#36 — The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963)
Widescreen aspect ratio has been used since the earliest days of film being run through projectors, but it really took hold as the default beginning in the nineteen-fifties, when the movie industry was panicked by the upstart television. When the new technology rapidly became a standard part of the American home, box office receipts dipped and moviemakers tried to find new ways to differentiate their product to get people to leave the comfort of their homes for entertainment. The interesting this is the need for innovation pushed directors to create imagery that seemed so natural for theaters, that seemed like it was the very reason an oversize screen was invented in the first place. An offering like The Great Escape can almost make a person wonder why movies weren’t always this shape and size.

Based on a nonfiction book of the same name by Paul Brickhill, The Great Escape follows a group of prisoners of war in a World War II Nazi camp who stage an elaborate, dedicated stab at freedom through tunneling their way out. The film may be drawn from real life, but it’s clearly been swept through a coating of tried and true Hollywood goodness. Plenty of stalwart American soldiers were added to the mix, even though the original escape was orchestrated entirely by Brits and others who fought under the Union Jack, and the motley band of collaborating prisoners were given distinct, easy-to-understand personalities. Character flaws introduced in the first act dependably emerge as problems to be overcome later in the film. Cads become noble, and bickering cohorts find their way to band of brothers mutual admiration. Except perhaps for the surprisingly downbeat ending, very little in the film surprises.

And yet it is that casual certainty of purpose–that sense that the filmmakers know exactly how a story like this should proceed–that is one of the major strengths of The Great Escape. This is what it was like when the major American studios still knew how to make a rousing entertainment, when properly exploiting the sturdy machinery of cinematic narrative could produce something satisfying rather than cynically condescending. Director John Sturges, with a bevy of war pictures and westerns under his belt by this point, simply had this sort of thing down, up to and including knowing how to showcase a star turn performance. Steve McQueen doesn’t deliver deep and inventive acting as Captain Virgil Hilts, the G.I. whose long line of failed escape attempts always end with him sent back to the same dinky cell, bouncing a baseball against the wall as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. But he’s engaging as hell, magnetic in a manner that is its own fine accomplishment, and arguably one that’s even more difficult to pull off. The rest of the cast is spotted with pure pros, elevating material that could have been overly simplistic. There’s an especially nice turn by James Garner–already famous as TV’s Bret Maverick, but still with fairly limited film experience–who channels his trademark battered, world-weary charisma into a selfish schemer who gradually rediscovers his moral compass.

The limber direction of Sturges keeps the nearly three-hour film feeling amazingly brisk, never succumbing to a sense of bloat or an imperious tone. Instead, The Great Escape has that aspirational, elusive quality all longer films need: it feels like it’s precisely as long as it needs to be. It is an epic with a wry smile, bigger not just because there was more screen to fill, but because there was, blessedly, more story to tell.