STALAG 17: 4K UHD Blu-ray combo (Paramount, 1953) Kino Lorber

Decades ago, when I was in the middle of my Billy Wilder phase of immersion and admiration, I confess, Stalag 17 (1953) was one of the last movies from the director’s repertoire I wished to explore. Frankly, it didn’t appeal to me…neither the title nor the premise behind it: a comedy about the hardships of American prisoners of war.  Hardly, a laughing matter. I was all of sixteen then…and naïve, but serious. Consequently, I boycotted the movie. But then, came the winter of 1986 and I, felled by a horrendous flu, basically at the mercy of three broadcast channels after midnight – two playing infomercials for spray-on hair, the other, beginning its heavily-commercial interrupted re-broadcast with the late Elwy Yost and Stalag 17. Forced to reconsider a movie I had absolutely zero interest in, what I quickly discovered then was that like everything else Billy Wilder touched, Stalag 17 was yet another seemingly effortless work of genius, with more than a modicum of Wilder’s razor-sharp wit to spare.

Of course, Stalag 17 had been a prominent comedy on Broadway before it became a hit film, although initially no one at Paramount wanted to fund the project. In fact, Stalag 17 was rejected four times before a chance meeting between playwrights, Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, and, Yul Brynner pointed a path to Billy Wilder, who saw it on the stage and instantly fell under its spell. Wilder, however, was not above rewriting greatness to suit his own tastes. Virtually none of Bevan and Trzcinski’s original dialogue survived this transition from stage to screen with Wilder and co-writer, Edwin Blum tag-teaming their creative juices into an acerbic cinematic flambé – succinct in its incendiary, but jovial jabs and astutely scathing takes on the rank suffrage of POW’s. Indeed, in planning this review, I am reminded of Stalag 17’s certain je ne sais quoi, its’ impossible mélange of Nazis, death, deception and war effortlessly stirred into Wilder’s cynically charming soufflé, the whole thing so gosh darn light and kooky, one could almost set aside the severity of circumstances surrounding the play and movie’s subject matter.

War is never a laughing matter. Arguably, no one knew this better than Bevan and Trcinski (both appearing in cameos in the movie). Each had been a POW. But Wilder isn’t poking fun at the enemy or even the suffrage endured by its victims. Instead, he illustrates the power of wartime camaraderie between captive men of mixed faiths and origins, brought together under the most appalling circumstances. At the crux of Stalag 17 is an undeniable thread of male bonding. The movie is perfectly cast with essential star presence immeasurably supported by some truly stellar character actors. Each is given a moment or two in which to shine without ever eclipsing the name above the title. Evidently, William Holden did not think much of the play. In point of fact, he walked out after the first act. Holden’s star had dramatically risen after Billy Wilder cast him in Sunset Boulevard (1950). Indeed, this movie resurrected Holden’s career from the dead. Holden was grateful. Moreover, he implicitly trusted Wilder. And so, Holden leapt at the opportunity to work with him again. Holden really ought to have been indebted to Charlton Heston: Wilder’s first choice, who proved unavailable due to a conflict of assignments. Bevan and Trzcinski were equally relieved, feeling Heston's presence – both physically, and, in performance – too grand for the part of the laconic loner.

A chief concern for Holden remained: that his character, Sgt. J.J. Sefton, is misperceived throughout a fair portion of the story as a Nazi sympathizer and stooge responsible for getting two Americans attempting escape murdered in a botched ambush. Holden had asked Wilder to write him in a line that clearly delineated Sefton’s aversion to Nazis. Wilder refused, rightly believing the character’s ambiguity would heighten the suspense of the piece. If Holden’s own opacity about accepting the role continued to dissipate, Wilder was faced with just as much apprehensiveness from co-star, Otto Preminger as shooting progressed. Nevertheless, Preminger was ideally cast as the unscrupulous Nazi Gen. Oberst von Scherbach. Preminger, a Viennese Jew, having fled the Nazis during the occupation in WWII, and, who could be tyrannical as a producer/director, willingly fell into line with Wilder’s vision. Evidently, Wilder had a magic that could convince anyone to do anything. Preminger would later regret his decision, however, regarding Stalag 17 as a damning influence on his future procurements as an actor – thereafter typecast as the perfect embodiment of the villainous Nazi thug.

