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Women in Prison
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Stalag 17 (1952) |
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| Sefton and Cookie share a moment. |
Stalag 17 is a classic. Though stagy and somewhat dated, it still comes across as a solid blend of drama and comedy: part spy thriller, part Hogan's Heroes. William Holden's performance holds the piece together, although Stalag 17 features solid ensemble acting throughout. In addition to the story, the movie is interesting as a historical record of its time. I'll discuss this issue at the end of the review.
Stalag 17 is set in a German prisoner of war (POW) camp in December 1944. The camp is cold, bleak, and muddy, and the mood of the prisoners is made worse by intermittent news coming from the front of a major German offensive (the Battle of the Bulge). The movie is narrated by Cookie (Gil Stratton). As Cookie describes it, Stalag 17 is a huge POW camp, broken down into separate compounds. Cookie's compound, and the scene of the story, is filled with over 600 American sergeants. The rank is important because these are all older, headstrong men. Since they are all of the same rank, there are no natural leaders. Though Cookie doesn't discuss it (and I don't know if historically this occurred), separating out the NCOs is probably a very wise course of action in a POW camp since without NCOs to lead them, the remaining enlisted men are less likely to cause trouble.
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| Betting on men's lives... |
The movie opens with the men of barracks 4 plotting an escape. Hoffy (Richard Erdman) -- the elected barracks chief -- and Price (a.k.a. Security, played by a very young Peter Graves) have approved an escape attempt by Manfredi (Michael Moore) and Jonson (Peter Baldwin). The escape is really a team effort with most of the other men contributing civilian clothes, forged documents, and smuggled currency to the endeavor. One man, however, stands apart. Sefton (William Holden) bets that Manfredi and Jonson never make it past the forest that surrounds the camp. The other men are irate, and in a show of solidarity with the would-be escapees, wager their entire stock of cigarettes against Sefton.
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| ...and the unfortunate outcome: running right in a machine gun nest. |
Manfredi and Jonson drop through a hacksawed hole in the barracks floor and creep over to the latrines. Under the sink, they drop into a shallow, but well-constructed tunnel. They maneuver underground until they get past the perimeter fence. Carefully they dig up through the turf and pop up outside the camp. Unfortunately, they don't get more than two steps before walking into a German machine gun nest. The Germans cut them to pieces as the grief-stricken men in the barracks can only pray that the gunfire was a coincidence. Sefton gathers up the wagered cigarettes. When one of the other men challenges him, saying that Manfredi and Jonson might still have made it, Sefton offers to double the bet. No one accepts.
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| Roll call on the following bleak morn. |
The failure of the escape makes the men wonder whether they have a spy in their midst. Sefton comes under immediate suspicion. How could he be so confident the men would get caught unless he had inside information? He replies that he was just playing the odds. Sefton's comments do little to endear him to the other men. But he goes further and decries the whole business of escaping. To what end, he asks. Even if one manages to overcome the incredible odds and escape, success simply means a trip back into the cockpit for more missions over enemy territory. Sefton's preference is to sit the war out as comfortably as possible, and if that means trading with the Germans for privileges, then so be it. The question for the other men is whether Sefton is just a cynic or a spy planted in their midst.
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| Manfredi and Jonson after the failed escape attempt. |
The next morning at roll call, the men are shocked to see the bodies of their comrades lying in the mud of the compound. The camp commandant, Oberst (Colonel) Von Scherbach (Otto Preminger) lectures the men against trying to escape. He calls attention to his perfect record and the results of the most recent attempt. Preminger plays Von Scherbach as a proud, vain, arrogant man. His men lay down wooden planks for him so he can step over the mud of the compound, although he makes his lieutenants to follow three paces behind him and to the side thus forcing them to walk in the mud he avoids. Though angry at the death of their comrades, the prisoners maintain a certain esprit de corps. When one of the men -- Animal (Robert Strauss) -- splashes mud on Von Scherbach's boots, the colonel demands the guilty party step forward. At first no one moves, but when Von Scherbach threatens to keep all of the men outside all day, Animal steps forward... followed by the rest of the complement of men. I wonder if American POWs actually pulled this kind of stunt in real life... and I wonder if the Nazis didn't shoot a dozen of them in response as a statement of sorts. Instead, Von Scherbach instead issues the following, rather toothless punishment: "There will be no Christmas trees, but there will be delousing with ice water from the hoses."
