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Steve McQueen is the Cooler King (King of Cool?) in The Great Escape |
But it doesn’t really matter, because The Great Escape
is one of the last hurrahs of effective, nostalgic war-films. The sort of
hugely enjoyable caper that recognises the cost of war, but also celebrates the
pluck, ingenuity and guts of Allied servicemen, running rings around those
dastardly cheating Nazis. Where we would all like to look back and remember
those days when men-were-men and worked together towards a common goal. Sturges
has created a marvellous tapestry of a movie, that pulls together several
striking scenes, characters and snippets of dialogue into a true ensemble piece
that reflects the camaraderie and unity that exists between the prisoners as
they work towards their escape.
In some ways, The Great Escape is such good fun, such
well-packaged entertainment and telling such an exciting, uplifting and (in the
end) moving story that it’s almost immune to criticism. You’d have to have a
pretty hard heart not to enjoy it. And you’d have to be pretty cynical not to
enjoy the way it presents a series of obstacles and then carefully demonstrates
the fascinating and rewarding ways the prisoners resolve these. It’s also
notable that, aside from the shadowy Gestapo types, the film doesn’t really
have an antagonist. The enemy is that fence. Most of the Germans are just
regular soldiers doing a job – it’s only the brutal final-act Gestapo who are
aren’t playing this eccentric game. But this helps us sit back and enjoy the
film as a caper – just as it makes the burst of machine-gun fire that (nearly)
ends the film even more impactful and shocking.
Sturges’ gets the tone of the film spot-on, and also draws a
series of perfectly balanced performances from his all-star cast. I think it’s
fair to say a lot of the film’s success was connected to Steve McQueen’s casting
in the crucial role of Hilts. McQueen channels a sense of 1960s
anti-establishment cool into the film (unlike the rest of the POWs, he seems to
be wearing basically his own clothes in t-shirt, chinos and bomber jacket).
Iconically bouncing his ball against the wall in a cooler, a natural loner (who
of course still does his bit), with a cocky sense of defiance and some
exceptional motor-bike skills, Hilts is undeniably cool. He’s the face of the
film – and the one you walk away wanting to be.
He also gets the film’s definitive claim to fame, with a
series of daring motorbike stunts as he races across Germany to escape. Mostly
performed by McQueen himself (although not the most famous fence jump, done by
a stuntman) this last act chase is a gripping, action counter-point to the more
cagey, paranoid runs of the other escapees. It’s so exciting and feel-good,
it’s a surprise to remember that Hilts actually gets caught. But then, if he
hadn’t, we’d have lost McQueen’s cool, wry shrug of acceptance as he and his
mitt were sent back to the cooler in the camp for another 20 days.
The film tees up plenty of sub-plots for the rest of the
cast, with Sturges’ spreading the love very effectively. Charles Bronson gets
perhaps the best plot as “tunnel king” Danny Welinski who holds back his crippling
claustrophobia almost long enough. I think this might be Bronson’s finest hour,
giving a real vulnerability to Danny, with genuinely quite affecting whimpers
and fear at confronting the tunnel – making his struggle all the more moving.
Bronson makes a wonderful double-act with John Leyton as fellow tunneller
Willie Dickes, the two of them forging an affecting bond of loyalty.
A similar bond also forms between James Garner’s suave and
playful scrounger Jack Hedley and Donald Pleasance’s professorial forger Colin
Blythe (has there ever been a more “Colin” Colin on film than Pleasance?). The
final moments between this pair carry perhaps the biggest gut-punch of a film
that has a surprising large number of them. Pleasance’s sad attempts to hide
and combat growing blindness are genuinely affecting, while Garner is a master
at conveying depth beneath a light surface. Sturges’ film taps into the
nostalgic memories most of us have (or have picked up) of this war being one
where life-long friendships were formed against horror and adversity.
Attenborough does most of the thankless heavy-lifting as Big
X, but the film uses his Blimpish authority well. Gordon Jackson has a memorial
role as the number #2 famously caught out by his own vocal trap (the sort of
irony films like this love). Fans of the TV show Colditz can enjoy
seeing David McCallum in a very similar role as a daring young escapee. James
Donald channels British reserve as the senior officer. The film’s single truly
bizarre performance is from James Coburn, with an Australian accent from the
Dick van-Dyke school of ineptitude, so terrible even Sturges surely noticed it
when cutting the film.
The Great Escape marshals all these cards extremely
well. Any combination of any of these actors produces fireworks. It’s one of
the best boys own adventure you can imagine. It in fact gets the perfect
balance: you can spend a large chunk of the film thinking that being locked up
in a German POW camp looks like the best time ever – and then it
chillingly reminds you with its sad coda of the terrible cost of war. But it’s
that first hour and half and its celebration of grit, guts, determination and
ingenuity that really works – and it’s so entertaining that it solves
immediately any mystery as to why any public holiday you’re 10-1 to find this
popping up on your afternoon TV listings.
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