The Colditz Story (1955)

The Colditz Story is a British war film first released in 1955, directed by Guy Hamilton.  The film is based on a book by P.R. Reid and stars John Mills, Christopher Rhodes, Lionel Jeffries, Bryan Forbes and Guido Lorraine.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


1942, Saxony.  After an unsuccessful escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp, captured British army officers Pat Reid and Mac McGill are sent to Oflag IV-C, a castle prison that is reputedly escape-proof.  These latest arrivals waste no time planning their next escape, but their efforts are thwarted by escape attempts by prisoners of other nationalities.  McGill takes the initiative and convinces the different parties to coordinate their bids for freedom.  When several subsequent escape attempts fail, it becomes clear that one of the prisoners is a Nazi informer...

For many people, the word Colditz sends a shiver down the spine, immediately conjuring up memories of the unremittingly bleak television series, first broadcast by the BBC in the early seventies, which gave a harrowing depiction of the events described in searing detail in P.R. Reid’s WWII memoirs.   However, several years before that, Reid’s book had provided the basis for a notable film drama, directed by Guy Hamilton, who was himself a WWII veteran, having played an active role in the French Resistance.  Today, Hamilton is best remembered for the four James Bond films he made, including the classic Goldfinger (1964), although his best work includes his war films, The Colditz Story and Battle of Britain (1969).  

It is interesting to compare the BBC series, with its harsh realism, with this film, which is much lighter in tone and yet just as authentic.  In the film, the recurring prison escapes become a kind of game, with each side relishing the opportunity to outwit the other.  The grim reality of the situation is so downplayed that the spectator in uncertain who deserves more sympathy, the prisoners whose spirit appears to be unbreakable, or the German soldiers who have the unenviable task of keeping them in check.  This is probably what makes the film’s darker sequences so effective and so shocking.  What had appeared to be a harmless game suddenly assumes a more tragic aspect; it feels like you have been kicked in the stomach when sympathetic, well-drawn characters slip up and meet an abrupt, brutal end.

The Colditz Story is a compelling and suspenseful wartime drama that combines the humanity of Jean Renoir’s La Grande illusion (1937) with the downbeat humour of John Sturges’s The Great Escape (1963) and yet stands apart as an altogether different kind of P.O.W. drama.   The stark, almost expressionistic, black-and-white cinematography lends an atmosphere of menace and grim foreboding that gives the setting, the apparently inviolable Colditz Castle, its own character.  Meanwhile, the prisoners are portrayed not as the familiar gung-ho action heroes but as down-to-Earth servicemen who appear to be unaware of their bravery and resilience.  This is a fitting tribute to those who participated in the escapes from the Nazi prisoner-of-war camps during WWII, only a small proportion of whom made it back home to tell the tale.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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