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The Great Escape

900 statements
178 feature instances
79 referencing feature instances

The Great Escape	type	TVTItem
The Great Escape	label	The Great Escape
The Great Escape	page	TheGreatEscape
The Great Escape	comment	The Great Escape is a classic 1963 World War II film, directed by John Sturges and featuring an All-Star Cast including Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, and David McCallum. It's Inspired byâ€¦ the true story of a mass escape from a German POW Camp, by way of Australian author Paul Brickhill's (now nearly forgotten) autobiographical account of the same title.During the War, the Germans decided to put all Allied prisoners with a record of escaping into the same, supposedly escape-proof camp, Stalag Luft III. The prisoners promptly formed an escape committee, which began coordinating plans for a mass breakout. Tricksters forged important documents, suborned the guards, and acquired needed equipment, while others dug secret tunnels.Months of planning and preparation culminated in a breakout attempt on the night of March 24, 1944. Seventy-six POWs (out of a planned 250) were able to escape the compound, but only three made it out of Germany. The rest were recaptured, several of them at the last moment. (The film climaxes with "Cooler King" Hilts, played by McQueen, leading the Germans on an iconic motorcycle chase, which ends with him trapped on barbed wire only inches from theoretical safety over the Swiss border— an entirely fictitious sequence.) Finally, most of the recaptured escapees were executed.The film is largely a work of fiction, though a number of details about the preparations for the escape are fairly accurate. Meddling executives added a historical American character, and, for security reasons, omitted all mention of the help the escapees received from outside the camp. It also contains a series of continuity errors relating to the real-life segregation of American prisoners part-way through the tunnel digging; Hilts is given a couple of lines which are references to this (based on the book) while he, for no explained reason, is left there. The other American prisoners do not appear, so the whole thread is meaningless in context.The film's theme music is very well known and a favourite of English football fans (especially when playing Germany). The story goes that the supporters' club band started playing it when England went a goal behind in a match against Italy; England staged a comeback and ended up winning, and the fans adopted the tune. It's one of Elmer Bernstein's epic masterpieces.A video game based on the movie came out in 2003 for the PlayStation 2, PC and Xbox. It managed to maintain a small cult following. There was also a 1986 game from the 8-bit computer era which didn't really follow the movie plot, but has the distinction of being considered one of the best games for the ZX Spectrum.Not to be confused with The Great Escaper.Be warned. There are unmarked spoilers.
The Great Escape	fetched	2024-03-22T01:31:36Z
The Great Escape	parsed	2024-03-22T01:31:37Z
The Great Escape	processingComment	Dropped link to TheDeterminator: Not a Feature - UNKNOWN
The Great Escape	processingUnknown	TheDeterminator
The Great Escape	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Great Escape / int_1237828f	type	Anyone Can Die
The Great Escape / int_1237828f	comment	Anyone Can Die: Bartlett, Mac, Cavendish, Ashley-Pitt, Blythe, and Ives, to name a few.
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The Great Escape / int_135b9977	type	Bloodless Carnage
The Great Escape / int_135b9977	comment	Bloodless Carnage: Zig-zagged. None of the people who get shot on screen visibly bleed (mostly) except for other moments regarding violence: Hilts gets blood stains and some small wounds on his arms and forehead after he gets caught in the fence following his famous motorcycle jump and after Blythe dies, there is a spot of blood on his forehead while Hensley (holding him in his arms), has a diagonal line of blood that starts from his right eyebrow to the left side of his chin.
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The Great Escape / int_1439161f	type	Heroic BSoD
The Great Escape / int_1439161f	comment	Heroic BSoD: Danny having an attack of Claustrophobia in the tunnel. Ives in the cooler. He suffers a second one during the 4th of July celebration after the Germans discover Tom, which leads to his suicide.
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The Great Escape / int_143939c1	type	Trailers Always Spoil
The Great Escape / int_143939c1	comment	Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer reveals that a bunch of men do, in fact, escape, which happens very late in the film, although to be fair, the word, "Escape" is in the title.
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The Great Escape / int_15b2cab3	type	Tempting Fate
The Great Escape / int_15b2cab3	comment	Tempting Fate:
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The Great Escape / int_165d6f53	type	Punishment Box
The Great Escape / int_165d6f53	comment	Punishment Box: The Cooler.
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The Great Escape / int_171ef47c	type	Not-So-Harmless Villain
The Great Escape / int_171ef47c	comment	Not-So-Harmless Villain: Werner is portrayed as a nuisance who lacks any zeal for his work and thus can be badgered by the prisoners. Despite this, he does not incurs in major dereliction of duty and is the one who discovers Tom.
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The Great Escape / int_185ea595	type	The Trickster
The Great Escape / int_185ea595	comment	The Trickster: The Allied prisoners are all specialists in escaping POW camps using various tricks.
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The Great Escape / int_18dd6739	type	Dressing as the Enemy
The Great Escape / int_18dd6739	comment	Dressing as the Enemy: A variation when Danny and Sedgwick try to pose as Russian prisoners when this special, secluded group is being taken outside to cut trees. They are easily spotted. Hilts dresses as a Wehrmacht soldier in the climax, but his cover is blown when he's halted and is unable to provide a travel permit when asked for one by a German officer.
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The Great Escape / int_19384952	type	Master Forger
The Great Escape / int_19384952	comment	Master Forger: Blythe is a heroic version of this, forging travel passes, identity cards, etc. for the allied POWs.
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The Great Escape / int_1c79ae8c	type	Those Two Guys
The Great Escape / int_1c79ae8c	comment	Those Two Guys: "Tunnel Kings" Danny and Willie.
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The Great Escape / int_1dacdb4f	type	Senseless Sacrifice
The Great Escape / int_1dacdb4f	comment	Senseless Sacrifice: Ashley-Pitt chooses to sacrifice himself early on in the escape in order to give Mac and Bartlett a chance to run from Kuhn, who recognised Bartlett. Both of them are later caught and are among the 50 men executed.
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The Great Escape / int_1dae374	type	POW Camp
The Great Escape / int_1dae374	comment	POW Camp: The entire setting.
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The Great Escape / int_1de5c038	type	Too Happy to Live
The Great Escape / int_1de5c038	comment	Too Happy to Live: Big X comments to one of his colleagues that he's never been happier than when he was at the Stalag working on escape plans. Less than a minute later, he and all of the other recaptured prisoners present are murdered by the Gestapo.
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The Great Escape / int_1dfbbf31	type	Heterosexual Life-Partners
The Great Escape / int_1dfbbf31	comment	Heterosexual Life-Partners: Willie and Danny are very dear friends who go back a long way. The same can be said for Bartlett and Mac. Not to mention the more short-lived but still very close friendships that develop between Hilts and Ives, and Hendley and Blythe. Another case could also be made for Haynes and Nimmo, who in addition to performing diversions, also escape as a pair, in addition to being together at numerous intervals. However, while Nimmo ends up being returned to the camp at the end, Haynes ends up being one of the fifty.
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The Great Escape / int_1e1aa82a	type	Diabolus ex Machina
The Great Escape / int_1e1aa82a	comment	Diabolus ex Machina: A realistic but unexpected one happens on the the night of the escape. Despite the calculations, the tunnel is found to be several feet short of the trees, so the escapees are briefly exposed. Cue Finagle's Law.
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The Great Escape / int_200c009a	type	Mook Lieutenant
The Great Escape / int_200c009a	comment	Mook Lieutenant: Strachwitz, the head guard at the camp, serves this function.
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The Great Escape / int_20860a0e	type	Punch-Clock Villain
The Great Escape / int_20860a0e	comment	Punch-Clock Villain: Colonel von Luger, Werner "The Ferret," and the rank-and-file German soldiers are generally shown to be professional and non-malicious.
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The Great Escape / int_21f3aa44	type	Good Is Not Nice
The Great Escape / int_21f3aa44	comment	Good Is Not Nice: Bartlett, in part due to the The Chains of Commanding, is sometimes unnecessarily blunt and cold to some of the fellow escape artists under his watch. He also refuses to give due credit to a Luftwaffe that applies some professional courtesy and is milder compared to other branches of the German military. Hilts is cocky and acts like a self-centered narcissist at first, but he sacrifices his own escape for the greater good a number of times and puts his life at risk to protect Ives and others.
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The Great Escape / int_225527db	type	Cult Soundtrack
The Great Escape / int_225527db	comment	Cult Soundtrack: Elmer Bernstein's music score, particularly the jaunty title march, has become recognizable even to people who've never seen this film.
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The Great Escape / int_23be181a	type	Patriotic Fervor
The Great Escape / int_23be181a	comment	Patriotic Fervor: The three American prisoners organize a festive, good natured 4th of July celebration, where with tongue-in-cheek Mac agrees to Hilts' "Down the British!". Early on, Werner tries to use the War of 1812 as a wedge between the British and Hendley, who dismisses it as propaganda.