As the dailies began to come in, Paramount’s top brass had their own gripes. Everyone in the cast looked awful. Holden appeared to have been ridden hard, looking weather-beaten and sporting realistic bruises. The supporting cast were filthy, as through to have trudged through thick, black mud caked onto their clothes and feet. But Wilder’s attention to detail transformed this grunge and grime of prison barracks into a filthy hole: the perfect counterbalance for his patina of comedy.  Arguably, Paramount had not allotted $100,000.00 to Wilder to film a pigsty; nor had they counted upon Wilder’s sublime depiction of drunken arousal when slovenly Sgt. Stanislaus ‘Animal’ Kuzawa (Robert Strauss) muddles through an alcoholic haze, briefly believing his best friend in the camp, Sgt. Harry Shapiro (Harvey Lembeck) is, in fact, an incarnation of Betty Grable (Animal’s ultimate fantasy pin-up girl). Paramount encouraged Wilder to tone down the inference Animal was becoming ‘excited’ while engaging Harry in a Christmas dance. Wilder refused and was eventually successful at keeping this moment in his movie.

For the rest, Wilder hand-picked an exceptional supporting cast to re-envision the play in cinematic terms. Peter Graves was cast as the stoolie, Sgt. Price; Don Taylor - Lt. James Dunbar, marked for treason and death after his involvement in the detonation of a railway bomb; Sig Ruman as the wily/jovial Nazi Sgt. Johann Sebastian Schulz, who conferred his messages with Price through hidden roles of paper exchanged in a hollow chess piece, and finally, Richard Erdman as Barracks overseer, Sgt. ‘Hoffy’ Hoffman – the only actor to keep a straight face throughout the entire movie. Stalag 17’s narrative strength derived not simply from Wilder’s waggishness – always fresh, with something perceptive and/or revealing to say – but from his actors’ ability to differentiate through performance his words as uniquely belonging to them – the characters taking on more ballast, Wilder’s prose becoming real thoughts rather than scripted dialogue.  

Stalag 17 opens with a clever narration by Clarence Harvey ‘Cookie’ Cook (Gil Stratton), setting up the grim premise for a daring prison break. This ends fatally for POW’s Manfredi (Michael Moore) and Johnson (Peter Baldwin). Their ‘foolproof’ plan of tunneling to freedom ends in a bloody ambush just beyond the barbed wire fence. Someone must have tipped the Nazi guard off. But who? All evidence points to the cynical Sgt. Sefton who callously takes bets on the pair making it out alive, has a stash of ill-gotten goodies in a chest beneath his mattress and seems to have established a unique and favorable rapport with Sgt. Feldwebel Schulz, affording him special perks, such as fraternizing with the nearby camp of Russian maidens. Sefton’s fellow detainees do not think much of him. The feeling is mutual.

In fact, Sefton seems to be exploiting the men by organizing, among other gambles, a mouse race – capitalizing on their desperation and daydreams of home to make a quick buck. Sefton’s only real pal is Cookie, who sticks close until the men collectively decide Sefton is actually a spy kissing up to the Nazis. Perhaps Sefton was responsible for tipping off Schulz about Manfredi and Johnson’s escape.  While the men contemplate the possibility Sefton is a traitor (simply because they don’t like him), the Wilder/Blum screenplay concentrates on extoling the camp lifestyle and camaraderie. The much-looked-forward-to collective activities of hearing and receiving the daily news are hilariously relayed by Marko the Mailman (William Pierson), the appalling food rations and bathing conditions (they use communal latrine sinks), and the organization of periodic parties and future escape attempts to keep morale up, also keep the men sane. Sgt. Price is in charge of security. Naturally, no one suspects him of smuggling information from the barracks using rolled up paper inside a hollow chess piece, the placement of a loose knot in the cord of a hanging lamp inside the barracks alerting Schulz to a new message.

However, after Schulz confiscates a clandestine radio used to pick up the BBC broadcast, the men retaliate against Sefton, beating him to a pulp and looting his stash. When the Geneva Man (Irwin Kalser) arrives for his general inspection of the camp, he finds the men belligerent. But Sgt. Hoffman (Richard Erdman) takes it upon himself to make inquiries about the detainment of Lt. James Schuyler Dunbar (Don Taylor) who was removed from barracks earlier and is currently being tortured by Scherbach using sleep deprivation techniques because he is suspected of having blown up a Nazi railway. Aware of Sefton’s animosity toward Dunbar – because he graduated from the flyer program Sefton failed, and also because Dunbar comes from an affluent family, the men firmly believe Sefton is responsible for Dunbar’s current incarceration. But Sefton is no fool. In fact, he has already figured out the real identity of the stoolie.