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| The men excitedly catch a glimpse of (fully dressed) female Russian prisoners. |
Back in the barracks, the Germans announce their plans to take away the stove that was hiding the trap door. For the men of Barracks 4, this will serve as additional punishment. The rapidity with which the Germans discovered the means of escape convince the prisoners that there is a spy in their midst, but at this point, their suspicions are more frustrations than actionable items. Before things can get too serious, though, we get some comic relief. One of the prisoners announces: "New dames in the Russian compound." The men pile out of the barracks and step right up to the warning wire in order to ogle and shout at the new arrivals, who wave back flirtatiously. Animal is particular taken with one statuesque blond who is "built like a brick Kremlin." I know Stalag 17 is partly a comedy, but I have to admit this whole bit with the Russian women felt dated and awkward to me. Part of it is that I couldn't quite shake the knowledge that Russian women prisoners would probably have been horribly mistreated by the Nazis, and using them as a comic foil made me uneasy.* Part of it, though, is simply the somewhat unnatural blending of drama and comedy here. I mean, the prisoners have just seen the bodies of two of their comrades dragged through the mud, and they suspect they have a spy in their midst, but the arrival of some Russian prisoners in a different compound turns them into a bunch of frat boys on spring break?
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| Listening to news from the front... |
Before the Germans can take the stove, Sefton cooks himself a fresh egg he got by trading with the guards. The others, whose breakfast consists of runny gruel, eye him suspiciously and enviously. Their resentment explodes. They confront him about betting against Manfredi and Jonson, but he deflects them and restates his philosophy about sitting out the war. Before this debate can go much further, the camp crier arrives (a.k.a. the "At Ease" guy... anyone who has seen the movie knows who I mean). He delivers the mail... and more importantly, smuggles the camp radio to the men of Barracks 4. While most barracks get to keep the radio for an entire week, Barracks 4 only gets it for two days in deference to their rash of bad luck.
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| ...while the men distract the guard with a rousing game of volleyball. |
The men immediately set up the radio and try to tune in the BBC. Their set-up is pretty ingenious. The radio is connect by a wire to a steel mesh that serves as a volleyball net. As Hoffy and selected few men stay inside and listen to updates of the Battle of the Bulge over the static, the rest of the men play outside trying to keep the Germans distracted. The movie shifts quickly between the rather the grim news coming from the front (Bastogne has been cut off... Nuts!) and a comic relief sequence that occurs when one of the guards notices the wire leading into the barracks from the volleyball net. Just as he is about to investigate further, the POWs manage to inveigle him into joining the game. He gets so involved that he actually hands his rifle to one of the prisoners as he fields the ball (ho! ho!).
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| The signal. Would you notice this sort of a thing if you were a POW and had nothing else to do except notice such little things? I think I might. |
Later that same day, Sergeant Schulz (Sig Ruman), the barrack's guard arrives to take away the stove. The men grouse at him, but he replies, "It isn't me. It is the order. I'm your friend." That, in fact, is Schulz's tone throughout. He tells the men they'd be sorry if he was transferred and they got a different guard. Schulz even visited in the United States before the war as a professional wrestler. Still, his manner is oily and manipulative. Unlike this counter-part in Hogan's Heroes, Schulz here isn't a genial buffoon. As we soon learn, he's the courier between the camp commandant and the spy in Barracks 4, and ultimately, one gets the sense that his affection for the American prisoner is an affectation. There is a certain subtlety here that I think is easy to miss, but the more I watch the scenes with Schulz, the more I'm convinced that his entire demeanor is calculated to disarm the Americans. Part of this is a function of his role in working with the mole, but part of it is simple self-preservation. This is a man who has to walk into a POW barracks on a daily basis, and he can't afford to have the captured soldiers angry at him. Playing dumb served to defuse tensions. In any case, the scene ends with Schulz herding the men out of the barracks to work at filling the tunnel they've dug. Once the men are out of the barracks, Schulz walks over to a table where a chess board is set up. He picks up the black queen and twists off the top to find a hidden message. Then he takes the knot out of the cord from which a naked bulb dangles... and for the first time, we have actual confirmation that there is a spy and the chess piece and light cord form a mailbox and signal respectively.