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The Great Escape / int_23ff95fb	type	Brutal Honesty
The Great Escape / int_23ff95fb	comment	Brutal Honesty: When Hilts is discovered testing his baseball trick to cross the wire, he first tells a tale to "Ferret" Kramer and then to his superior, Strachwitz. When Von Luger arrives to question him, Hilts is annoyed by the repetition, drops the act and flat-out tells the Colonel he was planning an escape.
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The Great Escape / int_2562da69	type	Great Escape
The Great Escape / int_2562da69	comment	Great Escape: The Trope Namer. Planned for 250 POWs, around a third of them reach the second stage.
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The Great Escape / int_294ed981	type	Bilingual Bonus
The Great Escape / int_294ed981	comment	Bilingual Bonus: The dialogue in German and French is not subtitled, providing the multilingual viewer a deeper understanding of some events without relying merely on the reactions of the characters.
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The Great Escape / int_2a02e5c9	type	Guile Hero
The Great Escape / int_2a02e5c9	comment	Guile Hero: The Allied POWs obviously need to be smart, because being overly brash and confrontational may be rewarded with a visit to the cooler or a bullet to the back. Hendley the scrounger stands out among them.
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The Great Escape / int_2b75f9b3	type	Token Good Cop
The Great Escape / int_2b75f9b3	comment	Token Good Cop: Played with regarding Kramer — he is the only guard at the POW camp who is willing to genuinely befriend the prisoners, but he's also one of the few with genuine competence in preventing escape attempts.
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The Great Escape / int_2c27353f	type	Was It Really Worth It?
The Great Escape / int_2c27353f	comment	Was It Really Worth It?: Hendley is informed by Ramsey that 50 of the 76 escaped POW's have been executed, but the escape itself caused havoc behind the German lines, tying up thousands of troops that would have been utilized elsewhere. Hendley asks of all his dead friends, "Was it worth it?" and is told "It depends on your point of view, doesn't it?"
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The Great Escape / int_2e8441c9	type	The Bad Guy Wins
The Great Escape / int_2e8441c9	comment	The Bad Guy Wins: Played mostly straight, just as in the true story it was based on. Three of the escapees do manage not to get captured again but most of them are re-apprehended and the many of the re-apprehended ones are killed. Von Luger is arrested for failing to prevent the breakout, leaving the camp in control of the SS. That said, Roger's main purpose for the escape (to inconvenience them by forcing them to waste more resources on capturing escaped POWs than ever before) is effectively achieved, pushing the Nazis further towards their eventual surrender in the war.
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The Great Escape / int_2f226fee	type	You Didn't Ask
The Great Escape / int_2f226fee	comment	You Didn't Ask: When Sedgewick learns that Danny knows a sentence in Russian, he immediately asks Danny to teach it to him. As he realizes shortly thereafter, he never bothered to ask first if it was a useful sentence.
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The Great Escape / int_30462ce8	type	Stock British Phrases
The Great Escape / int_30462ce8	comment	Stock British Phrases: The British officers tend to use these.
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The Great Escape / int_31e9c24b	type	Hooking the Keys
The Great Escape / int_31e9c24b	comment	Hooking the Keys: Played with. Hilts is being led to "the cooler" (a solitary-confinement cell) by a guard, who closes Hilts' cell door and then opens it a second later because Hilts stole the guard's keys.
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The Great Escape / int_32da548d	type	Arch-Enemy
The Great Escape / int_32da548d	comment	Arch-Enemy: Von Luger to "Cooler King" Hilts. Technically he's this to all of them, but Hilts seems to be out for him directly, while the rest of the X organization just consider him part of the system they have to escape.
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The Great Escape / int_33faa25	type	Thwarted Escape
The Great Escape / int_33faa25	comment	Thwarted Escape: Painfully. Hendley and Colin have several of them including the train jump, and the attempted theft of the aircraft, although the real escapees didn't manage to start it and were caught on the ground. Roger Bushell had, by his own account, crossed over the Swiss border and back into Germany, through becoming lost in the dark, during a previous escape. The lorry theft is another. At one point the POW leaders allow the Americans to try an easily thwarted escape just so the Germans don't get suspicious of their bigger planned escape.
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The Great Escape / int_34dd5f3	type	La RÃ©sistance
The Great Escape / int_34dd5f3	comment	La RÃ©sistance: The 'X' organization that arranges the titular escape. Part of their goal is to disrupt Nazi operations by forcing them to start a manhunt for the escaped prisoners. Sedgwick is aided by members of the French Resistance movement after escaping and making it to France. They protect him from a drive-by shooting of Nazi officers and ultimately help him make his way to Spain.
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The Great Escape / int_373283c9	type	This Cannot Be!
The Great Escape / int_373283c9	comment	This Cannot Be!: When Hilts informs Roger and Mac that the tunnel has come up 20 feet short, Mac asks a variant of this.
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The Great Escape / int_375e702b	type	Brits Love Tea
The Great Escape / int_375e702b	comment	Brits Love Tea: Blythe is most grateful to Hendley for getting him milk, as he believes that "tea without milk is so uncivilised".
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The Great Escape / int_3bc88a7f	type	Foregone Conclusion
The Great Escape / int_3bc88a7f	comment	Foregone Conclusion: For those who know or read about the escape, they'll already know that out of the 76 escapees, only 3 make it to friendly territory, with the rest recaptured and 50 of them executed.
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The Great Escape / int_3e463af8	type	Prison Escape Artist
The Great Escape / int_3e463af8	comment	Prison Escape Artist: The inhabitants of the German prison camp are the best escape artists among captured Allied soldiers, and Roger Bartlett (AKA "Big X") is the best organizer of escape attempts among them.
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The Great Escape / int_3f0b2f50	type	Make It Look Like an Accident
The Great Escape / int_3f0b2f50	comment	Make It Look Like an Accident: The 50 are reported as "shot while escaping" and unlike the real thing, none of them are wounded. The allied prisoners are not fooled by the obvious lie and even Von Luger is ashamed by the murders. (This was even more in play in real life, as the prisoners were shot a few at a time rather than one mass execution to further the fiction that they'd been trying to escape.)
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The Great Escape / int_40cc0c7e	type	Bittersweet Ending
The Great Escape / int_40cc0c7e	comment	Bittersweet Ending: Only Sedgwick, Danny, and Willie manage to escape Nazi Germany entirely. Most of the others are either killed during the escape, or executed afterward. A small number (including Hilts, Hendley and Nimmo) are recaptured and simply put back in the camp. Also, the Luftwaffe Commandant is being replaced by the SD, who will probably make life more difficult for the remaining POWs. That said, everyone agrees that Roger's main motivation for the escape (to inconvenience the Nazis by causing them to waste more resources on catching POWs than ever before) was a success, but fifty were murdered. It's openly asked: "Was it worth it?" and answered with: "That depends on your point of view." Hilts is back in the cooler bouncing a baseball against a wall, planning his next escape as he did so many times before. When the guards place Hilts back in the cooler again, you can visibly see their heads bow, and their actions half-hearted. Proving that even Mooks have emotion.
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The Great Escape / int_42c186e	type	A Tragedy of Impulsiveness
The Great Escape / int_42c186e	comment	A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Impulsiveness and nerves. During the escape, one of the guards gets too close to the tunnel and they have to hold up the line while he's searching. Unfortunately, the next person waiting gets anxious and pokes his head out at the exact wrong time, and the guard spots the tunnel. Of course, in this case it's not clear if he caused it or if the guard would have found it anyway.
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The Great Escape / int_44fc28e8	type	Honor Before Reason
The Great Escape / int_44fc28e8	comment	Honor Before Reason: "Colin is not a blind man as long as he's with me!!"
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The Great Escape / int_4604fd4d	type	Worthy Opponent
The Great Escape / int_4604fd4d	comment	Worthy Opponent: Von Luger respects his prisoners as fellow soldiers and officers doing their duty and fighting for their country. note In the original nonfiction book, it's noted that his real-life counterpart, von Lindeiner, was the one who pulled the strings to get Bartlett sent back to Stalag 3, rather than being killed, stating that the Gestapo don't represent Germany.
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The Great Escape / int_4764ce3a	type	Military Moonshiner
The Great Escape / int_4764ce3a	comment	Military Moonshiner: Americans Hilts, Hendley, and Goff celebrate the Fourth of July by distilling some paint-peeling hooch and sharing it with the other prisoners.
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The Great Escape / int_49d59be9	type	Scenery Porn
The Great Escape / int_49d59be9	comment	Scenery Porn: Lots of it, particularly in the post-breakout portion of the film.
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The Great Escape / int_4a852458	type	Big Good
The Great Escape / int_4a852458	comment	Big Good: Bartlett "Big X", the leader of the operation.
