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Special Features
- 24-minute in-depth documentary on the making of The Great Escape
Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Customer Reviews
The Great Escape is certainly one of the most memorable films I've ever seen. The cast includes the late great Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough (Director of Gandhi), Charles Bronson, James Coburn, James Donald (Bridge on the River Kwai), Donald Pleasance and David McCallum (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.). McQueen's performance is riveting and makes the viewer miss him all the more. Garner, who actually was a "Scrounger" during the Korean War, is terrific. It's also particularly nice to see a performance as a good guy from Pleasance and as a human being by Bronson (sorry, but Bronson truly wasted his talent in the Death Wish movies). And in an era when studios tried to substitute backlot sets for on location filming, the POW camp, which was built on location in Germany, looks completely authentic and makes the audience sympathize with the prisoners' plight even more. The DVD heightens the experience by presenting the film letterboxed in clear, vibrant colors. In addition, the DVD edition includes a documentary on both the real story and the making of the film. This film is a classic and the DVD edition does it great justice and makes you realize what a mistake the AFI made by excluding it from its list.
Here's to "the fifty."
This movie has transcended generations -- my 18 year old son recently viewed it and he was totally engrossed in this fantastic true story of men seeking freedom under the most desperate circumstances. He agreed with me that "they don't make em like they used to" and that most of the films today can't hold a candle to The Great Escape.
The DVD is superb -- the color and picture quality is first rate -- looks just like when I saw it in the fall of 1963 at the old Capitol Theatre in Rome, NY. The featurette on the making of The Great Escape is a nice feature that I never saw before.
The performances are outstanding. Notable examples are James Gardner as a scounger and Charles Bronson (virtually unrecognisable) as the tunnelling expert. The big name (at the time) is, of course, Steve McQueen, here his usual brash self, fleeing a German squad on a merry motorcycle chase in one of the movie's most famous scenes. More interesting for me, however, is the care the actors, directors, and screenwriters took to set up the escape - we are brought through the division of labour in the camp, the problems that must be overcome (such as incompatible dirt colours), and the clautrophobia of digging. (This seems to be proof that 10 screenwriters can occasionally produce a good movie, in spite of Roger Ebert's "law" that quality of a screenplay is inversely proportional to the number of people working on it.) Finally, the musical score is rousing, sombre, or lighthearted when called for. It might be a little overbearing, but no more so than in The Empire Strikes Back, for instance.
The DVD quality is low, hence the 4-star rating I'm giving to the movie in this format. The picture quality is okay - clear and crisp, but the sound is not particularly good. Why is it that video is always cleaned up so much better than sound? There are few extras on the DVD, but the "Making of" featurette contains a lot of information in its 24 minutes. For example, James Garner reveals how he was a scrounger in real life for his unit in Korea, the cinematographer talks about scouting locations, building sets, etc. One of the most useful featurettes I've seen.
Adventure, Drama, History, 172 minutes
Directed by John Sturges
Starring Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough
The... Read more
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