Nothing like a WWII P.O.W. movie to entertain! Not really a comedy, as there is mostly drama to account for the 630 U.S. Airmen imprisoned there, particularly in Barracks #4. There’s a suspected fink in their midst as every one of their plans to oppose the Nazis gets busted in one way or another. But it’s Billy Wilder, so there are some campy antics sprinkled throughout to help offset the seriousness of life in a German prison camp.
Sefton (Holden), the prisoner entrepreneur, always has the most smokes and contraband. But it’s more from him just grinding it out, setting up profitable ventures and betting opportunities to fight off the boredoms of being imprisoned. But his successful business ventures don’t exactly make him a lot of friends, so yeah, the “Informant” suspicions fall pretty heavily on him. This shows how that all comes to a head.
There’s some passing comparisons to the later TV comedy series Hogan’s Heroes, but besides the P.O.W. camp setting, the differences in tone and character make it completely different. I mean, after watching The Great Escape, it’s like, yeah, they use a lot of the same methods of subterfuge. But ultimately, they really didn’t have too many other options available to them, so yeah, overlap. Otherwise this is a decent war drama. But what’s with the cross-dressing? Wilder seems to like his cross-dressers. Hmmm.