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The Great Escape / int_4bfcfa7c	type	Kansas City Shuffle
The Great Escape / int_4bfcfa7c	comment	Kansas City Shuffle: The plotters avoid discovery by allowing their men to do smaller, less elaborate escape plans which are easily stopped, thus making the guards think they've got the situation under control.
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The Great Escape / int_4d1b485d	type	Dedication
The Great Escape / int_4d1b485d	comment	Dedication: The film is dedicated to the fifty.
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The Great Escape / int_4da6ac	type	Rated M for Manly
The Great Escape / int_4da6ac	comment	Rated M for Manly: Wily soldiers using all of their wits and gumption to escape Nazis
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The Great Escape / int_4f3bf54e	type	Working on the Chain Gang
The Great Escape / int_4f3bf54e	comment	The spirited, mischievous and almost jovial first day of the Allies in the camp is counterpointed by the somber, grim and grizzled looks of the Russian prisoners used as forced labor. A death march is even played during this scene.
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The Great Escape / int_4faa04bb	type	Dream Team
The Great Escape / int_4faa04bb	comment	Dream Team: The Germans round up together a large group of Allied escape artists, hoping the POWs would be easier to contain in a new Stalag-camp, designed and run without the flaws of previous ones. The temerity of this predicament is addressed in-story.
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The Great Escape / int_526cacaa	type	Murphy's Bed
The Great Escape / int_526cacaa	comment	Murphy's Bed: All the prisoners sleep in wooden, usually multi-tier bunks with the mattresses supported on planks. As these also supply the only readily available source of wood, a scene halfway through has Hilts removing all but the bare minimum to make pit props for the tunnel. Enter Cavendish, who bounds onto his third- tier bunk and proceeds to crash through all three levels to the floor.
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The Great Escape / int_537dd8fe	type	Affably Evil
The Great Escape / int_537dd8fe	comment	Affably Evil: Von Luger is more civil to the prisoners than they are to him. He is also genuinely ashamed by the Gestapo's murder of the escapees.
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The Great Escape / int_54689fb6	type	Eagle Squadron
The Great Escape / int_54689fb6	comment	Eagle Squadron: Hendley is still a member of the Trope Namer, presumably meaning he was shot down before Pearl Harbor and so hasn't been transferred to the USAAF. Amusingly, as he's The Scrounger, his RAF uniform is in better condition than the actual British characters'.
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The Great Escape / int_54bbe8ae	type	Blind Mistake
The Great Escape / int_54bbe8ae	comment	Blind Mistake: Hendley is tipped off to Colin's deteriorating vision when Colin mistakes him for Roger — who's eight inches shorter and much stockier than Hendley, meaning it would be hard to make the mistake even at a distance — while standing only a few feet from him. He confirms his suspicions by asking a trick question (one which would be easily picked up on by a sighted person, but would misdirect someone who couldn't see the obvious clue that the question was misleading) which Colin falls for.
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The Great Escape / int_56515a39	type	Artistic License â€“ History
The Great Escape / int_56515a39	comment	Artistic License â€“ History: Several of the characters assault German guards, a thing which real-life prisoners and escapers avoided at all costs as being tantamount to inviting execution, or at least a spell in a highly unpleasant German military prison. Hilts' capture after apparently killing a German soldier for his motorcycle (which he was riding when caught) would not result in him in the cooler; he'd simply be tried for murder and executed. The movie also removes a large amount of help the prisoners obtained from the Allied Intelligence services, which sneaked information and some gear through the Red Cross care packages. Some of this information was classified at the time the movie was made. The real POWs also requested the filmmakers to leave out a lot of such information to ensure that future real life escape attempts wouldn't be thwarted. The film omits any mention that many Germans willingly helped in the escape itself. The film suggests that the forgers were able to make near-exact replicas of just about any pass that was used in Nazi Germany. In reality, the forgers received a great deal of assistance from Germans who lived many hundreds of miles away on the other side of the country. Several German guards, who were openly anti-Nazi, also willingly gave the prisoners items and assistance of any kind to aid their escape. No American POWs participated in the actual "great escape" as suggested in the movie. Some American POWs helped with the digging of tunnel "Tom" but they were moved to another camp, seven months earlier before the "escape," as the Germans had suspicions something was going on. The escape took place during a bitterly cold March. The entire area was covered in snow. In the film, it happens in August. While the escapes themselves are more or less accurate, the three POWs who manage to get away clean, Danny, Willie, and Sedgewick, are Free Polish, English, and Australian, respectively. In real life, the three prisoners who escaped were two Norwegians and a Dutchman. The sequence in which two escapees steal a training aircraft, but are subsequently crash it, is derived from an episode in a completely different escape from another camp. The real-life escapees were caught attempting to start an aircraft. For Rule of Drama the recaptured POWs are dropped off by a truck and machine-gunned en masse. In real life there were taken for a drive in small groups and shot with pistols by the Gestapo, to play along with the fiction that they had been shot while trying to escape.
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The Great Escape / int_5798bfbf	type	Reassigned to Antarctica
The Great Escape / int_5798bfbf	comment	Reassigned to Antarctica: A reassignment to the bloody Eastern Front is mentioned as a potential and terrifying punishment for incompetent Luftwaffe guards. Implied to be one of the possible fates of Von Luger after the escape.
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The Great Escape / int_5a40d6a	type	Adaptation Distillation
The Great Escape / int_5a40d6a	comment	Adaptation Distillation: A large section of the end of the original book detailing things like the building of a later tunnel named George, how the imprisoned men eventually meet up with allied soldiers, the Gestapo murder investigations, etc, is completely omitted in the movie. The whole issue about the camp being full of escapees is this. In real life, the "bad boys" were sent to the Colditz prison; the name "Stalag Luft" signifies a camp for Air Force officers, which virtually all pilots and most aircrew were. The later NCOs were simply lumped in with the rest. Stalag Luft III was actually a much bigger complex than the film depicts.
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The Great Escape / int_5d6db368	type	Four Eyes, Zero Soul
The Great Escape / int_5d6db368	comment	Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Chief Gestapo agent Preissen.
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The Great Escape / int_5deb34da	type	Ace Pilot
The Great Escape / int_5deb34da	comment	Ace Pilot: Hilts is described as a "hotshot pilot" and seems to stand out in a Stalag Luft camp meant for captured Allied aviators. That said, Hendley is the only person ever shown actually flying a plane in the entire movie.
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The Great Escape / int_5f0546a2	type	The Scrounger
The Great Escape / int_5f0546a2	comment	The Scrounger: Hendley. Truth in Television, as James Garner served in the US 24th Infantry Division in the Korean War, where he was wounded twice. He described himself as the unit "scrounger".
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The Great Escape / int_5f3bb274	type	Late-Arrival Spoiler
The Great Escape / int_5f3bb274	comment	Late-Arrival Spoiler: The execution of most of the recaptured escapees.
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The Great Escape / int_607d4ada	type	Run for the Border
The Great Escape / int_607d4ada	comment	Run for the Border: The POW variety.
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The Great Escape / int_60d73edb	type	Drink-Based Characterization
The Great Escape / int_60d73edb	comment	Drink-Based Characterization: The American prisoners celebrate the Fourth of July by making moonshine. Blythe dryly notes that whatever it is, it's not Napoleon Brandy.
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The Great Escape / int_63ff08fc	type	I Have My Ways
The Great Escape / int_63ff08fc	comment	I Have My Ways: When asked where he got his hands on a copy of almost every Nazi identity paper possible, the scrounger Hendley's response is that it's on loan. When asked about numerous fabrics he acquired for the tailors, his response is Don't Ask. Actually that seems to be his usual answer for almost everything. The film does at least show that when it came to the documents, Hendley lifted the wallet of a German guard he had befriended. He promised the guard he would find it when the guard found it was "lost" (in exchange for another needed item, naturally), hence referring to it as "on loan".
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The Great Escape / int_6439de78	type	Heroic Sacrifice
The Great Escape / int_6439de78	comment	Heroic Sacrifice: While waiting to pass through a Gestapo investigation checkpoint at a train station, Bartlett is spotted and recognized by Kuhn, one of the Gestapo agents who had Barlett transferred to Stalag Luft III, but Lt. Cmdr. "Dispersal" Ashley-Pitt notices this and shoots him before he can take action. He immediately gets gunned down by the SS officers investigating the passengers.
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The Great Escape / int_659235a4	type	Train Escape
The Great Escape / int_659235a4	comment	Train Escape: A variant occurs with Bartlett and MacDonald running up to a train just as it is pulling out so the guards on the platform will not have time to check their papers.
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The Great Escape / int_6627695f	type	Author Appeal
The Great Escape / int_6627695f	comment	Author Appeal: The bike escape performed by Hilts originates from Steve McQueen's love for motorcycles. The star had enough clout and creative control to ask for such an additional scene, now iconic.
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The Great Escape / int_67edaf78	type	Gargle Blaster
The Great Escape / int_67edaf78	comment	Gargle Blaster: Hilts, Hendley and Goff celebrate the Fourth of July by distilling some homemade booze and sharing it with the others. It appears to be powerful stuff.
