warfilmman
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Registered: 02-2005
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Danger Within
Danger Within aka Breakout (US)
1959 British Lion
Not by any means the best known of the British POW films, and also the only one not based on a true incident. The setting is a camp in Italy in 1943, and the problem is that someone is letting the sadistic Italian Commandant know about all the escape plans. Therefore through the entire film the escapes, humorous incidents and camp life, play second fiddle to the search for the stool pigeon. The mixture of high comedy and a traitor in the midst is highly reminiscent of Bily Wilder’s American classic Stalag 17 from a couple of years before. Despite the bizarre and unlikely ending the film is enjoyable from beginning to end, mainly due to the exceptional cast. The cast, what can I say?, just about all the great British actors are present, in fact even the small roles are played by “leads”, so in fact its one of the few British war films that isn’t stuffed full of those great stalwarts of British cinema; Percy Herbert, Victor Maddern and Bill Owen. Instead you get Richards Todd and Attenborough, a fantastic Bernard Lee, Michael Wilding, Peter Jones, Donald Houston, William Franklyn and Dennis Price, with a pre stardom Michael Caine and Colin Blakely thrown in for good measure, and there are still more familiar faces from stage and screen.
The film is taut and tightly edited, all the sequences, both comic and tense are short and to the point. For me the most unusual aspect is the depiction of the “escape team” as being a minority in the camp. The majority being content to play sports, put on plays and play bridge. The other POW genre films imply all the inmates are clambering over each other trying to all escape, all of the time. A film with this sort of cast at the peak of their talents has to be considered a classic. The fact that most people would reel off: The Great Escape, The Colditz Story, Albert RN and the Wooden Horse before considering Danger Within as a classic, I put down to the fact I mentioned earlier – that it isn’t a true story. Though the period detail is fine, the whole story does seem a bit unlikely, especially the ending.
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2/12/2005, 2:45 am
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