you do what you gotta do to survive in those situations. I was a bit bothered by the guards’ shoot-first-to-kill act at the end; the guy’s making noise in the yard on purpose and yelling out to you in German, so your approach is to unload on him?! But I still really enjoy this. It reminds of watching the old war movies or westerns on weekend afternoons when I was a kid.

[Mike]

Not my bag at all. I appreciated the dramatic story in all of this and I appreciated some of the acting, but overall the mix of serious thriller and light-hearted comedy didn't appeal to me.

The spy drama was great, and I loved that it didn't have to rely on chase scenes and drawn out fight sequences to tell a story. If this were remade today, it would have ended with a huge fistfight or firefight pitting Sefton against Security and/or some Nazi guard/officer in order to make his final escape. It was refreshing to NOT see that.

But the comedy was lame. If I had a history with this movie, maybe I'd appreciate it. Same way I can appreciate Three Stooges slapstick, even though the Stooges are just not funny anymore. The whole Betty Grable hallucination and the bit with crashing the women's camp were just out of place for me. If this was solely a comedy, that's one thing, but this was also a world with life or death real world consequences. So the image of Russian women being stripped down and forced through the showers in a German POW camp and then giggling and batting their eyes at the funny Americans was just a bridge too far for me.

I thought Bill Holden and Peter Graves were fantastic and liked some of the others--I really dug Otto Preminger's transparent nice-guy act over the cruelty of being a Nazi colonel. But the comic actors just felt too broad and out of place. Strauss and Lembeck as Animal and Harry always felt to me like they were in a stage play over-enunciating and gesticulating for the benefit of those in the back.

Not my thing.

[Kyle]

Several thoughts. First, I liked this movie but I'm not sure I'd recommend it because I didn't love it. Particularly, I thought the comedy was a product of its time- slapsticky and dopey. Nothing clever. I'm not criticizing the movie because I'm sure that at the time, this was particularly hilarious and played well with a general audience. But in today's atmosphere, it just seemed sophomoric and predictable. So for a large part of the comedy-part of the movie, I felt like it was a bit of a slog.

As I was watching, I wonder how much a modern audience is missing out on the cultural context that this movie is playing to. This movie came out in 53, less than 10 years after the war. Nazis, invasions, bombings and the very real idea of the world ending were a distict reality for the audience that went to see this. And then they see a different approach to the typical pro-US, propoganda "Get 'Em Boys" war movie at the time, right? This is a more grounded view. A "slice of life" for a part of the war people never gave much thought to. I'm not saying it was realistic (I don't really know how much realism or fantasy there was in it), but I think it was probably a genius stroke by Billy Wilder to present this unique view of war. I have a lot of respect for that.

The mystery/thriller part of this movie is where I thought it really shined. The who-dunnit of the mole in the barracks was great. And watching Sefton get abused and have to figure it out. There was a real tension that was palpable to it. I thought that Wilder did a masterful job of making Sefton both a character that you hate (not caring about human life, capitalizing on the weaknesses of his fellow barrack mates) but then you route for him because he's wrongly accused. It was so well done and William Holden played Sefton perfectly- I really found him deplorable, but wanted him to stick it to the real nazi traitor at the same time.

And my opinion on Sefton is this: he's one of the worst. There was truly nothing admirable in him. He capitalizes on the deaths of the americans, he plies the nazis with contraband so that he can keep his operations going, he sneaks off to (presumably) sleep with the Russian women while hiding it from the other americans, he viscerally hates Dunbar-- even though he is a crazy brave hero-- because he's rich, and the list goes on. The only admirable thing Sefton did was to help Dunbar break out and avoid death-- and he only did that because he "liked the odds" and the payoff. But this kind of complicated character is why I found the thriller part of the movie so compelling.

So again, a mixed bag. I didn't like the comedy, but loved the thriller.

[poorpete]

I'm more glad than ever that I changed my pick, which was Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie, given how much y'all don't like Wilder's comic chops. That's fine. And I can see the issues with the play-acting with Animal, he did originate the role on Broadway, so it's definitely played loud to the back of the theater.

I think the complexity of Sefton is why Holden won the Oscar, otherwise any other actor could have stood in just fine.



Cool adjective
1. of or at a fairly low temperature
MIXED: cold in the bunkers but the match is hot
2. showing no friendliness toward a person or enthusiasm for an idea or project
PASS: definitely not a nice action
3. fashionably attractive or impressive
PASS. It's a GIF for a reason
4. calm and composed
MIXED. His demeanor is definitely calm but an even calmer person wouldn't have lit a match on a neck to begin with.

[Mike]

[Kyle]

[buckett]

Watched this last night. So I'm a pretty big noob when it comes to movies this old, I'll admit, but for the most part I liked it alot.

I'll start with the thriller aspect. It was genuinely really tight and well-constructed. Maybe I'm stupid, but I actually fell for the misdirect and scratched off Price as a suspect since he's the first one. I figured it wasn't Sefton - too easy, clearly - but was worried it would be some out-of-nowhere gotcha like Joey or Animal. I loved the symmetry of Sefton making his big reveal by betting on the deaths of the men as he did in the first scene. Holden was awesome. As everyone else has said I loved the antihero aspects of Sefton's character. I don't think he's as big a piece of shit as Kyle does but he's definitely not a good guy. He was an opportunist exclusively looking out for himself but he wasn't really dicking anyone over either.

Again, being a relative newcomer to movies this old I thought there were some really cool shots that would hold up technically/stylistically to any era - the opening looking up at the German Shepherd, all the one-shot takes in the square, etc.

And so the comedy - I mostly liked it! It was slapstick and a little farcical but it was tinged with melancholy too. Alot of humor is wrung out of their laughably endearing attempts to keep their sanity and/or recreate their comforts from home. The rat races (the one chasing its tail is a great visual gag). The moonshine "bar" - "Ay I'd like to speak to the manager!" The Betty Gable dress-up. There are moments of real sadness too - when we find out the broken Joey was going to be a lawyer. When Manfredi's letter pops up in the middle of mail call. Mike pointed out that people who would watch and even work on this movie were not that far removed from actually being in the war. In that context, the slapstick clearly reads to me as kind of a coping mechanism for not only the characters but the audience too. That's interesting to me.

That said - the Nazis here are largely toothless stooges which does undermine any effort to take it too seriously. But it doesn't really ask to be taken that seriously either, so I don't knock it too bad. Good experience!

This is a movie I probably never would have even thought of watching so thanks to the MEOW club and poorpete for the pick. Will have to watch more Wilder.

At ease at ease!

[buckett]

Posting this separately as it really isn't a criticism or anything, but more that I'm curious. Maybe I missed it, but there is absolutely no mention of the Holocaust or even any reference at all to the broader context of the war. The WW2 backdrop simply provides the guards v. prisoners setup. If anything the movie is consciously Christian with all the Christmas stuff, which is fine, but a curious omission to me.

Was this a thematic choice that it would make the film too heavy? Mike and Kyle have both mentioned how soon after the war this was made - was Hollywood just not ready yet to wrestle with it? Was it a historical choice - would 1944 POWs not yet have a full comprehension of it?

I honestly don't know but am wondering if anyone has any insight.

[buckett]

[Mike]

[Kyle]