Who Goes Next?

I caught the end of this film on talking pictures a couple of years ago, and now managed to obtain a dvd on Renown. Have watched twice in quick succession Some excellent performances, although German commandant, a bit of a caricature, and an unusual topic set around POW's and escaping during WW1, a young Jack Hawkins in a supporting roll a bonus. Highly recommended.

I think maybe Maurice Elvey could be accused here of trying to merge too many storylines into what could have been quite an efficient little great escape caper. Set during the Great War, we find "Hamilton" (an adequate Barry K. Barnes) swapping the delights of life in the sodden and perilous trenches for one in a POW camp where, together with loads of his compatriots, they focus on trying to escape. They find loads of innovative ways of not just digging a tunnel but of covering their tracks whilst under the slightly over-egged supervision of Meinhart Maur's camp commandant. Meantime, we discover that his beloved wife "Sarah" (Sophie Stewart) had an assignation at home with the caddish "Beck" (a wooden as a board Jack Hawkins) and that, for me anyway, introduces a degree of flashback-presented melodrama that the adventure aspects of this film just didn't need. At times it's quite a potent reflection on the conditions and attitudes at the time, and the stiff upper lip characterisations ring true now and again, but there are too many contrived attempts at comedy and maybe just one stereotype too many. It's based on a real event, though, and is worth a watch if only because it's clear that the next war was already on the horizon as this hit the screens!

At first this promises to be an early version of 'The Great Escape', which was nearly twice as long, yet showed the minutiae of digging a tunnel - disposing of the earth, for example - could easily fill an entire film of well over two hours in length and keep one interested.

Yet despite being only 85 minutes long - and boasting atmospheric photography (when it gets the chance) by Ronald Neame - this outing squanders footage on a gaping hole in the story back in Blighty as uninteresting as it is amoral in which Jack Hawkins forces his attentions on a woman he knows full well is married that eats up footage that would have been better devoted to the escape itself.

This film was screened three times in January 2018 on Britain's Talking Pictures TV channel. I can't recall many other POW escape films relating to the Great War ("Le Grande Illusion" comes to mind) and WGN sets the tone for many such later films set in the Second World War: breezy British PoWs valiantly digging an escape tunnel and winding up their captors with banter. There's just one exception - a young pilot suffering such a mental breakdown that he is to repatriated.

The plot is said to be based on a real-life escape, the largest of the war, from Holzminden PoW camp, when 29 officers escaped through a tunnel in 1918..

The German kommandant, played by Hungarian Meinhart Maur, struck me as too much of a caricature (a gross eater, fat, pompous), but Wikipedia tells us the actual kommandant at Holzminden was constantly ridiculed by the PoWs, who nicknamed him "Milwaukee Bill".

The other roles are played reasonably enough, not least by a 28-year-old Jack Hawkins, already depicting a character (of the resolute British officer) with which he came to be identified and here Doing the Decent Thing.

I did wonder about the long flashback showing him on leave in London, but justification for its inclusion became clear later in the film. There was one poignant scene of a woman who met every leave train at Victoria Station to see if her son, reported dead, was on it.

The film ends with presumably intended irony that reflects that in 1938 (when the film was released) Britain was already apprehensive that another world war was imminent.

A solid enough WW1 POW story which manages, with no small contrivance, to add a little marital infidelity to the mix. A young Jack Hawkins plays the kind of officer role with which he would soon become familiar, while Barry K. Barnes gives a decent account of himself as the officer who discovers his wife at home is playing away. Only Meinhart Maur's buffoonish portrayal of the cruel camp commandant strikes a bum note