The Colditz Story

People who watch The Colditz Story have probably seen The Great Escape as well and should bear in mind the fact that that camp where Steve McQueen, James Garner, and the rest was built to house all the big escape artists. Those really persistent offenders got incarcerated at the castle called Colditz. Those that is that didn't get summarily executed by the Gestapo as we well remember from The Great Escape.

What an incredible waste of manpower, but those guards had to be lucky because they could be at the Russian front. In The Colditz Story there are more guards than prisoners. When you think about it, it would have been easier for the Nazis to let this bunch be exchanged.

The protagonist of the story is later historian Pat Reid and he's played here by John Mills. Mills's character is the official British escape officer, there are French, Dutch, and Polish officers among those nationalities. Getting international cooperation here is about as easy as the alliance that defeated Nazi Germany with all the cracks and fraying in that endeavor.

There are two other standout characters, the senior British officer Eric Portman and Scot's Guard Christopher Rhodes. Rhodes had an interesting career, he and Stanley Baker probably were up for a lot of the same parts in British cinema. He played some very rough characters on film, some outright villains. Here he's just an incorrigible prisoner who's very rebelliousness endangers the escape plans of many. His is the best performance in The Colditz Story.

Made over 50 years ago, The Colditz Story holds up very well for today's audience. No flamboyant heroics like in The Great Escape, but some real situations in a story told simply and well.

I hate to rain on the parade of the people here who think this film is so great, but I had to force myself to watch it until the end. It obviously comes from a time in British history when the attitude was "Good show, British boys. You stuck it out in the German POW camps and kept the Jerries busy with your escape attempts, and we're proud of you chaps." That kind of gung-ho, congratulatory feeling is everywhere in the movie. Unfortunately, it turns the story into something bordering on the farcical. The Germans are portrayed as hapless dupes, toothless blusterers, not quite comical but easily fooled and quite incapable of backing up their threats. They may begin by saying that any attempt at escape will be met with death, but none of that seems to ever happen, and when an escape attempt is broken up or an escapee is returned, nobody seems the worse for wear. When two German shepherd dogs jump on an escapee emerging from a tunnel, they don't bite. It's all a game for the prisoners, without any real danger, pretty much on the level of schoolboy pranks. Life in Colditz is cheery, without any privations that we can see. It looks like a better place to be than in training camp back in Britain, where discipline was tough and your day was gruelling.

The prisoners seem to have a very free hand in the castle, moving about almost at will. How did they manage to cut through all those steel bars that they removed so easily from a window? How did they put together several dozen German uniforms, good enough to fool the sentries the escapees walked past? How did they speak such accent-free German that no one noticed? The film claims that everything portrayed is factual, but that claim is difficult to believe.

There is no narrative. The story, such as it is, consists of one escape attempt after another, none of them particularly inventive. Nothing joins them together into a cohesive plot.

I suppose we're expected to forgive crass nationalism in war movies. The Americans always save the day in American films, the British show superior character in British films. For me, this kind of thing spoils a movie. The Colditz story has it in spades. Brits always respond to Germans with a cheekiness that I think in real life would have earned them a rifle butt to the head. And they make arrogant, contemptuous comments about other prisoners, French, Polish, or Belgian. That dissolved most of the sympathy I might have felt for them. Yet, when the credits roll at the end, we see that these others were in fact more successful than the British in their escapes.

I didn't like this movie at all.

Shot in stunning B&W Colditz is exactly what you'd want from a 1950s British war film - horrible conditions, very stiff upper lips, and lots of self-deprecation and self-deprecating humour.

THe surprise is how well it is directed and the acting - all of which are classic for its genre. Now overshadowed by bigger productions like the fictional Guns Of Navarone, Colditz is actually probably one of the truest to its source material, and is a rewarding view.

For this viewer it is notable because it is at times an uncomfortable watch - it really did try to understand what being in Colditz meant - and yet it is exciting, human, and full of wonderful moments.

Highly recommended.

A really great film which shows the British fighting spirit at their best,the humour is first rate without losing the drama.well acted ,a remake is long over due.John Mills is superb as the escape officer and one must mention Lionel Jefferies and Ian Carmichael make their parts effective.Watch and enjoy

This was bundled with 'Ice Cold in Alex', 'The Dam Busters' and one other British war movie. Of the four, I found this the least satisfying, probably due to the brilliance of the other three. There's a TV mini series on Colditz which is far more enjoyable, probably due to its attention to detail. The movie lacks those details, of course, as it's relatively short. Nevertheless, it's still good but John Mills rather underplays his character, unlike his outstanding performance in, for example, 'Ice Cold in Alex'.

It's all a little unreal, really, considering Colditz was reserved for the most troublesome of allied prisoners. You just won't believe that some of the characters shown created trouble for their captors in this version.

However, as mentioned, it's still good to watch and better than the majority of movies with a similar theme churned out after 1960.