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 It's World War II and some G.I.s are in the "notorious German prison camp
Stalag 17". Most of their time is spent trying to escape, but then two of their
own get killed in an escape attempt and they begin to suspect that there is a
spy in their midsts. William Holden is noted for his Oscar win and they
describe his character as a "cynical sharp-tongued soldier who spends his time
scheming up rackets and trading with the Germans for special privileges." 1953, 120 minutes, DVD
As hard as it is to believe, even though there is no Colonel Klink in sight in
this film, it is still a great movie that succeeds in making you realize how
funny it would be to be in a German POW camp. William Holden, who wowed us
with his overwrought performance in the atrocious Picnic, earned an Academy Award for his role as Sergeant Sefton, one of those dudes
that those of us who did a stint in the armed forces, know as an "operator."
Holden is very good in this movie, as is everyone else, which makes it a bit of
a surprise that a flick known for Holden's role is actually much more of an
ensemble piece than you would have suspected. Holden doesn't get to do a lot in
this movie until the last half hour when he goes to town unmasking the German
squealer that has been planted in their barracks. He spends the first ninety
minutes of the movie making lots of cigarettes with various gags and schemes
and acting suspicious in his dealings with the Germans, getting himself beat up
for his troubles. It is probably a testament to the script and the actors
surrounding him that he was recognized for this role, which is more of a
supporting one, truth be told. The best part about him winning that award
though is that the character of Sefton isn't the clean cut, patriotic cowboy
you would expect in a movie from that era, but is a sullen, cynical,
self-centered jerk who doesn't blink about betting against his fellow
Americans getting out of the prison camp alive. This isn't the typical
flag-waving war picture, but is yet another one of those movies that you could
probably claim was a metaphor for all the McCarthyism that was going around
then. The fact that it is set in a typically rah-rah-American setting makes it
all the more pointed.  Sefton's pal Cookie narrates the action for us throughout the movie, clueing
us in on stuff like what a stalag is (German word for prison) and generally
doing the whole Waylon Jennings bit from The Dukes Of Hazzard. Cookie introduces us to all the crazy characters that inhabit Barracks Four
of Stalag 17 including Animal, Sugarlips Shapiro, and Sergeant Schulz. Yes,
Schulzie is in this movie and he's about the only character you'll recognize
from the hit (and fairly tasteless, I might add) sitcom Hogan's Heroes. This time, Schulz is played by Sig Ruman, a big German dude we all remember
as the burgermeister from House Of Frankenstein. The character of Schulz though is much different than in the television
series and is a good gauge as to the differences between the movie and
the TV show. I think we all recall that the Schulz on the TV show was an
incompetent buffoon that was easy prey for Colonel Hogan's antics just about
every week. In the movie, however, Schulz knows that his gimmick is to play a
buffoon, but that's only to lull the Americans into thinking he isn't a threat.
He's actually in league with the stoolie in the barracks and exchanges
messages with him through the use of some hollowed out chess pieces. It is
through these messages that escaping Americans are found out and killed and
that smuggled equipment like a radio are discovered. Not exactly the "I know
nothink!" goober we're used to seeing all flummoxed whenever Klink hollers at
him. Film director Otto Preminger plays the Klink-like character (well, he's
bald and runs the camp) named Oberst Von Scherbach (I think the name Klink is a
lot funnier.) and according to Otto's bio, he was quite a little dictator on
the set of his own films, even going as far as to get himself suspended from
directing for a period of time because he was tired of directing the trash that
20th
Century Fox head Daryl Zanuck sent his way. He took up acting for awhile and
became well known for playing Nazis during WWII, even though he was Jewish.
Otto is very effective at playing the tyrant obsessed with keeping his record
of no escaped prisoners perfect and though he doesn't get a lot of screen time,
each moment he has is tailored to get over the fact that he is a sycophantic
Nazi pig (like when he has someone put his boots on for him when he takes a
call from the higher ups in Berlin so that he can slam his booted feet together
while taking orders over the phone).  The movie begins with the escape attempt of two Americans. Sefton is taking
bets against them successfully making it out and cleans up when someone squeals
on them and they get machine gunned to death before making it out of the camp.
Everyone begins to suspect that there is a stoolie in the barracks and since
Sefton just made a killing (hehehe) in smokes when these two guys bought it,
some of the American POWs begin to think that it's him. Sefton probably
doesn't help his cause any because he's an ass and hoards all the goodies that
he gets for trading with the Germans. He tells everyone that they shouldn't
get on his case because everyone trades and he just happens to trade a little
sharper than everyone else. That doesn't go over real well with a group of
guys that gladly will pay a cig for twenty seconds of looking through a
homemade telescope at some Russian broads going into the delousing shed. Did I
mention who runs that little show? Sefton also runs a distillery (potato peels
and Red Cross String for flavoring on occasion) and the local horse races (mice
with numbers tied to them). The movie doesn't just focus on Sefton though.
There is a good deal of time (I would say a little too much time actually)
spent on the comedy relief supplied by Sugarlips and Animal. These are two
guys that aren't nearly as funny as the movie would want you to believe they
were and some of their gags go on way too long (like the Christmas dance
sequence), but you can see that this is the part of the movie that the TV folks
seized on as the crux for Hogan's Heroes and you can almost imagine Richard
Dawson and Robert Clary using the gimmick of painting a line in the road as way
to spy on the Russian women, the way Animal and Sugarlips do here. That kind
of stuff is right at home with Klink and company, but some of it just comes off
as being a bit broad in the movie. There is a funny moment when Animal
imagines that Sugarlips has turned into Betty Grable after Sugarlips put on a
hat with
straw in it. They actually impose a cut-out of Grable over Sugarlips as he
poses seductively at the Christmas dance (I guess you take your fun where you
find i in a POW camp). 
