Stalag 17

Billy Wilder followed up his brilliant Ace in the Hole with this darkly comic adaptation of Donald Bevan's and Edmund Trzcinski's stage play about an assortment of American airmen getting through the days in a German POW camp at the twilight of the Second World War.

William Holden stars as the laconic J.J. Sefton, a prisoner whose cynical and mercenary disposition leads his fellow prisoners to conjecture his role as an informant after two men are shot in an attempt to escape the compound. But who exactly is the real spy shuttling inside knowledge to the ever-watchful Oberst von Scherbach (director Otto Preminger in what would become an iconic screen-role)? Only after the film builds towards an explosive crescendo is the answer finally revealed...

A commercial success upon its release in 1953, Stalag 17 retains its reputation as one of the finest World War II films of all-time.

Full Frame