The Wooden Horse

I saw a documentary about this true story and was very impressed, so I looked forward to the film and wasn't disappointed.

The Wooden Horse is about officers attempting to escape a prison camp. This is actually a pretty decent camp - beds, exercise yard, and cooking facilities. The men have one tunnel started in their barracks, but they realize it's going to take too long to dig until they get under the wire fence. So they come up with another plan. They make a wooden exercise horse which they bring outside, closer to the fence. Someone hides inside who then digs a tunnel while the men leap over the horse and do various exercises. At the end of the exercise day, the person inside uses boards to cover the hole and then puts dirt over it as a camouflage.

That's the first part of the film. The second part has to do with escaping to Sweden. It's all very suspenseful and engrossing and sports good performances from Leo Genn, Anthony Steel, and David Tomlinson.

Really a great story, all the more amazing because it's true. A good watch.

This unsung quiet gem tells the true story of a POW escape during WW II. The performances are incredible, especially Anthony Steele. The movie works on many different levels: cerebral, emotional, visual, and literal. The dialogue is ingenious and rings very true. In fact, an unusual all-around authenticity puts this one head-and-shoulders above most war epics.

The British stiff upper lip way of filming POW escape movies is evident here, since this is a low-key telling of how three men escaped from a German prison camp right in front of their captors by using the age-old device of a Trojan Horse in the guise of gym equipment.

LEO GENN, ANTHONY STEEL and David TOMLINSON are the men who conspire to use a vaulting mechanism as a means of escape. The first part of the film deals with the tension that mounts as the escape is prepared by tunneling to the escape point far from the men's barracks. The second half of the story follows their escape route as they hide from German authorities in order to escape to Denmark and then to safety in Sweden.

All of it is told in crisp, no frills fashion and in the very understated British style of filmmaking, vastly different from the way the subject matter would have been treated in an American film. Particularly impressive are the sequences where Genn and Steel must rely on their own wit and abilities to deceive the enemy after their escape from camp.

Tension mounts toward a satisfying ending. All told, an excellent British film that tells a true story without a lot of false bravado.

In the long line of distinguished & inspiring war movies made in England in the 40's & '50s (Went The Day Well, Dam Busters, Cockleshell Heroes, One of Our Aircrafts is Missing, We Dive At Dawn) about British military personnel resisting German aggression in the second War, comes this little gem. This movie tells the story of Stalag Luft III where British airmen Leo Genn & David Tomlinson (both more famous for their roles in Quo Vadis & Mary Poppins respectively) are imprisoned. In a daring attempt the duo with one more accomplice break out of the heavily guarded camp by digging a tunnel from under their exercise title instrument. The second half of the movie concerns their attempts to reach Sweden, a neutral territory from where they can reach England.

Leo Genn performs convincingly as the pipe-smoking elder Flight Lt. who goads & coaxes the younger David Tomlinson on, first through the tunnel & then through enemy territory. Both had war time experiences & borrow heavily from that. Peter Finch has one of his first roles as a Australian soldier who helps in the escape plan. Two of the funniest parts of the movie are the 'venture capitalists' in the form of the escape committee headed by senior officers approving of the plan & later financing it, & the retort of one of the injured soldiers in the hospital to a German comment that Beethoven is a good German.

So ignore some of the incongruencies and enjoy this suspensor. It is no 'Stalag 17', but still a good entertainer all the way.

The Wooden Horse is a real life World War Two escape story. Stalag-Luft III is supposed to be escape proof but this is proved wrong by three incredible escapers. The film is divided into two parts. Firstly, the escape from the camp and then the series of adventures while travelling through Germany and occupied Danmark. The method of escape is ingenious; a tunnel built under a vaulting horse that ends under the camp perimeter wire. The escapers of course are all officers (after all this is a Brtish film) and the camp itself has an air of an English public (private) school. The Germans are baited as if they were form masters or prefects. The film follows Eric William's book The Wooden Horse quite closely. There is an omission though. In the book the two escapers played brilliantly by Leo Genn and Anthony Steele meet up with members of the Danish resistance at a secluded farmhouse. One Jewish member of the resistance tells the escapers about the deportation of Jews and how members of the resistance helped Jews get to Sweden. Another member of the resistance tells of The Schalberg Corps an organization of Danish Nazis who the resistance battle with. However, The Wooden Horse is a very good film and well worth seeing.