Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

evanston_dad "Stalag 17" is about 30 minutes of compelling film starring William Holden padded out with about 90 minutes of strained "comedy." Holden plays an inmate in a German prison camp during WWII who comes under suspicion by his fellow prisoners of being a spy because of his "every man for himself" attitude. For about an hour and a half, scenes of the prisoners being grumpy with him are interspersed with long segments of superfluous antics which make being an inmate of a German POW prison seem about as serious as being away at summer camp. Then, in the film's last half hour, Holden decides to find out who the spy really is, and does so without breaking a sweat.Holden's entire performance consists of attitude, which is exactly what the character calls for, but it's not the stuff of an Oscar-winning performance, especially because he seems very much like a supporting character. I wasn't timing things with a stopwatch, but it felt like Robert Strauss, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor as the lunkhead Animal, had more screen time. He's one of the actors included for comic relief, but man does he wear out his welcome early on, as do all of the other actors who are there only to provide what we are supposed to think are hysterical hijinks. The film would feel like an inferior knock off of "MASH" if it hadn't come out first. Billy Wilder joined Holden and Strauss at the 1953 Oscars as a nominee for Best Director. Grade: B-

elskootero-1 I first saw this film in a theatre in Heidelberg, Germany in 1960, and I'll bet I've watched 3 or 4 hundred times sine then; It's THAT good! It grabs your interest in the first 10 minutes and keeps you interested till the end! If you haven't got it on DVD; get it! You'll never regret it!

robert-temple-1 This was a very famous film at the time and made a big impact. One of the reasons for this was that the story was largely true. There really was a Stalag 17 (the name of a POW camp in Germany), and the characters really existed. One needs to remember that this film was made only a few years after the end of the War, and everything still resonated very strongly. The lead role is played by William Holden, who won the Oscar for his performance. If you want to know the truth, his performance is nothing to be excited about, and did not deserve an Oscar, but he himself claimed he was given it to make up for his having been denied one three years before for his role in SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950). Who knows. He was in any case a very popular and talented lead actor of the time. One surprise in this film is that the director Otto Preminger appears as an actor in the film, and plays the German commandant of the camp, Oberst (Colonel) von Scherbach. Preminger did not direct the film. It was directed by Billy Wilder. Stalag 17 is a camp for captured American non-commissioned officers, so everyone in the camp is a sergeant. They keep trying to escape but keep getting caught. The film begins with two of them being shot for this. They all know there is a 'stoolie' amongst them who is telling the Germans of all of their plans, but no one can figure out who it is. They all decide it is William Holden, who is not a team player and keeps himself to himself, and refuses to go along with group-think. But of course it is not Holden. Holden eventually figures out who it really is, but how can he prove it and expose him? The film is full of raw comedy, laughs, jokes, and teasing. This sounds very unlikely for a film about prisoners of war, and it certainly is, but it works. The film makes lively and entertaining viewing, and has been released in a restored version on Blu-Ray.

Prismark10 Stalag 17 is directed by the legendary Billy Wilder. It is an adaptation of a stage play and was filmed just seven years after the end of the Second World War.Its an uneasy mixture of drama, suspense and broad comedy. Given how some British movies made in the 1960s were so pompous about the war its refreshing to see an anarchic take of the war few years after the end of hostilities.Stalag 17 is a Prisoner of War camp inside Germany with captured American personnel. The film opens with two men trying to escape who are soon captured and killed. The prisoners think that one of them is a rat and suspicion falls on Sefton (William Holden) the resident black marketeer and hence not the most popular person in the hut. Sefton's character is similar to George Segal's character in King Rat, a man who knows how to live on his wits and his mission is to survive, preferably in some comfort.Some of the comedy did not work for me, I found it irritating. It focuses on Animal who is infatuated with Betty Grable and wants to break into the nearby compound which holds Russian female POWs and his friend Shapiro. The film would had been better if they were the two characters trying to escape at the beginning of the film and shot.Yet there are some serious aspects to the film. The men are held in filthy conditions given new blankets for a few hours when the man from Geneva arrives to inspect the camp for human man rights breaches and are then quickly taken away. They receive letters from back home and find out that they are behind on their rental payments or their spouses might be cheating on them.However it looks not all of the men are American. One of them is a German inside man, placed there to find out all manner of information that could be important to the Germans. Sergeant Schultz who regularly comes into the hut and takes part in the buffoonery with the prisoners is also exchanging messages with the insider. This plot only unfolds as Sefton realises he needs to clear his name quickly and sets about to unravel the rat.I did feel that bit of the plot was not very strong. No one in that hut played chess, yet the chessboard was always out and no one seems to have noticed the knotted/unknotted cord. Also with Sefton now the prime suspect, we see the real insider asking one of the new men for information on a sabotage event that took place. Its clear that the men would eventually realise that Sefton was not the rat, especially if they managed to get Sefton out of the way like kill him.I class Stalag 17 as a curious war film which was sold as a comedy. It is neither a comedy nor a straight drama. It inspired the television series Hogan's Heroes and William Holden won a best actor Oscar for his role.