Welcome to Flopcorn, where Reader staffers and contributors pay tribute to our very favorite bad movies. In this installment, associate editor Jamie Ludwig ponders her love-hate relationship with The Great Escape.
Obviously, given the track records of the prisoners, this was hardly a stroke of genius. Many troops considered it their sworn duty to try to escape captivity; a POW on the run was an annoyance to the Nazis and a drain on resources. And if one escapee could wreak havoc on the enemy, imagine what a couple hundred could do. Thus, in March 1943, a plan was hatched. Masterminded by Royal Air Force squadron leader Roger “Big X” Bushell (who inspired the character Roger Bartlett, played by Richard Attenborough), the scheme involved the construction of three tunnels over 12 months and the work of roughly 600 men—the “X organization.” The goal was to send 200 POWs beyond the wire dressed in civilian clothing and carrying perfectly forged identification papers. Sadly, the plot was discovered midway through the escape on March 25, 1944, but 76 men got away, three of whom eventually made it to England.
By now you might be wondering, with so many cards stacked in its favor, why have I developed such a love/hate relationship with The Great Escape? For starters, there are the filmmakers’ misguided attempts to make the story more appealing to American audiences, which sometimes means breaking with reality entirely; though some U.S. airmen had been involved in the early phase of planning, they’d all been transferred elsewhere before things really got under way. But Garner and McQueen’s starring roles were written in anyway, because why not give America a little credit where it’s not due?
