Actors - Stalag 17

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	Actors - Stalag 17

Stalag 17 is a 1953 film which tells the story of a group of Allied soldiers held in a German World War II prisoner of war camp who come to believe one of their number is a traitor. It starred William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck (Strauss and Lembeck both appeared in the Broadway production) and Peter Graves.

The movie was adapted by Billy Wilder and Edwin Blum from the play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski. It was directed by Wilder. The storyline is dramatic, skillfully interspersed with ironic and comedic references to 1940s American wartime culture which serve to develop the characters and realistic setting.

It won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role (William Holden) and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Robert Strauss) and Best Director.

Holden's acceptance speech for his Academy Award was the shortest on record: "Thank you."

The film was well received, and along with The Great Escape
, it is considered one of the greatest World War II Prisoner of War films.

The film is currently available on VHS and DVD, and a Special Edition DVD was released on March 21, 2006.

Plot synopsis

Although the date is never revealed, Stalag 17 is set in the weeks surrounding Christmas, 1944. The German prisoner-of-war camp, Stalag 17, is located somewhere along the River Danube in Southern Germany. The film is narrated by Clarence Harvey Cook, aka, "Cookie," who tells the story of a spy that has been operating in Barracks Four, where he lives. On the night when the film opens, two prisoners from Barrack Four, Manfredi and Johnson, are planning to escape through a tunnel the company has dug under the barbed wire. They are discovered and shot on sight. A mystery surrounds the situation: how did the Germans find out about the tunnel? Is there a German spy in the barracks? The prisoners have chosen a security officer, Price (Peter Graves), but he fails to learn anything.

The men's suspicion falls on another of their fellow inmates, Sefton (William Holden). Sefton enjoys a life that's luxurious compared to his comrades: he barters openly with the Germans for eggs, silk stockings, blankets. The other prisoners are suspicious of his dealings with the enemy, as well as envious of the results. Sefton himself is rather cynical, cold, and impersonal; he bets on whether Manfredi and Johnson will actually escape, then trades the cigarettes he won from his comrades to the Germans for an egg the next morning.

The plot meanders for a while, showing the lives of the prisoners, although the depiction is somewhat sanitized for reasons of taste. They receive mail, eat horrible food, are forced to wash in the latrine sinks, are forced out of the barracks during bombing raids, and collectively defy the will of the camp's cruel and ruthless kommandant, Otis von Scherbach (Otto Preminger). They use an illegal radio (shared by all the barracks) to pick up the BBC and the war news. (The antenna is the net for their volleyball court.) Their "supervisor", Sergeant Schulz (Sig Ruman), finds the radio and confiscates it. The mystery surrounding the "stoolie" grows.

Sefton is permitted by the German guards to spend a night in the women's barracks in the Russian section of the camp, amidst the female prisoners. The other prisoners spot him through Sefton's telescope, and the men conclude that this was a reward Sefton received for informing the Germans of the radio. When he returns to his barracks, he is accused of being a spy and is unable to convince his comrades that he isn't the man they're looking for. At that moment, Commandant von Scherbach pays a personal visit to the barracks to apprehend Lieutenant James Dunbar (Don Taylor), who the Germans correctly suspect of sabotaging a German ammunition train before his capture. The other men are convinced that Sefton is the spy and viciously beat him, after which he is ostracized, but this gives him time to think and investigate.

On Christmas Day, the men find out that the SS is coming to take Dunbar to Berlin. The entire camp creates a distraction and Dunbar is hidden. That night the men of Barracks Four, excluding Sefton, plan to draw a name to see who will try to take Dunbar out of the camp, but Price volunteers. At this point Sefton reveals what he has learned: the actual spy is Price. Sefton shows how messages were passed between Price and Schulz, then asks Price, "When was Pearl Harbor?" Price knows the date, of course, but Sefton now traps him by quickly asking what time. With no time to think, Price says 6 p.m. — correct for the German time zone.

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