After Sefton reveals the truth about Price to the rest of the men, Price attempts an escape. He is bound, gagged and forcibly dragged to the floor, silenced while Hoffman makes plans for Dunbar’s daring escape. At the break of dawn, as Dunbar is being led by guards to a waiting car that will take him to Berlin (and his death), the men detonate a smoke bomb, pummel the guards and whisk Dunbar to the nearby water tower where he waits while the rest of the plot is hatched. Sefton agrees to make the daring escape with Dunbar under the cover of night, writing off his fellow detainees with his ‘go to hell’ attitude. The men stage a diversion, using Price as bait – thrusting him into no man’s land with noisy cow bells attached to his feet to create a disturbance. Unaccustomed to such obvious distractions, the watchtower guards blindly open fire and murder their own man. Von Scherbach and Schulz only discover the rouse after the body has been turned over - time enough for Sefton and Dunbar to make their break to freedom.

From end to end, Stalag 17 is a starkly cynical, yet engaging, and oft poignant and prophetic masterpiece. Billy Wilder’s best movies frequently rank among the ‘top ten’ on critics’ lists. Yet, Stalag 17 is difficult to place.  On the one hand, it is an observant comedy of errors, set in the unlikeliest milieu for comedy to flourish - a POW camp (inspiring the latter-day creation of Hogan’s Heroes for primetime TV). On the other hand, Stalag 17 adopts a wickedly satirical view of war in general. And still, it owes goodly strength to the precepts of the melodrama, arguably with light comedy peppered in for good measure. Wilder, a master craftsman in virtually all genres, herein resisted the urge to clearly delineate the aim of the picture for his audience. Are they entitled to laugh, even scoff at the ugliness of war? Perhaps. Yet, consider that the pall of WWII was barely eight-years in the rearview of actual history at the time the picture was made. Arguably, Stalag 17 plays to all of the aforementioned mixed emotions about the war. This is the picture’s singular advantage. Wilder keeps the narrative arc truthful and taut. He exacts his pound of verisimilitude through humor – both highbrow and lowborn. As a result, he cuts across class distinction. He also slices into the wound of reality with a distinct jab to the funny bone. It’s okay to be amused, even entertained by the plight of these service men, distilled and demeaned, though never debased or destroyed for the pleasurable pursuit of entertainment itself.

Embraced upon its release, Stalag 17 was nominated for several Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor, William Holden – who accepted his Oscar rather begrudgingly. (He would have preferred it for his performance in Sunset Boulevard.) Viewed today, Stalag 17 retains its air of intangible truth through comedy. This goes well beyond crackling and bright prose or even the picture’s stunning ensemble of performances and set pieces. The movie…well… it moves, well, that is, and, Wilder and his characters make – but never belabor – their points. The intermingling of tragedy and silliness merge as two perfectly realized halves to the same equation. Movies as good as this are very rare – but remarkably more ever-present in Billy Wilder’s canon of indelible classics: Double Indemnity, Sabrina, Sunset Boulevard, The Seven Year Itch, Witness for the Prosecution, Irma La Douce, The Apartment and Some Like It Hot among them.  In such esteemed company, Stalag 17 often gets overlooked, or rather, displaced. Personally, I still think it’s the title – failing, as it so obviously does, to offer even a glimmer of the robust and razorback drollness that follows.  Oh well, we can forgive a weak title when what is sandwiched between it and ‘the end’ credit is pure box office gold. Stalag 17 is simply a winner in more ways than one, by far the best war-themed satire of its ilk and generation

Kino Lorber, via their alliance with Paramount Home Video, debut Stalag 17 in 4K UHD, scanned off an original 35mm camera negative. Do the results best the previously issued Blu-ray? In a word – yes. Stalag 17 has always looked rather dark on home video. True enough, this is not a bright and airy movie – in visual terms. Only now, in native 4K, can we fully appreciate Ernest Laszlo’s strangely sumptuous/yet bleak cinematography. The gray scale exhibits pluperfect tonality. Just wonderful. And film grain is presented pleasingly throughout. Fine detail pops, even during sequences shot at night. The ‘wow factor’ is in evidence in every frame. The 2.0 DTS audio is rather robust, particularly during Franz Waxman’s sparse music cues. Dialogue sounds natural and impressively clean. Kino has shelled out for 2 new audio commentaries; the first, featuring historians/authors, Steve Mitchell and Steven Jay Rubin, the second, with historian and Wilder aficionado, Joseph McBride. Kino has also ported over the old commentary with actors, Richard Erdman and Gil Stratton, and, co-playwright, Donald Bevan. For good measure, Kino’s also mastered a new-to-Blu from the same 4K scan, and the standard hi-def disc, in addition to the aforementioned extras, also houses a nearly half-hour making of, and another half-hour devoted to the real heroes of the war. These docs are in 720i and look atrocious. Otherwise, what’s here is a distinct upgrade from the old retired Blu and well worth your double-dip. So much for my ‘first impressions’ so many years ago. For now/for always: very highly recommended.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

4.5