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| Fun and hijinx: Mouse races, sneaking into the Russian camp, and letters from home. | ||
We now shift our attention back to Sefton. Apparently, he isn't just a trader, but also an entrepreneur. He wins cigarettes off the other prisoners by sponsoring mouse races, and he manages to put together a telescope that the men use (for a price) to spy into the Russian compounds to see the women being deloused. I guess that after three years in a POW camp, getting glimpse of some women going through delousing might be sexy... but God, I hope I never have to find out. We also get some comic relief as Animal and his buddy Harry Shapiro (Harvey Lembeck) scheme to get into the Russian compound. Armed with a brush and a bucket of whitewash, they bluff their way past the guard by painting a line on the ground.... I'm not sure why this might work, but whatever, they get past the guard. Unfortunately, just as they are approaching the window of the delousing building, another guard stops them. They paint his face white and run back to their own compound (ho! ho!). In another extraordinary and uncharacteristic examples of German restraint, neither Animal nor Shapiro get shot for this little stunt. Still more comic relief, this time bittersweet. One of the prisoners get a letter from his wife. "Darling, you won't believe it, but I found the most adorable baby on our doorstep. And I've decided to keep it for our very own. You won't believe it, but it has exactly my eyes and nose." His response, "Why does she keep saying I won't believe it? I believe it... I believe it."
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| Dunbar (center) regales the others with his tales of derring-do. |
The plot begins to come to a head when two new prisoners arrive at the camp and are assigned to the bunks now vacated by Manfredi and Jonson. They are Sgt. Bagradian (Jay Lawrence) and Lieutenant Dunbar (Don Taylor). Dunbar is in Stalag 17 temporarily, while the Germans arrange transport to an officer's camp. Dunbar's first act as a new inmate is to tell an indiscrete story about how he managed to sabotage a munitions train while in German custody. The other men enjoy the story, but with a spy in their midst, Dunbar is now at risk for being shot as a saboteur rather than simply imprisoned as a POW. For a while, nothing happens, though, and we get another comic interlude as the men don fake Hitler mustaches and pretend to read out of Mein Kampf. Schulz's response when he sees a roomful of bemustached men is "Ah. One fuehrer is enough." Schulz warns the men that a Red Cross representative from Geneva is arriving the next day. He urges the men not to complain, and offers to give them new blankets as a sort of bribe.
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| Animal discovers Sefton's loot... |
But he takes away more than he gives when he orders the men to turn over their radio. The POWs, of course, play dumb, but Schulz unerringly hones in on the receiver, hidden in the false bottom of a water bucket. Again the men are shocked at the ease with which the Germans penetrate their security measures. Unfortunately for Sefton, at that moment he's out of the barracks, and moments later when one of the men spies him walking about the Russian prisoner compound, the quid pro quo seems clear. The men attack Sefton's assistant Cookie and pry open Sefton's footlocker. Its contents seem to seal his fate. He's hoarding booze, cigarettes, nylons, cuckoo clocks, and jewelry.
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| ...and the men take their revenge. |
When Sefton returns, he faces an angry mob. He tries to deflect their accusations, but the evidence seems overwhelming. Still, he staves off violence by warning the men against acting prematurely. He says that ultimately only two men know of his innocence... himself and the real stoolie, and that the men will have to deal with the real one even after they've gotten rid of him. Unfortunately for Sefton, this argument comes to naught when the Germans arrive suddenly to arrest Dunbar as a saboteur. The men as so shocked that they initially try to find an alternative explanation. Maybe Dunbar and Bagradian were indiscrete elsewhere? But no, Bagradian claims they told no one until they arrived at the barracks. Sure enough, this sets the prisoners off, and they turn on Sefton, beating him brutally.
The next day the Red Cross caravan arrives, bringing an inspector and a bunch of supplies, including 2000 ping pong balls. As the men pile out of the barracks to unload the supplies, Schulz runs into a bruised Sefton still in his bunk. Schulz asks about his condition, but Sefton refuses to rat out his buddies. Instead, he tries to bribe Schulz to tell him who the stoolie is. Unfortunately for Sefton, the other men come back right then and assume he's back to his old tricks of trading with the enemy, proving the no good deed goes unpunished for long.
