SISSYDUDE SINEMA: STALAG 17 (1953) William Holden is some HOT in this!

Stalag 17 is a 1953 war film which tells the story of a group of American airmen held in a German World War II prisoner of war camp, who come to suspect that one of their number is an informant. It was adapted from a Broadway play.

Produced and directed by Billy Wilder, it starred William Holden, Don Taylor, Robert Strauss, Neville Brand, Harvey Lembeck, and Peter Graves (Strauss and Lembeck both appeared in the original Broadway production); Wilder also cast Otto Preminger in the role of the camp’s Commandant.

In this rowdy comedy about Americans in a German prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War, William Holden’s hair-trigger performance as the crafty, cynical heel who turns into a hero won him a new popularity, as well as the Academy Award for Best Actor. He had been a sensitive but milder actor before, and even the despairing range he demonstrated in SUNSET BLVD. hadn’t prepared audiences for the abrasive edge and distinctively American male energy he showed in this role, which is rather like the parts that catapulted Bogart to a new level of stardom in the early 40s.

The melodramatics of the plot are low-grade, and the material, taken from a play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski–two ex-G.I.s who were interned in the actual Stalag 17–is still structured and performed like a play, but the gallows humor is entertaining, despite some rather broad roughhouse effects. Billy Wilder directed and had a hand in the adaptation, and it’s a safe bet that he’d taken a long look at GRAND ILLUSION–Otto Preminger does an Erich von Stroheim-Kommandant number. With Don Taylor, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Neville Brand, Peter Graves, and Sig Rumann. Paramount. – PAULINE KAEL

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