Film · Paramount · 1953
Stalag 17
56Watch it awake.
A teen can take it. The joke is the camp's boredom and fear, not the dead.
Pass it on
The review
Billy Wilder sets the film in a prisoner-of-war camp in 1944 and refuses to make the men noble as a class. J. J. Sefton trades, hoards, and bets against escape attempts. When two men are killed, the barracks decides he sold them. The mystery is a real one. So is the pleasure the room takes in having someone to hate.
A teenager can watch this. Say that a joke in a barracks is not the same thing as a joke about the war, and that Wilder knows which one he is telling. The part to keep is the speed of a false accusation among friends. Any house with a group chat has already seen a smaller version.
Journal
Keep Stalag 17 in the record.
No house has filed a sentence for this yet.
Live Historic number 56. Yours can differ.
The glance
Household and Piety are the thin ones.
Is a marriage, a parent, or a child a real life here, or just a prop?
This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.
Consider this
Casablanca
68 instead of 56
Casablanca is still a war film, and it scores 68 instead of 56. What you gain is republic: A occupied city, and a man who stops pretending it is only a nightclub.
The eight
- 7Industry
Survival in a camp is a set of hustles, and Sefton is honest about the hustle.
- 4Household
The barracks is a mean little household. It turns on its own.
- 3Piety
Irreverence is the creed. Do not come here for reverence.
- 6Courage
The courage, when it comes, is a man doing a dangerous thing after the room has despised him.
- 5Republic
Prisoners keeping an order among themselves. The film is interested in how quickly that order becomes a mob.
- 6Temperance
The comedy is a pressure valve. It does not dance on a grave.
- 8Truth
The man the room hates is not the man the room should fear. The film waits to show you.
- 6Stewardship
What it leaves is a warning about a group that needs a traitor so badly it will appoint one.
Where to watch
Finding the page.
Live Historic · Stalag 17 · 56IMDb tt0046359