Amazon.com Essentials:
Black comedy and suspenseful action inside a German POW camp
during World War II--a setting that was later borrowed for the TV
sitcom Hogan's Heroes. The great director Billy Wilder adapted
the hit stage play, applying his own wicked sense of humor to the
apparently bleak subject matter. William Holden plays an antisocial
grouse amid a gang of wisecracking though indomitable American
prisoners. Because of his bitter cynicism, Holden is suspected by the
others of being an informer to the Germans, an accusation he must deal
with in his own crafty way. Holden, who had delivered a brilliant
performance for Wilder in Sunset Boulevard,
won the 1953 Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17. Very much his
equal, however, is Otto Preminger, an accomplished director himself,
who plays the strict, sneering camp commandant. --Robert Horton
