The Great Escape (1963) Christmas Classics and the Issue of Historical Accuracy

Despite my young age and relative lack of experience with some of the classics, of course I’ve heard of The Great Escape. How could I not? I’m from Britain and I watch TV over the Christmas period, where The Great Escape is normally on at least one of the channels every day for the entire holiday. I completely understand why it’s constantly played at Christmas. The many scenes of the prison choir singing carols probably get it in the Christmas schedule singlehandedly, but it’s also nearly three hours so that’s an afternoon of TV sorted. I also completely understand the appeal – it’s a gripping story, a historical period that everyone finds interesting, with an iconic cast and moments.

My feelings on this are complicated but also quite simple. At no point in The Great Escape was I bored, but I also think it’s tremendously bloated. At no point did it anger me, but I’ll get into the incredibly pro-American stance that results in some rather careless rewriting of history. 

Firstly, I was surprised when I started research for this review to find out that the film didn’t receive unanimous critical acclaim in the way that many films of this pedigree did. The New York Times decried the film as a “mechanical adventure with make-believe men,” and Time also complained about the jarring use of color photography, which was still not commonplace at the time. Personally, I think the look of the film is one of its strongest points. There’s some lovely shots and the color cinematography is strong all throughout it. However, I think I was expecting some more visual storytelling especially considering the faster pace later on. Instead, The Great Escape gets a lot of its story out throughout dialogue. It’s a testament to the directing skills of John Sturges that he keeps the film engaging despite so many scenes of people talking to each other, but this wasn’t quite the spectacle-filled romp I was anticipating. 

I’m aware of a lot of the actors present here. Steve McQueen is obviously a legend in the world of cinema, and I had no idea that Richard Attenborough was in this until watching this. The two most notable additions for me though are Blofeld himself, Donald Pleasance, who turns in a great performance, and a couple of lines for the late great William Russell who passed away earlier this year. As a Doctor Who fan that was a very pleasant surprise to see Ian Chesterton casually sitting there smoking a pipe in some scenes, but he livens up what little of the film he’s in. So the cast are doing basically all of the work here, at least for me. They were the part of the film that distracted me from the fact that I was watching a somewhat bloated affair that doesn’t use its time to tell the full story. 

Maybe it’s because I’m a history student so I care a bit more about these things, but it was news to me when I realised that this was an actual event that took place in 1944. For all that The Great Escape is praised for how faithfully it presents these real-life people and how accurately it draws up the escape plan, the way in which it paints every American as a hero and downplays the help sometimes given by the Germans makes the film feel way more simplistic than it probably intends. 

I don’t want to criticise the details that they did get right. They don’t sugarcoat the fact that the escape attempt did not end well for many of the prisoners, and they even complied with many requests from former POWs to not show the help they received from their home countries. However, the commitment here is inconsistent at best: for one thing, the film ignores many ways in which some Germans, especially those guards who were against the Nazis, helped the prisoners escape by getting them items or even assisting in the digging of the tunnels themselves. 

I’m not just moaning because it abandons this side of the story so it can take a more pro-Allies stance, but wouldn’t this be so riveting as a story? Watching the supposed enemy actually help our hero characters escape their terrible situation, even though they’ll probably end up facing the wrath of their Nazi “superiors”? Unlikely friendships forming between two opposing forces? Maybe it would have still been too much to take while the Western world was still embroiled in the Cold War, but it would have been gutsy. So it’s a shame that the story, although decent, is overly simplistic and truncated.

The characters we meet are based on real people although the names are changed, and they are likeable but I found that after a certain point it became difficult to tell them apart. A lot of them have similar personalities and there’s not many, apart from Steve McQueen’s Hilts, that I’ll remember as individual characters. I get that you want everyone here to be a hero, but in a lot of ways they feel like stock heroes with the same aspirations and determination as everyone else.

With that said, this definitely peaks in its third act which is much-discussed among classic film fans. It’s brilliant how the scenes involving the separate escapees are spliced together to make something that is constantly building and constantly exciting. The most well-known bit here though is the motorcycle chase featuring McQueen constantly dodging guards over open fields. Although it is extremely well-directed and exhilarating, the iconic stunt did come up a bit short to me. Not because it isn’t flawlessly executed in how seamless it is, but as someone born in 2004 I’ve seen stunts in blockbusters that go way further. It’s definitely impressive seeing someone jump a motorbike over a fence, but just last year I saw Tom Cruise use a motorbike to jump off a mountain and base-jump through a valley. I know this is an issue only for someone my age who’s grown accustomed to stuff like this, and it’s interesting to see what stunt-work was like in older movies like this.

So I wish that I’d liked The Great Escape more than I did. It’s certainly got a charm and a scale to it, and its title sums it up perfectly – it wasn’t necessarily a great escape plan, since only 3 men actually escaped successfully, but it was ‘great’ in its scale and ambition. However, in this instance ‘great’ is not a measurement of quality. It’s never boring and it’s always engaging, but it feels bloated and frustratingly thin, sacrificing full historical accuracy in favor of a one-sided narrative that fails to make each character interesting. Then again, maybe that’s why it works so well at Christmas – everyone’s too full, tired or drunk to care about the details. Now that I’ve watched it with my critical faculties on, I look forward to ingluging in this weirdly festive classic being with the same “christmas spirit”. 

You won’t need to scour the TV channels to find it though, as the Great Escape is out on Arrow Video with a written feature from our very own Mark Cunliffe. Of course, it’ll also be on Christmas TV too, it’s as much of a given as Santa Clause: the Movie.

Alex’s Archive – The Great Escape (1963)