The Great Escape

One of the great adventure movies is about an escape from a German POW camp in the middle of World War II where most of the characters end up dead, murdered by the SS. Fun, right?

It’s both a great irony and a testament to John Sturges’ sure hand on the material that a story so inherently depressing doesn’t come off that way. That the tone of the film manages to move from one extreme to another without feeling like whiplash is kind of amazing, and I think it all has to do with the general appro...