Weston Library Film Club: on the theme of VETERANS ON FILM -- STALAG 17

Library : Weston Public Library

Location : Community Room Weston Public Library, 87 School Street, Weston, MA, 02493

Start : Monday 17th of November 2025 6:15 PM

End : Monday 17th of November 2025 8:30 PM

Description :

Veterans on Film Stalag 17 1953, 120 minutes When his career was in full stride in the 1940s and 50s, there were few filmmakers who could match the sharpness of writer, producer, director Billy Wilder. He was born in Austro-Hungary, honed his screenwriting skills in Weimar-Era Berlin and fled the Nazis for Hollywood by way of Paris. His big break came with writing Ninotchka starring Greta Garbo 1939 followed by his directorial debut in 1942 with The Major and the Minor followed by Double Indemnity with Barbara Stanwyck in 1944. At war’s end he became an officer in the US Army’s Psychological War Unit and returned to Germany, where his mother and stepfather had died in the camps. With his mordant sensibilities and his innate familiarity with both Germans and GIs, Wilder made the documentary Die Todesmülen as part of the Denazification program and then Berlin Affair with Marlene Dietrich in 1948 followed by Stalag 17 in 1953. In the case of Stalag 17, Wilder adapted a Broadway play written by a former POW who had been held in Austria and used Hollywood “Germans” such as Sig Ruman and the renowned (notorious) director Otto Preminger as guard and commandant. For the American POWs, all of whom were sergeants (which was Air Corps policy for any personnel flying over occupied Europe) Wilder employed original Broadway cast members Harvey Lembeck and Robert Strauss alongside Peter Graves, Don Taylor and William Holden, who delivers an outstanding performance as a barracks wheeler-dealer suspected by the other prisoners of being an informer. At turns suspenseful, infuriating and strangely funny, Wilder’s film captures the sense of civilian soldiers trying to find some kind of normality when they are not at all sure if they are fated to be the last ones shot by a monstrous regime. BE ADVISED---This film is listed as UNRATED, with smoking, drinking, violence, gambling, and all the hospitality one would expect from the Luftwaffe. westonlibrary.assabetinteractive.com/calendar/weston-library-film-club-24/