Search - Stalag 17 on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Adult Situations, War Violence Movie Release: 1953 DVD Release: 12/14/1999 Format: DVD - Black and White - Closed Captioned Audio Tracks: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 0 mins Studio: Paramount Members Wishing: 18 Genres: Comedy Drama, War, War Drama, POW Drama, Ensemble Film See Also: Stalag 17 [Special Collector's Edition], Stalag 17 [Special Collector's Edition]

The scene is a German POW camp, sometime during the mid-1940s. Stalag 17, exclusively populated by American sergeants, is overseen by sadistic commandant Oberst Von Schernbach (Otto Preminger) and the deceptively avuncular sergeant Schultz (Sig Ruman). The inmates spend their waking hours circumventing the boredom of prison life; at night, they attempt to arrange escapes. When two of the escapees, Johnson and Manfredi, are shot down like dogs by the Nazi guards, Stalag 17's resident wiseguy Sefton (William Holden) callously collects the bets he'd placed concerning the fugitives' success. No doubt about it: there's a security leak in the barracks, and everybody suspects the enterprising Sefton -- who manages to obtain all the creature comforts he wants -- of being a Nazi infiltrator. Things get particularly dicey when Lt. Dunbar (Don Taylor), temporarily billetted in Stalag 17 before being transferred to an officer's camp, tells his new bunkmates that he was responsible for the destruction of a German ammunition train. Sure enough, this information is leaked to the Commandant, and Dunbar is subjected to a brutal interrogation. Certain by now that Sefton is the "mole", the other inmates beat him to a pulp. But Sefton soon learns who the real spy is, and reveals that information on the night of Dunbar's planned escape. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Stalag 17 is as much comedy as wartime melodrama, with most of the laughs provided by Robert Strauss as the Betty Grable-obsessed "Animal" and Harvey Lembeck as Stosh's best buddy Harry. Other standouts in the all-male cast include Richard Erdman as prisoner spokesman Hoffy, Neville Brand as the scruffy Duke, Peter Graves as blonde-haired, blue-eyed "all American boy" Price, Gil Stratton as Sefton's sidekick Cookie (who also narrates the film) and Robinson Stone as the catatonic, shell-shocked Joey. Writer/producer/director Billy Wilder and coscenarist Edmund Blum remained faithful to the plot and mood the Donald Bevan/Edmund Trzcinski stage play Stalag 17, while changing virtually every line of dialogue-all to the better, as it turned out (Trzcinski, who like Bevan based the play on his own experiences as a POW, appears in the film as the ingenuous prisoner who "really believes" his wife's story about the baby abandoned on her doorstep). William Holden won an Academy Award for his hard-bitten portrayal of Sefton, which despite a hokey "I'm really a swell guy after all" gesture near the end of the film still retains its bite today. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

William Holden - Sefton
Don Taylor - Lieutenant Dunbar
Otto Preminger - Von Scherbach
Robert Strauss - "Animal" Stosh
Harvey Lembeck - Harry Shapiro

Stalag 17 appeared on laserdisc at least twice, in versions that were more expensive than this DVD, neither of which looked as good as this disc or were remotely as convenient. With a running time of almost exactly 120 minutes, Billy Wilder's World War II prison camp drama was a difficult film on laser, either jammed too tightly onto two sides or divided awkwardly onto three; here it's just a pleasure to watch, without any breaks and looking good, in razor-sharp detail and beautiful contrasts. The movie has dated less than most POW dramas, mostly because of its edge of cynicism, which was new in 1953 and still punches through to the viewer. William Holden's knowingly wry, self-interested scrounger was so compelling an image coming out of this movie that the producers of Bridge on the River Kwai virtually transposed the character intact in everything but name to David Lean's epic to help ensure its success. The 14 chapters break the movie down effectively enough, but the producers have done little else -- one wishes that there were at least a trailer here. But this disc points up how little Paramount has done to enhance any of the Billy Wilder films in their library. Wilder himself may be too old to do a commentary track, but there are any number of scholars of his work that could have done one on the production history, impact, and influence of this film. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide