Stalag 17

Audience Reviews

View More

bruce F @bruce999 Aug 15 a classic prisoner of war movie. filled with humor, and interesting dialogue. a fun moment is a prisoner pretending to be hitler...giving a talk in the prison camp. so funny. don't miss it. See more Patrick C @RT84374237 Jun 6 Billy Wilder was on such a roll in this period, moving from drama to comedy and back with aplomb. In 'Stalag 17' he succeeded in fusing the two in this amusing and affecting tale of American soldiers in a German prisoner-of-war camp. Wonderful performances all round (Animal is fabulous!) and superb direction from a master storyteller. See more Diane N. @Niedi737 Nov 11 Well acted & well directed film. Billy Wilder never disappoints- great script! Watch it! See more Stephen C @bob25009 07/28/2025 Funny in 2 hours flat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! See more Yoshi3 M @RT27893635 04/30/2025 It's like Wilder told everyone to pretend they were clowns in a circus. Only Holden and Preminger give solid performances; the rest confuse acting with making cartoonish faces and voices. It fails as a drama because of all the buffoonery, and it also fails as a comedy because of its lack of real humor. For a man who wrote and directed some of the greatest movies of all time, this one is surprisingly bad. See more Matthew D @OceanSage 12/27/2024 A miserably unfunny and slow POW camp film that’s just dull. Director Billy Wilder’s war mystery comedy Stalag 17 (1953) is a rare miss from Wilder. I love his films Sunset Boulevard, Witness for the Prosecution, Five Graves to Cairo, Double Indemnity, A Foreign Affair, Love in the Afternoon, and Sabrina. However, sometimes his films rub me the wrong way and Stalag 17 falls into the Billy Wilder films I did not enjoy like The Apartment and The Seven Year Itch. Wilder’s rather sterile direction just lingers mostly inside this one barracks in a POW camp, but rather than make the American prisoners of war sympathetic soldiers, they all feel like obnoxious idiots. Stalag 17 is like if The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai were written by idiots. Tonally, It felt like a terrible Three Stooges knock off movie. Even the show MASH is better than this or Cool Hand Luke. Stalag 17 influenced all of these, but it’s so boring and unfunny. Writers Billy Wilder, Edwin Blum, Donald Bevan, and Edmund Trzcinski come up with immature jokes, basic characters, and a bare plot. It’s unengaging as a war film, increasingly obvious as a mystery, and horribly stupid as well as unfunny as a comedy. William Holden has the only serious performance in all 120 minutes of this total lame farce. See more Read all reviews

Stalag 17

My Rating

Read More Read Less WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW POST RATING