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| Von Scherbach squeezing into his old boots before calling Berlin. |
In the meantime, Von Scherbach is questioning Dunbar. Von Scherbach's methods are surprisingly tame, and consist exclusively of sleep deprivation... which, don't get me wrong, is nasty, but not quite the same as bamboo under the fingernails. Still, Von Scherbach is sure he has the right man, and since the saboteur has triggered a massive manhunt, he sees this as an opportunity to get back in favor with Berlin. Before calling HQ, however, Von Scherbach squeezes into his old cavalry boots in order to execute crisp Prussian boot clicks during the call. The scene is somewhat humorous, but still manages to present Von Scherbach as a real person. As he tells Dunbar, the young cavalry officers ended up in the Panzer divisions, while the older ones like him got put out to pasture, assigned to backwater postings like running POW camps. Unfortunately for Von Scherbach, he needs more proof against Dunbar before he can remove him from the POW population. I'm not sure how realistic this is... my sense is that the Germans were not particularly interested in such niceties during the Second World War, although presumably the presence of the Red Cross official on the spot makes a difference here.
Back in the barracks, the men are in the process of dismantling Sefton's little empire. After breaking into his footlocker, they then agree to trade away his distillery for a phonograph. As they play a marching song on their new record player, we see that the light cord has a knot in it, signaling a message in the black queen. The movie then gives us the villain. Price walks over, switches the chess pieces, and returns the cord to its original position. Although no one spots him, Sefton notices the bulb swinging back and forth. In the back of his mind, he starts putting 2 and 2 together.
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| Sefton watches from the shadows as Price and Schultz confer. |
The note that Price retrieves apparently instructs him to get more info about Dunbar's crime. The problem that Von Scherbach faces is that although he has a confession from Dunbar (through Price), he still doesn't know how Dunbar pulled it off. How, exactly, did Dunbar sneak a time-bomb past his captors in order to detonate a train over three miles from where he was being held? Bagradian tells Price... it wasn't a real time bomb. Dunbar simply attached a lit cigarette to a pack of matches and tossed it into the train. When the cigarette burned down, it set off the matches which started a fire that detonated the ammo. That same night, the air raid warning sounds, and Schulz rousts the men from the barracks. Sefton pretends to leave, but stays behind in the shadows. From that position he watches Price demonstrate the cigarettes/matches trick for Schulz, so now Sefton knows who the spy is too. Price even address Schulz in German, showing he isn't a traitor, but rather a plant. But of course, given Sefton's current standing with the men, he realizes he can't just accuse Price who the men have elected chief of security.
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| Talk about beer goggles... ouch! |
Now, just the movie is picking up momentum, it comes to a screeching halt. We get a nine minute long musical sequence as one of the POWs sings, and the rest dance with each other to celebrate Christmas. Having raided Sefton's booze, the men are nice and toasted. Animal is desperately pining over Betty Grable, and when Shapiro stuffs yellow straw under a bonnet as a gag, Animal thinks his dream girl has come to life. Hmmm. None of this quite qualified as homo-erotic, although I think someone interested in such topics could easily write a lengthy scholarly paper on images of masculinity in Stalag 17. Let me digress, however, for a moment on the theme of Betty Grable. I know it has become fashionable in some circles to deride our current generation of "anorexic," "surgically altered," "fake" starlets, but the fact is that I have trouble seeing the appeal of BG. She's attractive enough in sort of a housewife next door sort of way (I doubt she'd score higher than a 7.5 on www.amihotornot.com), but hell, she's no Jennifer Aniston. And it isn't like she was a great actress or particularly charismatic either. I don't completely buy the notion that her plainness was one of her great appeals (i.e. that it reminded the GIs of what they were fighting for). I suspect, the GIs would have been just as happy with snapshots of Pam Anderson in a thong. Ultimately, she was a deliberate creation, mass-produced and marketed to keep morale up. My point, friends, is that she was no more real than today's sex symbols, and for my money, a little lipo and nosejob wouldn't have hurt.
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| Snatching Dunbar amidst a huge cloud of smoke. |
Back to the movie.... Armed with Price's info, Von Scherbach now has the evidence he needs to formally charge Dunbar, and he calls the Gestapo in to arrest him. Hoffy, however, refuses to let Dunbar go without a fight. He hatches a plan to snatch Dunbar just as he's being transferred to Gestapo custody. He orders the men out into the compound. Price offers to go keep Schulz distracted (i.e. warn him of the plot), but Sefton cleverly intercedes. "I wouldn't worry about Schulz, I'd worry about Sefton. Remember me? I'm the stoolie." Hoffy agrees: "You're going to stay here in the barracks, Sefton, and not a peep out of you." Sefton then says: "Okay, then put a guard on me. I want you to put a guard on me." Sefton says he wants to make sure that if something goes wrong, no one can blame him. And when Hoffy agrees, he insists on Price as the natural choice. "Wouldn't you feel safer with Security on the job?" Sefton asks. Price is furious at this intervention, but he can't say anything since Sefton's suggestion is, after all, quite reasonable. After the other men have left the barracks, Sefton taunts Price, probing at the legend he's built up to cover his infiltration. Meanwhile, back in the compound, Hoffy has the men cause a commotion and with the help of a smudge pot (made from ground up ping pong balls -- remember I mentioned those before) he manages to snatch Dunbar from the Germans.