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The Great Escape / int_697b5232	type	Those Wacky Nazis
The Great Escape / int_697b5232	comment	Those Wacky Nazis: The villains, the Gestapo. Many of the guards of the camp, ruled by the Luftwaffe, are just antagonists.
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The Great Escape / int_6ad1eeb8	type	Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality
The Great Escape / int_6ad1eeb8	comment	Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: The film has an all male main cast. Justified, as it is set in a WWII POW camp, where there generally were not many women. There were talks about including a Ms. Fanservice in the cast, but it never happened.
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The Great Escape / int_6bd689ca	type	Meaningful Echo
The Great Escape / int_6bd689ca	comment	Meaningful Echo: "It looks, after all, as if you will see Berlin before I do."
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The Great Escape / int_6cb4cb70	type	Improperly Placed Firearms
The Great Escape / int_6cb4cb70	comment	Improperly Placed Firearms: While it's not confirmed, one of the German officers seems to use an Arminius Revolver at the train station. They were not invented until 1960.
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The Great Escape / int_6d332aea	type	Driven to Suicide
The Great Escape / int_6d332aea	comment	Ives in the cooler. He suffers a second one during the 4th of July celebration after the Germans discover Tom, which leads to his suicide.
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The Great Escape / int_723be11b	type	Villain Has a Point
The Great Escape / int_723be11b	comment	Villain Has a Point: Preissen and Kuhn accurately warn Von Luger that Bartlett is an escape mastermind. They also warn Bartlett himself that if he tries to escape again, they'll just execute him this time. It doesn't justify murdering him and the other prisoners later in the film, of course, but they did warn him.
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The Great Escape / int_73328e84	type	Suicide by Cop
The Great Escape / int_73328e84	comment	Suicide by Cop: After the tunnel Tom is discovered, the shattered Ives commits suicide by attempting to scale the wire in full view of the guards, and is machine-gunned. This is a Truth in Television moment, as a real prisoner had done this (one of the cameos at the start of the book, unconnected with the tunnel)
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The Great Escape / int_7360806f	type	In-Series Nickname
The Great Escape / int_7360806f	comment	In-Series Nickname: Everyone in the main cast has a nickname: Hilts is "The Cooler King." Danny and Willie are "The Tunnel Kings." Bartlett is "Big X." Hendley is "The Scrounger." Sedgwick is "The Manufacturer." Blythe is "The Forger." Ives is "The Mole." Ashley-Pitt is "Dispersal." MacDonald is "Intelligence." Ramsey is "The SBO (Senior British Officer)." The guards are referred to as "goons" and "ferrets."
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The Great Escape / int_737394ab	type	Iconic Item
The Great Escape / int_737394ab	comment	Iconic Item: Hilts' baseball and glove. The guards are chivalrous enough to let him use 'em in the cooler.
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The Great Escape / int_77c0952e	type	Face Your Fears
The Great Escape / int_77c0952e	comment	Face Your Fears: Ironically enough, "Tunnel King" Danny suffers from claustrophobia, but he recounts he was able to overcome it because his resolve to escape is usually stronger than his fear. After he snaps, Willie is there to help him.
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The Great Escape / int_78270847	type	Curse Cut Short
The Great Escape / int_78270847	comment	Curse Cut Short: Hilts gets caught trying to test a blind spot near the prison fence and attempts to explain himself to a guard by saying he was retrieving his baseball. The head guard, Strachwitz, appears and the following exchange ensues.
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The Great Escape / int_7a0030a9	type	Cargo Concealment Caper
The Great Escape / int_7a0030a9	comment	Cargo Concealment Caper: A group of prisoners try to escape by concealing themselves in a load of tree branches a group of trucks are taking out of the newly-completed prison camp. One of the guards is Genre Savvy enough to take a pitchfork and stab it into one of the truck's cargo beds, so the prisoners hiding there give themselves up.
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The Great Escape / int_7a17d1ca	type	Eagleland
The Great Escape / int_7a17d1ca	comment	Eagle Land: Ace Pilot Hilts loves to project the boisterous, self-confident and proud image. The Germans are able to find a tunnel during the 4th of July celebration, when the prisoners are relaxed.
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The Great Escape / int_7ae4d273	type	Point of No Return
The Great Escape / int_7ae4d273	comment	Point of No Return: When informed that the tunnel is twenty feet short, Mac proposes that they call off the escape until they can dig further to reach the woods. However, Roger says that because of the documents being dated for that specific date, there's no turning back.
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The Great Escape / int_7d49d74a	type	Cultural Translation
The Great Escape / int_7d49d74a	comment	Cultural Translation: Kinda. While there were Americans at the prison camp in Real Life, the breakout was primarily enacted by British and Canadian pilots flying with the RAF.note The early stages of the real plan actually involved a large number of American prisoners. Unfortunately as the tunnels progressed the Germans decided there were now enough Americans in the camp to justify giving them their own compound and transferred them all over at about the time where the film puts the July 4th celebration.
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The Great Escape / int_7dbfa45b	type	Spy Speak
The Great Escape / int_7dbfa45b	comment	Spy Speak: The tunnels are called "Tom," "Dick" and "Harry."
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The Great Escape / int_7f933d43	type	Claustrophobia
The Great Escape / int_7f933d43	comment	Danny having an attack of Claustrophobia in the tunnel.
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The Great Escape / int_7febc23b	type	Establishing Character Moment
The Great Escape / int_7febc23b	comment	Establishing Character Moment: During Hilts' first scene, he tries a baseball trick to cross the safety wire and gets sent to the cooler when he talks back to the Colonel in the ensuing argument after he gets discovered. He gets effectively drawn as cocky and snarky, resourceful but over-confident, proud and unabashedly determined. When the prisoners arrive, the first thing they do is start looking for escape vulnerabilities.
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The Great Escape / int_863fa679	type	What Happened to the Mouse?
The Great Escape / int_863fa679	comment	What Happened to the Mouse?: After the introductory speech by Roger, the second tunnel Dick is only mentioned again once when it's sealed off. The book reveals that the area where it was supposed to surface was built over when the camp was expanded. As a result, there was no longer any point in extending it. The partially built tunnel was used to store tools and equipment to dig the other tunnels. It's also noted in the book that the entrance to Dick was the only one of the three never to be discovered by the guards, eliminating another reason for the tunnel to be reintroduced later in the film. If you work out the math, 76 prisoners escaped, three got out of German held territory, eleven were captured and sent back to prison, and fifty were executed by the Gestapo. That leaves twelve escapees unaccounted for. Ramsey doesn't know about Blythe's death prior to the executions but does know about Ashley-Pitt's. They may have ended up killed while resisting recapture offscreen like Blythe and Ashley-Pitt were. It's also possible that the eleven we see being brought back were just the first batch, and the others were returned later, sent to different camps, or (unlike in real life) did escape occupied territory.
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The Great Escape / int_86af7ab0	type	Badass Biker
The Great Escape / int_86af7ab0	comment	Badass Biker: Hilts. The entire bike chase was pure fiction, but it's awesome.
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The Great Escape / int_875615dd	type	Truth in Television
The Great Escape / int_875615dd	comment	Truth in Television: Many of the escapes went down in real life the same as they did in the film, with some changes made for the sake of drama. Roger Bushell and Bernard Scheidhauer got tripped up the same way as Roger and Mac from the film, with Scheidhauer being tricked into giving a response in English. Like Danny and Willie, Norwegians Per Bergsland and Jens MÃ¼ller stowed away on a ship to Sweden, and Dutchman Bram Van der Stok made his way into Spain with the help of the resistance, much like Sedgwick does in the film. Hilts, like real life escapee Dennis Cochran, is apprehended literally yards away from neutral Switzerland (though there was no motorcycle chase; he tried to cross at a checkpoint with a faked document, but the Germans had issued updated documents to catch anyone trying exactly this). And as noted above, Hendley and Colin's escape method was also tried, although the real-life pair never got the plane off the ground before they were caught.
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The Great Escape / int_88a97dd4	type	Stiff Upper Lip
The Great Escape / int_88a97dd4	comment	Stiff Upper Lip: Roger, Mac, Colin, Cavendish, and a lot of the British officers.
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The Great Escape / int_8984e5d1	type	Commonality Connection
The Great Escape / int_8984e5d1	comment	Commonality Connection: Hendley invokes a moment of bonding with Werner by bringing up his background in the Boy Scouts. Werner reveals he was enrolled in the German counterpart when, to his chagrin, it was merged into the Hitler Youth. The camps for Allied airmen are run by the Luftwaffe, and they share a mutual loathing of the Gestapo. This bonding over their shared military background is Truth in Television.
