Why The Great Escape Resonates in 2025

 

This evening, I went to the Somerville Theatre where I attended a special screening of The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, Richard Attenborough and David McCallum and directed by John Sturges. The screening is part of the Somerville Theatre's F*ck the Nazis series. 

The Great Escape resonates in 2025 for several reasons. 

For starters, there are too many quarters where the Nazis are no longer viewed as the bad guys - namely in the White House with the likes of Elon Musk repeatedly minimizing the Holocaust while the overtly anti-Semitic Kingsley Wilson has been promoted to Pentagon Press Secretary.

With that said, I wonder how many in the audience would view Israel as Nazi-like while likening the Palestinians, including Hamas, to the Resistance. 

Nevertheless, it is important to have films such as The Great Escape to remind us there is no moral ambiguity when it comes to the Nazis. 

The Great Escape also resonated because of the aforementioned all-star cast many of whom had served in combat in WWII and in Korea. Pleasence himself had been a POW who was captured after the plane he was piloting was shot down over Vichy France.

For me the most touching friendship from the movie was the one between Pleasence's Lt. Blythe and Garner's Lt. Hendley. Blythe is a forger who is going blind. When Blyth is informed by squad leader Roger Bartlett (played by Attenborough) that he cannot be part of the escape, Hendley stands up to Bartlett and tells him in no uncertain terms that Blythe is not blind as long as he is around and that he will be part of the escape. 

The audience was quite bemused by the devil-may-care attitude of Captain Hilts (played by McQueen) for his frequent failed escapes and willingness to accept solitary confinement for weeks at a time with a ball and glove to keep him company. Then there was the daring motorcycle chase sequence. 

They were perhaps most moved by Charles Bronson's performance as Lt. Welinski, a Polish RAF officer in charge of digging the tunnels despite his claustrophobia. I suspect many in the audience remember Bronson best as Paul Kersey in the Death Wish movies and other action films and may have been caught by surprise by the vulnerability he displayed in his performance as Welinski. There was an audible gasp when the power went out in the tunnel during an air raid as he was trying to escape and a genuine sense of terror which followed. A big cheer arose when Welinski successfully escapes. 

I was very pleasantly surprised when I heard spontaneous cheering for the raising of the American flag during the POW's Fourth of July party. I have seen the American flag booed and viewed with disdain. But in this particular context, the American flag was raised in defiance of the Third Reich. In seeing the flag displayed in this manner, I think there is also a hope that it will one day stand for something good again when ICE stops arresting American citizens for the color of their skin.

Perhaps what resonates the most about The Great Escape more than 60 years after its release and 80 years after the events which inspired it occurred is that there is no guarantee that defiance and resistance will succeed. In fact, there is a very good chance such efforts will end in failure and in turn result in the loss of life, possibly your own. Nevertheless, in the face of evil, defiance and resistance must be deployed as an obstacle to its triumph.