Based upon the 1951 play of the same name by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 is a mystery set within a WWII POW camp as a barracks of American servicemen strive to find a mole in their midst who is revealing their plans to their German captors. Although dealing with a serious set of circumstances, the film contains a lot of humor as the characters just try and survive. Much of the comedy comes from the antics of “Animal” Kuzawa and Harry Shapiro (Robert Strauss and Harvey Lembeck, respectively, both reprising their roles from the original Broadway production).
Buy Stalag 17 (70th Anniversary Edition) Blu-rayOne night, two men sneak out of the barracks intending to escape. Sefton (William Holden in an Oscar-winning performance) bets against their success, which outrages his fellow soldiers who wager various amounts of cigarettes in support. Gunfire soon reveals Sefton the winner. Some wonder how he was certain the outcome and suspect he may be feeding information to the Germans. Sefton claims he wasn’t certain; he just liked the odds.
Looking out for himself is how Sefton navigates the camp. He’s always hustling. He brews alcohol, takes wagers on rat races, and rents a telescope for gazing at female Russian POWs. Bartering with the prisoners and the Germans gets him privileges the others can’t access. For example, Animal and Harry trick a guard into thinking they are working to sneak into the women’s camp before being run off while the guard allows Sefton in, likely bribed with nylons or a bottle of wine.
That selfishness is why Sefton’s fellow prisoners don’t trust him, especially after the Germans find their hidden radio and interrogate a new prisoner, Lieutenant Dunbar (Don Taylor), right after he admitted to a bombing a munitions train. The audience soon discovers the identity of the mole, but the question becomes how will Sefton convince anyone the truth when all the Americans in the camp believe it’s him.
The video is available in 1080p/MPEG-4 AVC encoded transfer displayed at the film’s original aspect ratio of 1.37:1. A brand new HD master was struck from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative and it highlights the work of cinematographer Ernest Laszlo. Blacks are inky and a wide spectrum of grays is apparent. The image is clean, exhibits a light film grain. The sharp focus reveals depth in the frame and fine texture details. The audio is available in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Dialogue is clear. Composer Franz Waxman’s has good fidelity.
The Special Features have accompanied previous Stalag 17 releases, except for the first two commentary tracks listed below:
- Audio Commentary with filmmaker/historian Steve Mitchell and author Steven Jay Rubin
- Audio Commentary with film historian Joseph McBride, author of Billy Wilder, Dancing on the Edge
- Audio Commentary with actors Richard Erdman and Gil Stratton and co-playwright Donald Bevan
- “Stalag 17: From Reality to Screen” (22 min) – Interviews for this featurette include actors Erdman and Stratton, co-playwright Bevan, William Holden biographer Bob Thomas, Billy Wilder biographer Ed Sikov, and writer-director Nicholas Meyer.
- “The Real Heroes of Stalag XVII B” (25 min)–WWII veterans, including Bevan, talk about their time in the prison camp that served as the basis for the film’s location.
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min)
In Stalag 17, co-writer/director Wilder strikes a successful balance of drama and comedy. Holden’s character effortlessly moves between being peripheral to the story to a focal point of it. The new master created for the Kino Lorber Blu-ray delivers pleasing video, and the three commentary tracks offer a lot of information of the film and Wilder. Highly recommend for his fans.