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The Great Escape / int_8a83cabc	type	Captured on Purpose
The Great Escape / int_8a83cabc	comment	Captured on Purpose: Bartlett asks Hilts to scout the area around the camp for them. Though he refuses, he initially seems intrigued and like he might be persuaded to change his mind, until he realizes what the plan would entail. Following Ives' death, he decides to do it anyway. It works pretty much exactly like they'd planned. When Hilts returns to the camp after Ives' death, the following occurs between Roger and Ashley-Pitt:
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The Great Escape / int_8f9f71a8	type	Crazy Enough to Work
The Great Escape / int_8f9f71a8	comment	Crazy Enough to Work: After Hilts details his and Ives' escape plan, Mac's reaction is that it's "so stupid it's positively brilliant." Unfortunately, it still doesn't work. The whole escape plan hinges on this, since the Germans are on the lookout for attempts that typically feature half a dozen men. Big X lampshades that they never will suspect them of being crazy enough to try and breakout over 250!
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The Great Escape / int_90766cc6	type	Voice of the Resistance
The Great Escape / int_90766cc6	comment	Sedgwick is shown doing this in a French cafe. Unfortunately the producers have him reading Liberation, an underground newspaper that would be the last thing an escaped POW trying to avoid attention would read, though it could be something he grabbed out of a trash can, and he couldn't understand the written French well enough on the spot to realize what it was, and is now stuck with it, unable to get rid of it inconspicuously in front of the German officers.
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The Great Escape / int_9843be73	type	As You Know
The Great Escape / int_9843be73	comment	As You Know: Ives reminds Hilts that in the art of tunnel-making, the digging is not the main problem. It's the shoring up with wood and getting the dirt out.
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The Great Escape / int_99ddfcec	type	Unwitting Instigator of Doom
The Great Escape / int_99ddfcec	comment	Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Tom gets discovered because Werner helps himself to a cup of coffee and then spills it, revealing that there is drainage in that room that shouldn't have been there. The discovery and loss of Tom results in Ives doing Death By Cop and makes the entire escape plan much more difficult than it already is.
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The Great Escape / int_9c46222e	type	Inopportune Impersonation Failure
The Great Escape / int_9c46222e	comment	Inopportune Impersonation Failure: During the planning for the POW Camp escape, Mac warns that a common German tactic to spot British or American escapees is to say something to a suspect in English as Schmuck Bait to see if they'll respond in English by mistake. Mac later gets caught by a Gestapo operative who tells him "Good luck" as he's getting on a train, and mistakenly thanks him in English.
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The Great Escape / int_9d12bbc1	type	Foreshadowing
The Great Escape / int_9d12bbc1	comment	Foreshadowing: While they're practicing getting past security checkpoints, Mac warns another escapee of the Gestapo practice of catching out Anglophones by speaking to them in English. Near the end, Mac himself falls for this trick, when a Gestapo man says "Good luck!" in English and he answers "Thanks!" When Hendley brings Colin a can of milk for his tea on the first night, if you watch carefully, you can see that Colin brings it very close to his face in order to see what it is. It's an early sign that all may not be well with Colin's eyesight.
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The Great Escape / int_a0ccd559	type	Last Chance to Quit
The Great Escape / int_a0ccd559	comment	Last Chance to Quit: After delivering Roger to Von Luger, Gestapo Agent Kuhn leaves, but not before telling Roger what will happen should he make another escape.
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The Great Escape / int_a2022cc9	type	Killed Mid-Sentence
The Great Escape / int_a2022cc9	comment	Killed Mid-Sentence: Bartlett. He's wistfully telling Mac how this escape has given him a renewed sense of purpose in life, before trailing off when he notices that the SS have set up machine guns.
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The Great Escape / int_a4c37cbe	type	Mood Whiplash
The Great Escape / int_a4c37cbe	comment	Mood Whiplash: The cheery Fourth of July party is ominously aborted when the Germans find "Tom", and to make things worse, Ives is killed a moment later trying to climb the barbed wire. The spirited, mischievous and almost jovial first day of the Allies in the camp is counterpointed by the somber, grim and grizzled looks of the Russian prisoners used as forced labor. A death march is even played during this scene. In spite of their situation, Bartlett begins to tell Mac about how working on the tunnels has given him a sort of purpose in life, then not only them, but all the men who were in the truck, are gunned down in cold blood. Blythe and Hendley are in a jolly mood as their plane flies over the Alps, being so close to escaping. Not a minute later, their plane's engine begins sputtering... We get a highly comical Description Cut of Hilts and Ives being returned to the cooler covered head-to-toe in mud just after Bartlett, Mac and Ramsey have speculated that their bizarre "mole" escape plan might actually work...which is instantly followed by Ives suffering his first Heroic BSoD.
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The Great Escape / int_a5f0752f	type	Rule of Drama
The Great Escape / int_a5f0752f	comment	For Rule of Drama the recaptured POWs are dropped off by a truck and machine-gunned en masse. In real life there were taken for a drive in small groups and shot with pistols by the Gestapo, to play along with the fiction that they had been shot while trying to escape.
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The Great Escape / int_a696c783	type	Event Title
The Great Escape / int_a696c783	comment	Event Title
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The Great Escape / int_a6bd0685	type	Died in Your Arms Tonight
The Great Escape / int_a6bd0685	comment	Died in Your Arms Tonight: Blythe's death. After he's shot, he lays on the ground while Hendley hurries over to him. After telling the approaching Germans not to shoot, Hendley takes Colin in his arms, and apologizes to him for "fouling things up." However, Blythe forgives him and takes some solace in the fact that he did manage to escape. He then expires as the German soldiers reach the top of the hill.
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The Great Escape / int_a6cda066	type	Rule of Three
The Great Escape / int_a6cda066	comment	Rule of Three: For fun, on the 4th of July, the three Americans tasting their alcohol:
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The Great Escape / int_a73c667a	type	Captivity Harmonica
The Great Escape / int_a73c667a	comment	Captivity Harmonica: Hilts throwing a baseball against the cooler cell wall is a variation.
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The Great Escape / int_a7aef9ff	type	Obfuscating Stupidity
The Great Escape / int_a7aef9ff	comment	Obfuscating Stupidity: The POWs don't make a fuss at the arrival of Bartlett, aka Big X, just in case the Germans don't know who he is. When Von Luger comes to inspect the vegetable patches, the Escape Committee wonders if the Colonel is just being wise to their act and knows exactly what they are doing with the soil and dirt. It apparently never grows beyond a suspicion. Bartlett realizes a complete absence of escape attempts would make the Germans suspicious, tipping them about something big going on, so the committee allows quick and less elaborate — if not outright ill-conceived — attempts to go ahead. This also describes Captain Hilts. He acts rather dim-witted, and Von Luger is surprised to learn he speaks German. Ives assumed he was an athlete of some kind, until he explained he was studying chemical engineering. Hilts keeps up his slow-witted act even as he proves himself to be one of the more clever escape artists in the camp. In the aforementioned interrogation scene, the Gestapo ask Cavendish what he's done with his papers. Cavendish attempts to pretend like he doesn't know what they're referring to. However, Lt. Dietrich isn't impressed with this.
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The Great Escape / int_a8556a04	type	Video Credits
The Great Escape / int_a8556a04	comment	Video Credits: Each actor is shown with a slightly extended clip from earlier in the film.
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The Great Escape / int_aa9fcfed	type	Embarrassing Middle Name
The Great Escape / int_aa9fcfed	comment	Embarrassing Middle Name: Hilts. Actually, he'd prefer Captain Hilts, but please, just don't call him Virgil.
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The Great Escape / int_ab1659d5	type	Hero Stole My Bike
The Great Escape / int_ab1659d5	comment	Hero Stole My Bike: Sedgwick steals a bicycle, Danny and Willie appropriate a rowboat. Averted by Hilts in that his bike isn't civilian property. Material from the DVD points out these thefts aren't recommended for POWs, as such a crime gives the foreign government an excuse to prosecute the POW as a criminal.
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The Great Escape / int_ac09dc0f	type	Alas, Poor Villain
The Great Escape / int_ac09dc0f	comment	Alas, Poor Villain: Von Luger's villainhood is mild in the first place, especially compared to the Gestapo, but in any case he leaves the picture with respectworthy dignity — the implication being he's going to be sent to the Russian Front, court-martialed, or worse, and that things will go From Bad to Worse for the POWsnote The real commandant, Friedrich Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau, was an ardent anti-Nazi who only joined the Lufwaffe out of a sense of patriotism toward his country, and then tried to retire due to poor health before being put in charge of the camp. He would have been court-martialed in the wake of the escape, but feigned mental illness and was eventually taken prisoner by the British while commanding an infantry unit in the Polish town of Zagan, incidentally the same area where most of the escapees were recaptured. After the war, when the massacre of the 50 was being prosecuted, he was defended by the freed camp prisoners as an honorable man who followed the Geneva Convention scrupulously, and had the respect of the senior Allied officers in the camp. He provided evidence in the trials, and was eventually repatriated..