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| Sefton outsmarts Price... who later pulled precisely this sort of reversal dozens of times as Mr. Phelps. |
The Germans try desperately to find Dunbar, but only Hoffy knows where he is. Finally, Von Scherbach threatens that if Dunbar does not appear by the next day, he will completely tear down the camp and the men will live in tents in the mud for the rest of the war. This strikes me as an idle threat. "You did what to your camp Oberst Von Scherbach? What were you thinking? Off to the Eastern front with you." But in any case, Hoffy knows he has to smuggle Dunbar out sooner or later. The men draw lots to determine who will get the assignment. Naturally, Price volunteers. When Hoffy objects, Price says he wants to make up for all the security screw ups. Just as Hoffy is about to agree, Sefton offers to bet two packs of cigarettes that Dunbar doesn't make it out alive. The men turn on him, fury in their eyes. He explains, "The Germans know where Dunbar is." Hoffy is incredulous: "How do they know?" Sefton replies, "You told them Hoffy." Before Hoffy can protest anymore, Sefton confronts Price about his story that he left his home in Cleveland and enlisted right after Pearl Harbor. "When was Pearl Harbor, Price? Or don't you know that?" "December 7, '41," Price answers correctly. "What time," Sefton asks. "Six o'clock. I was having dinner." Busted! "Six o'clock in Berlin. They were having lunch in Cleveland." Price tries to protest, but when Sefton pulls a black queen from his pocket, Price know the jig is up. He tries to bolt, but the men capture him. This is, of course, a classic scene, and is all the more well-done for the understated way in which Sefton traps his man. Nowadays Sefton and Price would have had a drawn out fight, probably on a rooftop, with Sefton killing Price at the last minute. Although I wouldn't trade today's starlets for those from the past, I'd love to bring back some of those golden age screenwriters.
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| Sefton and Dunbar make it through the wire... |
With Price out of the way, Sefton offers to sneak Dunbar out. He hasn't suddenly become a patriot, but now with the mole neutralized, Sefton thinks the odds are in his favor. The fact that the Dunbars are rich, and that he might get a reward for rescuing their son also plays a big part in his calculus. Sefton remains cynical and mercenary to the last. Ironically, Price ends up being Dunbar's savior. Just as Sefton is about to lead Dunbar to the fence, the men throw Price out into the yard, trailing pots and pans. The racket draws the attention of the guards, who promptly machine gun the spy just as Sefton cuts through the wire and leads Dunbar to safety.
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| ...as Price pays for his crimes. |
The dramatic portions of Stalag 17 hold up much better than the comic interludes. I wonder how people saw it at the time. Considering that many people in the original audience had fought in the Second World War, and that American POWs were then being held in Korea, it seems to me that the extensive comic segments might have been a calculated effort to defuse scenes that would have hit home more directly then than now. I doubt that in 1952 many Americans would have been willing to sit through an unrelentingly grim POW drama. As it was, the bit about the soldier, his wife, and the baby on the doorstep must have made at least a few people in the audience squirm.
I was also intrigued by the treatment of the Germans in the movie. They're portrayed by turns as buffoonish, colorful, vain, and sneaky... but not evil, or wantonly cruel for the most part. Again, part of that is probably a function of what audiences would have been willing to sit through at the time, but I can't help but think that the onset of the Cold War and the need to rehabilitate Germany as an ally might have played a part on soft-pedaling some issues. I don't know... maybe, I've just been watching too much History Channel.
Anyway, Stalag 17 is definitely worth a look. The dramatic sequences definitely warrant 4 manacles, but the comic interludes haven't aged well, and that knocks the whole thing down a bit in my book. Still, I think this, rather than Some Like it Hot (1959), is my favorite Billy Wilder movie (although Sunset Blvd (1950) and Double Indemnity (1944) are both fine movies too).
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(3.5 out of 5)