I found overwhelmingly that my experience was similar to theirs: We had expected a Hollywood film of moral clarity and rousing commitment and had been bewildered, even affected in a woundingly emotional way, by this film that veered into despair and deflation.

Yet I’d long been aware of the film, or at least of what I imagined the film to be as promoted in its iconic poster - men fleeing from background to foreground under words that promised “The great adventure! The great entertainment! The Great Escape” - and all that buoyant spirit readily appealed to me as a typical American boy of the times for whom war was (still) imagined as great and grand enterprise.įor the book, I interviewed by email several military aficionados and film scholars about their first memories of the film. The film came out in 1963 so my viewing must have been of a re-release following its first run. My newly published book, Dreams of Flight: The Great Escape in American Film and Culture, just out from the University of California Press, stands as the culmination of my engagement with the film and its history over the years. Its turn from gung-ho romp to downbeat fatalism was something I hadn’t anticipated, and the film remained with me as something to come to grips with. I was around 12 or 13, and the film blew me away. I first saw The Great Escape at my local drive-in in the mid-1960s.

(Image source: ) “It can be illuminating to unpack the process by which what ‘really happened’ in 1944 became a fictional film in 1963.” Foxing to the top textblock and minor offsetting to the endpapers jacket is price-clipped with a small chip to the spine panel.Captain Virgil ‘The Cooler King’ Hilts (Steve McQueen) makes a daring bid for freedom on a stolen motorcycle during the final moments of The Great Escape. Deeply moving, Brickhill's book is one of the best memoirs of the Second World War. Although most of the 76 who escaped were recaptured, the secretive digging, the counterfeiting of the uniforms, passports, and other materials to avoid detection comprise a story of defiance and resistance against Nazi cruelty. Due to his claustrophobia, Brickhill could not participate in the mass escape, but his story is one of courage and sacrifice, helping his fellow soldiers to freedom. Brickhill's memoir tells the story of how he and 600 men worked together to create three large, underground tunnels that would eventually help 76 Allied P.O.W.'s escape Stalag Luft III. Illustrated with drawings by Ley Kenyon and with black and white photographs. Red cloth with blue lettering on the spine. London: Faber and Faber Limited (1951), 1951.

The great escape by paul brickhill