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The Great Escape / int_ac5364fe	type	Chekhov's Hobby
The Great Escape / int_ac5364fe	comment	Chekhov's Hobby: In the cooler, Hilts tells Ives that he did a lot of motorcycle riding while in college. After the Escape, he nearly reaches Switzerland on a commandeered motorcycle. Colin's love of ornithology provides yet another method for the prisoners to conceal their activities (in Colin's case, the forgery workshop) right underneath the Germans' noses.
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The Great Escape / int_ac7471b0	type	The Dead Have Names
The Great Escape / int_ac7471b0	comment	The Dead Have Names: A list with the fifty is read at the end.
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The Great Escape / int_ad1db87c	type	Oh, Crap!
The Great Escape / int_ad1db87c	comment	Oh, Crap!: MacDonald tests a prisoner on passing off as French and then tells him off when the prisoner responds to a question posed in English by speaking English. Later on when MacDonald has escaped he talks to some SS officers in French - just when he thinks he's safe one of them says "Good luck!" in English. And he says "Thank you" in English. An Oh, Crap! expression immediately ensues, followed very shortly by his capture. The entire camp has this reaction while they are celebrating July 4 with the three Americans, and realize from the shouts that their "Tom" tunnel has been discovered, and all the work they've put into it has been for nothing. At one point, all the prisoners who have yet to escape have one of these when they hear the gunfire and know that the tunnel has been found and there will be no more escape attempts. Goff directly gets one when he pops out of the tunnel right next to a German guard who screams an alarm and holds him at gunpoint.
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The Great Escape / int_ad9fbc1e	type	Pyrrhic Victory
The Great Escape / int_ad9fbc1e	comment	Pyrrhic Victory/Was It Really Worth It?:
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The Great Escape / int_aed65980	type	All for Nothing
The Great Escape / int_aed65980	comment	All for Nothing: After Kuhn recognizes Bartlett in a train station, Ashley-Pitt sacrifices his life so Bartlett can get away, only for Bartlett to end up being caught anyway a few days later.
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The Great Escape / int_b3dbc942	type	Sequel
The Great Escape / int_b3dbc942	comment	Sequel: The 1988 Made-for-TV Movie The Great Escape II: The Untold Story, which stars Christopher Reeve and basically picks up where the original film left off. It's almost 100% fictional, though. It also features Donald Pleasence again, this time as a Nazi officer.
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The Great Escape / int_b4922dc8	type	Reflexive Response
The Great Escape / int_b4922dc8	comment	Reflexive Response: Reflexively responding "Thank you", in English, to an English phrase spoken by a German soldier, is what gets McDonald caught. The same escapee who, while drilling the others, had hammered on the point that reflexes like that would get you killed.
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The Great Escape / int_b6af057e	type	Double Vision
The Great Escape / int_b6af057e	comment	Double Vision: During the iconic motorcycle scene, Steve McQueen is not only playing Hilts, but is the guy riding the motorbike that Hilts stole and also played one of the German motorcyclists chasing him!
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The Great Escape / int_b6b6355f	type	Politeness Judo
The Great Escape / int_b6b6355f	comment	Politeness Judo: Played more seriously - Bartlett and MacDonald are questioned while trying to pass off as Frenchmen to get on a bus to Switzerland. They almost make it, until one of the Germans wishes them "Good luck" in English... and MacDonald responds with a reflexive "Thank you". It was MacDonald who had warned another prisoner about this trick. (This is actually a very close copy of the event that got Bartlett's real-life counterpart caught.)
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The Great Escape / int_b7248073	type	My Country, Right or Wrong
The Great Escape / int_b7248073	comment	Von Luger respects his prisoners as fellow soldiers and officers doing their duty and fighting for their country. note In the original nonfiction book, it's noted that his real-life counterpart, von Lindeiner, was the one who pulled the strings to get Bartlett sent back to Stalag 3, rather than being killed, stating that the Gestapo don't represent Germany.
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The Great Escape / int_b7c312ff	type	Cacophony Cover-Up
The Great Escape / int_b7c312ff	comment	Cacophony Cover Up: The prisoners loudly sing Christmas carols to mask the sounds from a workshop (it doesn't look like it's anywhere near Christmastime, but the songs were likely chosen because virtually everyone in the camp would know the words). Also when the tunnel is started and it is necessary to break a thick piece of slate, some of the prisoners pound some stakes into the ground with mallets for their vegetable gardens (which are part of the distractions as well).
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The Great Escape / int_b905c10c	type	The Alcatraz
The Great Escape / int_b905c10c	comment	The Alcatraz: The prison camp was specifically designed to be escape-proof and houses the most frequent troublemakers/escape-attempters among the POW populace.
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The Great Escape / int_bb0197af	type	Cool Bike
The Great Escape / int_bb0197af	comment	Cool Bike: The bike stolen by Hilts is a Triumph SR6 650 disguised as a German BMW R75.
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The Great Escape / int_bbe740e2	type	Tyrant Takes the Helm
The Great Escape / int_bbe740e2	comment	Tyrant Takes the Helm: Von Luger gives a reasonable New Era Speech to Ramsey in the beginning, but the trope is only played completely straight in the end, when the Gestapo takes over from the Luftwaffe.
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The Great Escape / int_bf051ba3	type	Don't Ask
The Great Escape / int_bf051ba3	comment	Don't Ask: Hendley seems to take this attitude with regards to his own work as well, as he tends not to pay much mind to what people need things for. For example, when Colin asks for a camera, Hendley simply asks him what kind. Keep in mind that this is before he learns that Colin is the forger, so he would have no idea why Colin needs a camera; he just doesn't see it as relevant or something he needs to know.
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The Great Escape / int_bfafc1b	type	MacGyvering
The Great Escape / int_bfafc1b	comment	Macgyvering: Hendley builds a still out of a furnace, a pressure cooker, and a trombone.
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The Great Escape / int_c02f148d	type	Both Sides Have a Point
The Great Escape / int_c02f148d	comment	Both Sides Have a Point: Roger initially prohibits Blythe from taking part in the escape, viewing his blindness as a major hazard. Hendley then counters with a point of his own by saying that Roger is the "biggest hazard they've got" because of how the Gestapo marked him.
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The Great Escape / int_c0303542	type	Covering for the Noise
The Great Escape / int_c0303542	comment	Covering for the Noise: The prisoners of war disguise the noise they are making whilst mining out a tunnel, by having a couple of stooges drive a giant stake into the ground outside as mentioned above, in full view of the guards. They later switch to loud choir practice.
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The Great Escape / int_c253090a	type	Big Blackout
The Great Escape / int_c253090a	comment	Big Blackout: A low-key one helps the prisoners out when the Germans shut down the lights during an Allied air raid.
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The Great Escape / int_c32ff031	type	Xanatos Gambit
The Great Escape / int_c32ff031	comment	Xanatos Gambit: While the mass jailbreak ultimately resulted in relatively few actually escaping to friendly territory, the prisoners managed to make the Germans divert massive amounts of resources to tracking them down, resources that could otherwise have been spent fighting the Allies at the front lines. In the end, the most positive outlook of the Escape is that there were two ideal outcomes: Either the majority of the flyers return to friendly lines, where they are able to return to active service and/or provide vital intelligence they may have gathered behind enemy lines, or the Germans waste resources otherwise dedicated to warfighting to track down the escaped inmates. Hendley, knowing this, asks if the lives of so many who were lost in the escape, such as his friend Blythe, was worth the effort, as mentioned above.
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The Great Escape / int_c335b9ec	type	Irony
The Great Escape / int_c335b9ec	comment	Irony: Mac is caught when a German speaks to him in English and he responds. Earlier, he tricked Haynes with the same play during rehearsal, and cautioned him that it was the simplest way to fool a suspect. The chase scene with Hilts starts off when he gets challenged to produce certain papers. Hendley had stolen an example of the paper in question when he lifted Werner's wallet earlier in the movie, so if there had been more time before the tunnel breakout or if Hilts had let someone know about his post-tunnel plans before his last stint in the cooler (assuming there were plans and he wasn't just improvising the whole way through), Blythe could have made him a set. At one point in the film, after quickly hiding the entrance to the tunnel they later escape through, a guard specifically questions three of the POWs what they're doing there so late. (They, of course, lie) Those same three prisoners, Sedgwick, Danny, and Willie, are incidentally the only three prisoners to make it into neutral territory, a 'home run', so to speak. A few of the guys are upset when they see the large suitcase that Sedgwick has elected to take with him through the tunnel, seeming to think it's impractical and might ruin his escape. Sedgewick ends up being one of the few who actually gets away.
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The Great Escape / int_c3478f1d	type	Badass Bookworm
The Great Escape / int_c3478f1d	comment	Badass Bookworm: Hilts was studying chemical engineering when he joined the war. Next he's riding motorcycles and beating up Those Wacky Nazis.
