The Great Escape (film)

The Great Escape (film)

The Great Escape is a 1963 American epic war film starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough. The film is based on Paul Brickhill’s 1950 nonfiction book of the same name, a firsthand account of the mass escape by British Commonwealth prisoners of war from German POW camp Stalag Luft III in Lower Silesia, Nazi Germany. It is also notable for its motorcycle chase scene and famous jump scene, which is considered one the best stunts ever performed. All 76 POWs flee through various parts of the Third Reich through the tunnel in the film.

About The Great Escape (film) in brief

Summary The Great Escape (film)The Great Escape is a 1963 American epic war film starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough. The film is based on Paul Brickhill’s 1950 nonfiction book of the same name, a firsthand account of the mass escape by British Commonwealth prisoners of war from German POW camp Stalag Luft III in Sagan, Lower Silesia, Nazi Germany. It was made by The Mirisch Company, released by United Artists, and produced and directed by John Sturges. It became very popular and emerged as one of the highest-grossing films of the year, winning McQueen the award for Best Actor at the Moscow International Film Festival, and is now considered a classic. It is also notable for its motorcycle chase scene and famous jump scene, which is considered one the best stunts ever performed. All 76 POWs flee through various parts of the Third Reich through the tunnel in the film. The escape is discovered when an air-raid is discovered in a guard’s view of a tunnel in a Nazi prison camp in Sagan. The prisoners’ escape committee mount an audacious plan to tunnel out of the camp and break out 250 men, not only to escape, but so that as many troops and resources as possible will be wasted on finding POWs. They are led by RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett and senior British officer Group Captain Ramsey, the men organise into teams. They get away by stealing a bicycle from a Swedish merchant ship where they board a train to France, where they get hidden on a Resistance train to get to the French Resistance.

The Escape is also known as the “Great Escape” because of the number of people involved in the escape, including American Flight Lieutenant Robert Hendley and Australian Flying Officer Louis Sedgwick. The Great Escape was filmed in Panavision and was released on June 20, 1963, in the West End of London’s Odeon Leicester Square in London’s West End on 20 June 1963, and in the U.S. on June 22, 1963. It has been hailed as the best film of the 1960s and 1970s by critics and fans alike, and has been described as “one of the greatest films of all time” The film was based on real events but deviated significantly from the historical record, depicting a heavily fictionalized version of the escape. It also featured numerous compromises, including numerous compromises—such as featuring Americans among the escapees—in order to boost its commercial appeal. The last part of the tunnel is completed on the scheduled night but it proves to be short of the woods due to faulty surveying. The claustrophobic Danny Bartlett nearly refuses to go ahead, but is helped along by Willie Griffith, who steals a bicycle, then rides him to a hidden train where he gets hidden on the Resistance train, where he escapes to France. He then steals a rowboat and goes to a major port where he hides in a French Resistance ship where he flees to the Resistance.