The real problems for Sefton begin when two new Americans are brought to the
barracks. One of them is an officer who is being held until he can be
transferred to an officer's POW camp and it turns out that he's the one
responsible for blowing up a supply train that has disrupted the Nazis' war
effort in the area. The stupid part of this movie is that even though everyone
suspects that there's a stoolie in their midsts (and many of them think they
know
it's Sefton) they continue to plot, scheme, and exchange sensitive information
with one another in front of of everyone. The stoolie immediately gets word to
Schulz and his boss that the captured American (Lt. Dunbar) is the guy that
blew up the train. Dunbar gets taken away for questioning, but after three
days of sleep deprivation, the guy from the human rights organization shows up
and tells them to cut it out and that they need to have proof before they try
the guy as a saboteur. Schulz relays this to his inside man and it isn't long
before this guy is asking Dunbar how he did it. Meanwhile, the radio gets
discovered by Schulz and Sefton is seen cavorting with Russian babes after
hours and the men decide it's time for some vigilante justice. The bust open
his footlocker and are amazed to see his treasure trove of exotic goods like
cuckoo clocks, cameras, and beanie babies. When he gets back, they hold him
down on his bed and beat him senseless. Sefton decides that maybe it's about
time he got serious about rooting out this traitor in the barracks and gets off
some good lines about how while everyone was beating him up, the traitor was
the one hitting him the hardest. Sefton has his suspicions and manages to lurk
around in the shadows when Schulz and the stoolie confer briefly about how
Dunbar blew up the train and then waits for his chance to
take the guy out in his own way. He gets his chance when Dunbar is set to be
taken by the Gestapo and the boys in the barracks decide to break him out. It
comes together so fast that the stoolie doesn't have a chance to warn his
German buddies and Sefton sticks it up his arse by convincing the barracks
chief to put this guy on him as a guard. When everyone is gone, Sefton and the
stoolie do a little verbal fencing and it's obvious that they both know that
Sefton knows who and what he is. Dunbar was successfully taken out of the barracks, but is still hidden somewhere
in the camp. He
needs someone to take him out and since the stoolie doesn't know where he is,
he volunteers to take Dunbar himself. Sefton shows
everyone who the stoolie is when he questions him about what time Pearl Harbor
was (nowadays you'd question him about how bad Pearl Harbor was) and the stoolie says he was having dinner in Berlin at the time (okay,
that's not
it exactly, but it is the gist of things). Then Sefton pulls out the chess
piece from the dude's pocket and explains how the stoolie and Schulz exchanged
information.
Well, that turns the tide and everyone likes Sefton and hates the stoolie.
Sefton takes the wire cutters, says he's going to get Dunbar and escape the
camp. As he leaves, he tells everyone that if they ever meet again, to pretend
like they don't know one another, disappears down the escape tunnel, reappears
for one last ironic salute and is off again, helping Dunbar to escape. A very
absorbing tale about the cost of maintaining individuality and the price people
pay when they don't. No one wants to think too hard in the barracks about which
among them might be the stoolie and they immediately jump to the easy
conclusion
(Sefton is an easy target because of his abrasive personality) as to his
identity. When you think
about it, Sefton is the last guy that would be the stoolie. He's too smart an
operator for that. He's able to profit off everyone just fine without giving
information to the enemy and besides, would the Germans really be so stupid as
to plant a
guy that everyone takes an immediate dislike to among them? No, they'd go for
a regular
good old boy that would fit right in under everyone's noses. It's easier to
point fingers and root out the guy that doesn't fit in, than to identify real
problems (just like the McCarthy hearings) that beleaguer you and/or your
country. Holden does a fine job as the anti-American hero, the guy that is
content to stay in Stalag 17 until the odds are in his favor. I suppose his
character isn't really all that groundbreaking when you think about it - we
always seem to root for the man of few and surly words. You know the drill
about the guy that plays by his own rules and does things his way and all that
jazz. Holden is doing that exact thing here and we cheer him for it,
especially when he smokes out the German narc. This movie though is more than
just a tough guy flick, because so many of the other characters are written
equally as well - no one comes off as a throwaway character, so it's fun to see
Holden's Sefton interact with them when he finally gets things going. What
makes this movie great is that they make take this
iconoclast and dump him in a setting that usually demands a goody-goody
American character full of all the virtues your mommy wishes you had and have
him be the hero, in spite of him doing decidedly unheroic things (Betting on
your own men to die?). The movie doesn't suffer like a lot of these movies of
that era where the gruff, out-for-himself guy is miraculously redeemed with a
heart of gold either. He only helps Dunbar (whom he doesn't like) because he
finally thinks he can escape, not because it's the brave or decent thing to do
and even though the guys in the barracks seem to be warming up to him again
(Sefton lights a match off the face of one of the guys who hated him the most
and this dude was just smiling about it!) he makes it clear as he leaves that
he still thinks every one of them is a piece of trash. A hard and sometimes
amusing look at what it is to do your own thing when some group wants you to
fall in line (those are called Nazis, right?) highlighted by the strong
scripting and great ensemble cast (even Animal and Sugarlips in small doses).
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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