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The Great Escape / int_c3c18143	type	Hope Spot
The Great Escape / int_c3c18143	comment	Bartlett grabs a newspaper for cover after a harrowing escape from pursuing Germans, only to be greeted by name by an SS officer who's recognised the notorious British escapee.
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The Great Escape / int_c4286511	type	For Doom the Bell Tolls
The Great Escape / int_c4286511	comment	For Doom the Bell Tolls: When Roger is captured, he raises his arms and tosses the newspaper he's reading to the ground while a bell rings ominously in the distance.
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The Great Escape / int_c82e751f	type	Unspoken Plan Guarantee
The Great Escape / int_c82e751f	comment	Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The X Organization sets things up early on, and the rest of the film is watching them struggle to stay on track and deal with the inevitable setbacks. "Tom", the tunnel initially meant to be used for the escape, is discovered near completion. The calculations for Harry were off, and the tunnel comes out in the open rather than the safety of the trees as planned. As a result, they're only able to get 76 of the proposed 250 men out before the Germans catch on,. Once the escape happens, all of the escapee's initial plans fall apart, forcing them to improvise. Only three make it to neutral territory.
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The Great Escape / int_c83751cb	type	Description Cut
The Great Escape / int_c83751cb	comment	We get a highly comical Description Cut of Hilts and Ives being returned to the cooler covered head-to-toe in mud just after Bartlett, Mac and Ramsey have speculated that their bizarre "mole" escape plan might actually work...which is instantly followed by Ives suffering his first Heroic BSoD.
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The Great Escape / int_c87660d5	type	Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!
The Great Escape / int_c87660d5	comment	Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Willie punches some sense into Danny when he's trying an ill-conceived escape after a panic attack. It works indirectly, but Danny warns Willie not to do that again, ever.
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The Great Escape / int_ca81eae7	type	Hollywood Darkness
The Great Escape / int_ca81eae7	comment	Hollywood Darkness: During the escape scene. Even worse when the camp's lights turn off, yet the ambient light levels barely change. Same when the lights turn back on. Averted, however, in the tunnel itself which goes pitch black until they can get candles lit, presumably to help the viewer understand Danny's fear.
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The Great Escape / int_caf8c66c	type	The Chains of Commanding
The Great Escape / int_caf8c66c	comment	Bartlett, in part due to the The Chains of Commanding, is sometimes unnecessarily blunt and cold to some of the fellow escape artists under his watch. He also refuses to give due credit to a Luftwaffe that applies some professional courtesy and is milder compared to other branches of the German military.
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The Great Escape / int_cc1bd54d	type	Non-Action Guy
The Great Escape / int_cc1bd54d	comment	Non-Action Guy: Colin's mild, meek demeanor makes Hendley wonder what is he doing there. Colin explains that he was an aerial photograph analyst who tagged along on a flight because he wanted to see what it was like in person, only for that plane to end up getting shot down. He does turn out to be quite valuable, however.
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The Great Escape / int_d001c42c	type	Anti-Villain
The Great Escape / int_d001c42c	comment	Anti-Villain: Von Luger. He is the main villain the organization has to overcome to escape, but he has no real animosity towards them or any real love for the Nazi cause. He would much prefer that they all sit out the war comfortably, but as much as its the officers' duty to escape, it's his own to contain them. When he hears about the 50 men who were killed in cold blood, he's visibly ashamed as he gives the news to Ramsey.
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The Great Escape / int_d074c3a2	type	Coming in Hot
The Great Escape / int_d074c3a2	comment	Blythe and Hendley are in a jolly mood as their plane flies over the Alps, being so close to escaping. Not a minute later, their plane's engine begins sputtering...
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The Great Escape / int_d34cbda2	type	Implausible Deniability
The Great Escape / int_d34cbda2	comment	Implausible Deniability: When interrogated by the Gestapo, Cavendish tries to say that his escape outfit is actually his uniform, before providing an explanation. However, the Gestapo agents easily know he's lying, as it's likely that they heard the same story from numerous other escapees they apprehended.
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The Great Escape / int_d45c0b86	type	Refuge in Audacity
The Great Escape / int_d45c0b86	comment	Refuge in Audacity: Hilts, Goff, and Hendley, the only three Americans in a camp filled with hundreds of British POW's, host a boisterous Fourth of July celebration with some homemade moonshine. The Brits (and others) are more than happy to join in the fun. Again, Truth in Television; the actual event is described at length in the book, as are the various distillers of home-brew. Bartlett and MacDonald sit directly across from two SS officers while on the train going away from the camp, and pass completely unnoticed until they get off the train and are spotted by a Gestapo agent who knows Bartlett personally at the station checkpoint.
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The Great Escape / int_d7b34c31	type	Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"
The Great Escape / int_d7b34c31	comment	Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": After his second stay in the Cooler, Hilts goes to tell Roger and MacDonald about his next plan to escape. During their conversation, Hilts address Roger as "Squadron Leader", before the latter tells him his actual name. In addition, when Roger asks Hilts about his first name, Hilts asks to be addressed by his surname.
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The Great Escape / int_d99fdd5e	type	Let X Be the Unknown
The Great Escape / int_d99fdd5e	comment	The POWs don't make a fuss at the arrival of Bartlett, aka Big X, just in case the Germans don't know who he is.
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The Great Escape / int_da19c62a	type	Leave No Survivors
The Great Escape / int_da19c62a	comment	Leave No Survivors: Fifty escaped POWs who had already been recaptured were summarily executed by the Germans.
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The Great Escape / int_db69b32c	type	Newspaper-Thin Disguise
The Great Escape / int_db69b32c	comment	Newspaper-Thin Disguise: Sedgwick is shown doing this in a French cafe. Unfortunately the producers have him reading Liberation, an underground newspaper that would be the last thing an escaped POW trying to avoid attention would read, though it could be something he grabbed out of a trash can, and he couldn't understand the written French well enough on the spot to realize what it was, and is now stuck with it, unable to get rid of it inconspicuously in front of the German officers. Bartlett grabs a newspaper for cover after a harrowing escape from pursuing Germans, only to be greeted by name by an SS officer who's recognised the notorious British escapee.
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The Great Escape / int_dc955e66	type	Inspired by…
The Great Escape / int_dc955e66	comment	Inspired byâ€¦: As disclosed in the opening titles.
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The Great Escape / int_dd6749e1	type	The Von Trope Family
The Great Escape / int_dd6749e1	comment	The Von Trope Family: Colonel von Luger, a name that sounds distinctly German to an Anglophone ear but isn't an actual German surname. He was inspired by Friedrich Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau.
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The Great Escape / int_e099f0de	type	I Will Only Slow You Down
The Great Escape / int_e099f0de	comment	I Will Only Slow You Down: Ramsey is aged and has a notable limp, and knows full well he'll never be part of the escape.
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The Great Escape / int_e26465db	type	Backhanded Apology
The Great Escape / int_e26465db	comment	Backhanded Apology: When inspecting the prisoners tend to their alleged 'gardens,' the pause in Colonel von Luger's "I am sorry the soil is not better suited... for you men's purpose" apology to Big X raises Eric's suspicions that von Luger may be aware that they're not using the soil for the gardens. It's likely he wasn't.
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The Great Escape / int_e28f88b8	type	Last-Name Basis
The Great Escape / int_e28f88b8	comment	Last-Name Basis: Everyone except Roger, Colin, Danny, and Willy. Hendley and Mac also address each other as 'Bob' and 'Andy' respectively in a single scene.
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The Great Escape / int_e4965307	type	Composite Character
The Great Escape / int_e4965307	comment	Composite Character: Except for Roger Bartlett (who was based specifically on Roger Bushell, the real Big X), pretty much all the main character prisoners are composites. Cavendish's character is basically a composite of nearly every notable mistake made in the course of the story, from the relatively innocuous (falling through the bunk beds) to the serious (the incorrect estimate that caused the tunnel to come up short).
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The Great Escape / int_e6515b32	type	Security Blindspot
The Great Escape / int_e6515b32	comment	Security Blindspot: Shortly after being transferred to Stalag Luft III, Captain Hilts observes the placement of the guard towers and realizes that they have a blind spot on a particular stretch of fence, and demonstrates it by hiding from them there. He is spotted by a patrolling guard, gets warning shots from another tower, and is finally tossed in the cooler.
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The Great Escape / int_e68b72	type	The Load
The Great Escape / int_e68b72	comment	The Load: Bartlett insists on not taking Blythe along for fear he might become this due to his poor vision. Hendley offers to look after Blythe and Blythe manages to avoid slowing them down for the most part, although he does wind up getting himself killed.
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The Great Escape / int_e6b5d22f	type	Catchphrase
The Great Escape / int_e6b5d22f	comment	Catchphrase: Colin loves to define things as "splendid."
