Stalag 17 (film)
Stalag 17 is a 1953 war film which tells the story of a group of American G.I.s held in a German World War II prisoner of war camp who come to believe one of their number is a traitor. Produced and directed by Billy Wilder, it starred William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, Robert Strauss, Neville Brand, Harvey Lembeck, and Peter Graves. (Strauss and Lembeck both appeared in the original Broadway production.)
It won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role (William Holden). Holden's acceptance speech was the shortest on record ("Thank you"), until Alfred Hitchcock said "Thanks" upon receiving an honorary Oscar in 1968.
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. The runway of a small municipal airport covers part of the camp location and the rest is being used as agricultural land, as it clearly has been for decades. The physical location is not marked in any way on the ground or on published maps but the footings of the barracks can be found upon close examination.
The movie was adapted by Wilder and Edwin Blum from the Broadway
play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski. (Both Bevan and Trzcinski appear in
the film as prisoners.) The play was directed by José Ferrer and was the
Broadway debut of John Ericson as Sefton. It 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.
Plot
Stalag 17 begins "about a week before Christmas" in 1944 in a prisoner-of-war
camp located somewhere along the Danube River. The story of a Nazi spy in Barracks
Four is narrated by Clarence Harvey "Cookie" Cook (Gil Stratton).
Prisoners Manfredi and Johnson try to escape through a tunnel the inmates have dug under the barbed wire. They are immediately shot when 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 mouse 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, Oberst 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 German guard, 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 own 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), whom 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. His considerable property is taken and redistributed to the rest of the prisoners. Sefton decides to investigate and uncover the identity of the spy.
On Christmas Day, the men find out that SS men are coming to take Dunbar to Berlin, to be interrogated for his act of sabotage. The entire camp creates a distraction and Dunbar is freed and hidden. The guards search the camp thoroughly, but cannot find him. Later, the men of Barracks Four, excluding Sefton and Joey (who suffers from shellshock), 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 had stayed behind in the barracks during a fake "air raid" and eavesdropped on Price speaking with Schulz). 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, Price betrays himself by answering 6 p.m. — the correct time of the attack in Germany. After that, Sefton reaches into Price's jacket pocket and extracts the "mailbox" used to exchange messages with the Germans, a hollowed-out chess piece.
With his fellow POWs convinced of Price's guilt, Sefton decides to take Dunbar out of the camp himself, partially because he likes the odds and 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 above one of the camp latrines, then 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 barbed wire and make their escape.
Cast
William Holden - Sefton
Don Taylor - Lt. Dunbar
Otto Preminger -
Col. von Scherbach
Robert Strauss - Stanislas Kasava
Harvey Lembeck
- Harry Shapiro
Richard Erdman - Hoffy
Peter Graves
- Price
Neville Brand - Duke
Sig Ruman - Sgt. Schulz
Michael Moore
- Manfredi
Peter Baldwin - Johnson
Robinson Stone - Joey
Robert
Shawley - Blondie Peterson
William Pierson - Marko the Mailman
Gil Stratton - Clarence Harvey Cook (as Gil Stratton Jr.)
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