Review of Great Escape, The: Special Edition (2 Disc Set)

Introduction

When I was a little boy, while all my friends set their sights on lofty career goals like firemen, astronauts or cowboys, my dream job was Tunnel King. I`d spend hours in my back garden up to my elbows in soil, crafting masterpieces of subterranean engineering. This was of particular annoyance to my parents, especially as I had reached that age when bathing was seen as an inconvenience to be avoided rather than simple hygiene. For a brief time The Great Escape was not a popular film in our house, and not just because it had a six-year-old thinking that World War II looked like great fun. The Great Escape is the perennial schedule filler, and seeing as the holiday season is threatening once more, I pre-empted the television channels and bought a copy of the Special Edition to see if it would fill stockings just as easily.

Based on a true story, The Great Escape tells of Stalag Luft North, a German prisoner of war camp that opens in 1943 to hold the most intractable and troublesome of prisoners. It is an attempt to put "all of their rotten eggs in one basket", and one that is destined to backfire, when into this group of wily escape artists is put Roger Bartlett, a.k.a. Big X. Bartlett has a plan to stage the most audacious escape ever seen, to put hundreds of escaped POWs into the German countryside and to tie up the Nazi war effort in an attempt to recapture them. Pretty soon prisoners from all over the world are working together on three tunnels, Tom, Dick and Harry, right under the noses of the Germans. Among them is American Bob Hendley who forms an odd friendship with mild mannered forger Colin Blythe; Australian Louis Sedgewick devises the machinery that will help accomplish their escape, and Danny and Willy the two tunnellers who reach for freedom beyond the watchtowers. With Bartlett are Eric Ashley-Pitt and Sandy MacDonald who together comprise the brains of the operation. Finally thrown into the mix is the individualistic American Virgil Hilts, who in between escape attempts spends much of his time in the Cooler, earning him the moniker Cooler King. The Germans have no idea of what they are in for.

Video

A 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer is the best way to see The Great Escape, especially after years of pan and scan butchery by various channels. It isn`t an advert for pristine restorations though, as the film still retains some of its age. Grain and a hint of print damage are certainly evident in certain scenes, and on occasion the image is a little soft. Having said that, by and large it`s a clear and colourful picture, that shows the film at its best.

Audio

A DD 5.1 English soundtrack is unexceptional to say the least. Other than an occasional spot effect, the surrounds are used mostly for subtle ambience and the music. This isn`t one of those films that has had an extensive remix done for the latest in audio technology, and if your memories of this film are in glorious mono, then the results aren`t too far removed from that, and it`s all the better for it. Elmer Bernstein`s glorious, iconic score is there in all its glory, and memories of agonising bittersweet football matches arise as soon as you hear those triumphant bars. Most importantly, the brilliant dialogue is there in perfect clarity, and it need not be said that it is accompanied by plenty of subtitle tracks.

Features

For a change, some thought has actually gone into the extras for one of these special editions, rather than cobbling a couple of bits together and stuffing them in some fancy packaging. The POW camp imagery extends to the animated menus, with a searchlight illuminating the film`s name on both discs.

Disc 1 as well as containing the movie, also finds room for a commentary track and a trivia track. The commentary is edited from interviews recorded over a period of time, and includes comments from actors James Garner, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, Jud Taylor and David McCallum. There are also contributions from the production crew like Robert Relyea, motorcycle stuntman Bud Ekins, and excerpts from an interview conducted with director John Sturges in 1974. It`s sharply edited together and held together well by host, historian and Great Escape fan, Stephen J. Rubin. There is a wealth of information about the real life events and the making of the film. It`s presented in DD 2.0, but lacks subtitles.

It goes together well with the subtitle trivia track which also is a mine of information, and it`s great to watch the two in conjunction.

Disc 2 is a single layer disc, and contains the remaining extras.

Great Escape: The Untold Story is the 51-minute documentary made in 2001 by Granada television. Presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, and narrated by Derek Jacobi, it tells the true story of The Great Escape, without the Hollywood embellishments. With a mixture of dramatisation, interviews and archive footage, it relates the events at Stalag Luft III, and also looks at the aftermath from the point of view of Frank McKenna, who investigated the war crime, and in 1947 bought to justice the Gestapo officers responsible for the deaths of 50 escapees.

Great Escape: The Untold Story - Additional Interviews lasts 10 minutes and has extra material from one of the forgers in the camp, tells the stories of the three who made it home, as well as those who survived the experience. This segment ends with the roll call of the 50 who lost their lives in the escape.

The Great Escape: Heroes Underground is a more light-hearted look at the film and the events that inspired it from across the pond. Narrated by Burt Reynolds and presented in 4:3, this looks at the making of the film and how it differed from reality for entertainment purposes. It also looks at initial reactions by audiences. It runs for around 43 minutes, but has been divided into 7 brief featurettes for those with small attention spans. It is a supreme source of irritation that there is no way to play all the featurettes in one go.