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The Great Escape / int_e9f517e1	type	Artistic License â€“ Geography
The Great Escape / int_e9f517e1	comment	Artistic License â€“ Geography: Immediately after Lt. Hendley tells Colin that they are just one mountain ridge away from Switzerland, their plane flies past the famous castle of Neuschwanstein, which is on the Austrian border, about 60 miles (and some very high mountains) away from Switzerland.
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The Great Escape / int_e9f79e23	type	Screw the War, We're Partying
The Great Escape / int_e9f79e23	comment	Screw the War, We're Partying: The prisoners take a brief hiatus to celebrate 4th of July, however the German guards do not and a tunnel is discovered.
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The Great Escape / int_ec0ce986	type	Spotting the Thread
The Great Escape / int_ec0ce986	comment	Spotting the Thread: This is how Bartlett and MacDonald are captured. A Gestapo agent asks to see their identification and asks them questions in German. When he is finished, he says "good luck" to them in English, and MacDonald blunders by replying in English. Furthermore, this is harsh irony, because MacDonald had previously admonished one of his men for falling for the same trick when MacDonald plays it on him. Apparently he wasn't kidding about how important it is for your facade to be 100% perfect. During the Fourth of July celebration, Werner tries to serve himself a cup of coffee at Tom's location, but spills it after burning himself with the hotter than expected pot. He then notices that the coffee is slipping through the floor, thus betraying the presence of a tunnel, and even spills some additional coffee to verify it before calling Strachwitz and the others, causing Tom to be found.
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The Great Escape / int_eea06f9a	type	Artistic License â€“ Cars
The Great Escape / int_eea06f9a	comment	Artistic License â€“ Cars: The motorcycle Hilts rides is a (postwar) Triumph T6. The Germans used BMWs and ZÃ¼ndapps, never Triumphs.
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The Great Escape / int_f13643c4	type	Tunnel King
The Great Escape / int_f13643c4	comment	Tunnel King: Danny and Willie are the Trope Namers. Archibald "The Mole" Ives also qualifies.
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The Great Escape / int_f38adaff	type	Fast Tunnelling
The Great Escape / int_f38adaff	comment	Fast Tunnelling: The film at least shows a bit of the logistics: Where do you put the dirt you dig out from the ground, how do you make sure the tunnel won't collapse, and where do you get the materials to stabilize it note not to mention what happens when you don't? Especially if you're watched by German soldiers.
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The Great Escape / int_f5b7b990	type	Verbal Backspace
The Great Escape / int_f5b7b990	comment	Verbal Backspace:
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The Great Escape / int_f64a9cf7	type	Earn Your Happy Ending
The Great Escape / int_f64a9cf7	comment	Earn Your Happy Ending: Sedgwick crosses into neutral Spain. Willie and Danny board a Swedish ship.
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The Great Escape / int_f8f71b5f	type	Buried Alive
The Great Escape / int_f8f71b5f	comment	Buried Alive: They originally try to tunnel without any shoring, only to find that the tunnel caves in on a regular basis doing it that way. After Willie is pulled out of what turns out to be the fourth collapse of the day, he and Danny both tell Bartlett that they're going to have to shore up the entire thing, both because the experience is so unpleasant and because they'll never finish at this rate since they keep having to re-dig the same parts over and over. Bartlett agrees and quickly puts a team on it. In a later scene, the tunnel, shoring and all, falls in on Danny. This kicks his formerly-suppressed claustrophobia into high gear.
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The Great Escape / int_f9f2c33	type	Running Gag
The Great Escape / int_f9f2c33	comment	Running Gag: Hilts and his baseball and glove when he's in the cooler. Cavendish, who yells "Alley-Oop!" before jumping into his upper bunk. He eventually falls through to the lower bunks after too many of his bed slats are stolen to reinforce the tunnels.
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The Great Escape / int_fb48d8d7	type	Brig Ball Bouncing
The Great Escape / int_fb48d8d7	comment	Brig Ball Bouncing: Captain Hilts frequently ends up in The Cooler, a solitary cell, as punishment for his many escape attempts. While there, he can be seen throwing a baseball against the cooler cell wall to entertain himself. He even has a baseball glove for catching the ball. This movie provides the current page image for the trope, and, if not the Trope Maker, is certainly the Trope Codifier, as many of the other works that use the trope are doing so as a Shout-Out to this movie.
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The Great Escape / int_fd69ea80	type	Minor Major Character
The Great Escape / int_fd69ea80	comment	Minor Major Character: Group Captain Ramsey is the senior British officer but his involvement in the escape is very limited. He never intends to escape as he's too old and walks with a cane. He mostly serves as Bartlett's foil stating some unpleasant truths, and receives exposition from the Germans.
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The Great Escape / int_fd7f0823	type	Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe
The Great Escape / int_fd7f0823	comment	Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: Sorren, the officer on lookout duty, smokes one. He even uses it to signal the others.
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The Great Escape / int_fe0330fb	type	Brick Joke
The Great Escape / int_fe0330fb	comment	Brick Joke: The first time Hilts gets thrown in The Cooler, he pinches the keys to his cell on the way in just to prove to the guard that he could. If you pay attention on the following three times Hilts gets thrown in The Cooler over the course of the movie, you will note that the guard never lets go of those keys until Hilts is securely locked up, to make sure he doesn't do it again.
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The Great Escape / int_ff6d8ad9	type	Adaptational Nationality
The Great Escape / int_ff6d8ad9	comment	Adaptational Nationality: Averted, save for a downplayed country lift. There were mostly British-Commonwealth prisoners in the camp and the movie reflects that. On the other hand the Americans were transferred to other camps just before the great escape but the movie has only three American characters, one of them fairly minor. This isn't too bad when you consider that the transfer happened while Hilts was in the cooler (meaning he might have been left behind) and might not have applied to Hendley as he was from a RAF Eagle squadron. (His character was a composite one, and included a Canadian POW, who would not have been moved). American actors James Coburn and Charles Bronson (of Polish-Lithuanian ancestry) are playing an Australian and a Pole, respectively.
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The Great Escape / int_ffad4e9f	type	Shown Their Work
The Great Escape / int_ffad4e9f	comment	Shown Their Work: They went to great lengths to accurately build a German POW camp. Of course, it did help that several of the actors had been prisoners of war during WW2: Donald Pleasence, who had been in a German POW camp, made a few suggestions to John Sturges, who wasn't aware of that fact, and was told to keep his opinions to himself. However, when the director learned that Pleasence knew what he was talking about, he was asked for advice all the time. Charles Bronson had actually been a coal miner and actually was claustrophobic because of it. James Garner had been the scrounger for his unit in the Korean War. Hendley wears USA flashes on his uniform, showing that he is an American serving in the RAF and is a member of the Famous "Eagle" squadrons, three squadrons composed of Americans who joined the RAF. This also means that Hendley was shot down before 1944, since the squadrons were re-absorbed by the USAAF at that time.
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The Great Escape / int_ffb79066	type	Chromosome Casting
The Great Escape / int_ffb79066	comment	Chromosome Casting: It is a World War II POW movie, after all, so the cast is all male apart from a handful of background characters in post-escape scenes.
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The Great Escape / int_ffe1bbf8	type	Defiant Captive
The Great Escape / int_ffe1bbf8	comment	Defiant Captive: An early scene has SBO Ramsey tell Oberst Von Luger to his face that the prisoners will be attempting to prove the Germans wrong about the camp being escape-proof, as is their sworn duty as POW officers. Hilts' scene at the end of the film throwing his ball again is a nonverbal version of this. It shows that after everything that happened, he's still ready to try again.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

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The Great Escape	hasFeature	Face Your Fears / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Fake a Fight / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Fast Tunnelling / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	For Doom the Bell Tolls / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Gameplay Automation / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Gangland Drive-By / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Great Escape / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Hero Stole My Bike / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Homegrown Hero / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Hooking the Keys / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	I Have My Ways / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Inopportune Impersonation Failure / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Ironic Echo Cut / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Leave No Survivors / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Let X Be the Unknown / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Master Forger / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Military Moonshiner / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Mr. Smith / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Multi-Disc Work / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Murphy's Bed / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Newspaper-Thin Disguise / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Off-the-Shelf FX / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	POW Camp / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Politeness Judo / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Prison Escape Artist / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Prison Films / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Prisoner Performance / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Punishment Box / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Rated M for Manly / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Reality Has No Subtitles / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Reflexive Response / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Run for the Border / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Security Blindspot / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality / int_edb68237
SteveMcQueen	seeAlso	The Great Escape
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Suddenly Always Knew That / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Suicide by Cop / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	The Alcatraz / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	The Cast Showoff / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	The Dead Have Names / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	The Scrounger / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	The Von Trope Family / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Thwarted Escape / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Token Good Cop / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Train Escape / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Trust Password / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Very Loosely Based on a True Story / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Wag the Director / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Was It Really Worth It? / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	You Just Told Me / int_edb68237
The Great Escape	hasFeature	Too Happy to Live / int_edb68237

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