Stalag 17
1953
****
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves, Sig Ruman, Neville Brand
The American prisoners of war in Barrack 4 of the Stalag 17 POW camp suspect that one of them is a Nazi spy. Billy Wilder's black comedy is more of a prison film than a war film; it provides solid entertainment but doesn't really have anything to say about war. It's based on the 1951 play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, and is set mostly inside the barracks. William Holden plays a cynical prisoner who runs the black market on the camp, and he won a deserved Academy Award for his performance.