Original Documentary: A Man Called Jones… The Real Virgil Hilts does exactly what it advertises. Lasting 25 minutes, presented in 4:3 and narrated by James Coburn, we are introduced to David Jones, the inspiration for the Virgil Hilts character, and we learn about his experiences in the war as a POW, as well as learning about his life after service. To say his career is pretty illustrious would be an understatement.

The photo gallery has 13 categories. Each section begins with a page of text putting the pictures in context. When you enter the appropriate section, a slideshow plays that allows you to enjoy the pictures without any of that pesky button pushing.

Finally, no DVD would be complete without a theatrical trailer.

All the extras are subtitled in English.

I almost forgot the eight-page insert with production notes and a bit of history to boot.

Conclusion

The Great Escape truly is a timeless classic. It`s one of those rare films that audiences can pretty much memorise, they will joke about its guaranteed place in the Christmas schedules, yet as soon as it starts, usually just after a heavy dose of turkey dinner, millions will be sitting engrossed for the next three hours. Not bad for a film with an unhappy ending. I pretty much watched it twice in a row so I could sample the commentary and trivia track, and I was still so engrossed in the film that I often missed what was being said on the commentary. This film still has an amazing power to enthral audiences of all ages.

One of the natural draws of this film is that it is a true story, a tale of heroism not too far removed from our own age. Of course that is Hollywood truth as opposed to fact, as the Americans had been removed from the camp prior to the escape (although they were involved in the construction of the tunnels), the escapes weren`t as spectacular as depicted on screen either. Also I doubt that there was an American airman who managed to fight a war without ever wearing a uniform either. Yet this is all part of the fun of The Great Escape, as the fundamental truths of the event aren`t changed, and the dramatic licence adds greatly to the fun, unlike films like U-571 which are examples of Hollywood at their worst, rewriting completely the history they dislike to the specifications of their audience.

For an action film, it`s the characters in The Great Escape that are its strength. The relationships that form as these disparate characters work together to escape, offer opportunity to empathise with what they are going through, as well as some choice lines of dialogue. Perhaps the strongest of relationships in the film is that of scrounger Hendley and forger Blythe, the sheer mismatch of cocksure American and mild-mannered Englishman is one that you would expect to be abrasive, but on the contrary theirs is a deep friendship, rivalled only by that of tunnellers Danny and Willy, especially when in one of those ironies that only Hollywood can create, Danny is claustrophobic. The ensemble cast is simply amazing, James Coburn, Donald Pleasence, James Garner, Charles Bronson, David McCallum, Gordon Jackson all light up the screen. There are two standout characters of course. Those used to seeing Richard Attenborough as a kindly old grandfather figure in films like Jurassic Park will be surprised to see his performance as the driven Bartlett, whose mania regarding the Germans motivates this awesome escape attempt. Then there is Steve McQueen, the King of Cool as the Cooler King Virgil Hilts. Whenever he is on screen, he owns it completely; you just cannot look elsewhere, despite the wealth of talent around him. Who cares if he doesn`t wear a uniform, leads the Germans on a totally implausible wild goose chase on a motorcycle, when he has this much charisma.

This film also attempts to show the Germans in more than a one-dimensional light. The Luftwaffe officers who are in charge of the prison camp are shown as the more humane side of the Third Reich. There is a respect and even admiration between them and their prisoners. The Gestapo officers revert to type of course, but when there are rounded characters like Werner the ferret, ever fearful of being shipped off to the Russian front, and unwitting foil for Hendley`s scams, then the Germans come across more as people rather than the jack-booted menace of the typical war film.

The secret is that while the film is fast paced, it takes its time to establish the characters. A generous 2¾-hour running time lets us get to know these people, as they play their games of cat and mouse against their captors. The film also keeps it light-hearted for the most part, so that we don`t realise the bonds we form with the characters as we are having so much fun. It takes a languorous couple of hours to weave its spell before the actual escape occurs, and by then I`d dare anyone to be able to tear themselves away. It`s only the final scenes that throw the cold water of reality on the audience, when the Gestapo deal with the escapees, a chilling reminder that despite the fun of the movie, the war was a real and terrifying thing. Even then, our last sight in the film is that of Virgil Hilts striding defiantly into the cooler, baseball and glove in hand. You know that his spirit hasn`t been dampened and it`s only a matter of time…

Like many others, I love The Great Escape, and this two disc special edition is very well put together indeed. The picture and sound isn`t stellar, but it`s more than acceptable. More importantly, the extras that accompany the film are very well put together and an immense improvement on the usual PR guff that come with these sort of things. The commentary and trivia track on disc one are truly engrossing, although I did wonder why Richard Attenborough didn`t contribute. The extras on disc two are a wonderful education about the real event, and mollify even the harshest critic of Hollywood sensationalism. I can envisage watching this again and again, each time crossing my fingers that Hilts will make that final jump. One of these days, he will.