The Movie Room

Stalag 17 1953, directed by Billy Wilder

Rating: 7/10

A bunch of sergeants are trapped in a German prisoner of war camp in this Billy Wilder classic, and that isn’t going to stop them from having a good time, especially for Christmas! When I saw this in high school, it was one of my favorites; since then, my opinion of it has definitely dimmed.

What works great for me is the suspenseful and dramatic parts. William Holden won an Academy Award as J. J. Sefton, and he is fantastic as he navigates the enclosed spaces and tries to separate himself as much as possible from the other prisoners who don’t like him but, as with other lone wolves, he does a lot of watching them anyways. Holden is a master at this performance, as he shows both why the other prisoners would want to distance themselves from him and yet how he is a respectable enough man that he still wants to do what he can to protect them. He (pretty understandably) becomes the prime suspect amongst his fellow prisoners when they realize someone is leaking information to the Nazi guards, and his determination to find the real mole is complexly rendered as not just to clear his own name but also because he represents the kind of “good man” you see a lot in these movies—despite not being as “good” as many of those others. Besides Holden’s great performance adding to the good drama, you also have Otto Preminger doing amazing work as one of the Nazis, and Wilder’s always great direction and shots.

What does not work for me as well here anymore is the comedy; the problem is not so much that it is bad that it has just aged. Even as a comedy, this is still better than a lot of comedies from the 1950s—it is just not a great comedy and it kind of drags down the amazing suspense scenes. The main comic elements here are Harvey Lembeck as Harry Shapiro and Robert Strauss in an Academy Award nominated performance as Stanislas “Animal” Kuzawa. They do a lot of antics and they are occasionally amusing. There are a few moments where they work really well, but these are all the moments where they are intertwined with the dramatic—like when Sefton finds out who the mole really is and the antics of Shapiro and Animal in the background add a lot of great irony. I wish they had been used more for these kind of ironic moments because they work really well instead of trying to play this as a straight comedy half the time. Prisoner of war movies were not really a thing before this movie, so I can see why they felt the need to add in comic stuff to draw in audiences, but now that POW movies have become a genre unto themselves, this bit of growing pains really sticks out.

Overall, the suspense and drama bits of this movie are a STRONG 10/10, while the comic bits drag the whole movie down to a 7; it’s no surprise to me that the DVD box cover I have heavily emphasizes the dramatic aspects. Billy Wilder is great at both drama and comedy, and he does a great job of mixing them in films like The Apartment, but here the mixture just doesn’t really work for me. Still, this movie is worth a watch for William Holden demonstrating why he is one of the best actors of all time.