Stalag 17

Paramount Pictures | Release Date: June 6, 1953

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

84	METASCORE Universal acclaim based on 15 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Noel Murray

Stalag 17's irreverence likely didn't revolutionize moviemaking for adults so much as it paved the way for the likes of M*A*S*H and Animal House. Then again, that alone is an achievement worth celebrating. Read full review

100

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Unlike previous POW films, Wilder and co-writer Edwin Blum's script, based on the play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, presents the prisoners not as paragons of patriotic virtue but as real, self-interested, bored soldiers trying to survive. Holden is magnificent as the heel-turned-hero, but Stalag 17 is full of wonderful, well-directed performances. Read full review

100

Michael Wilmington

It's a shame the dippy TV knockoff Hogan's Heroes has supplanted memories of this great dark WWII POW comedy. Seeing it makes you understand why Schindler's List was a long-time Wilder project. [17 Oct 1995, p.3C]

100

Joe Holleman

Wilder consistently infused his films with wit and intelligence, offering comedy in his dramas and drama in his comedies. And Stalag 17 is a shining example. [28 Mar 2006, p.E1]

Jeff Otto

Stalag 17 is a black comedy before the term black comedy was coined. Read full review

James Berardinelli

Stalag 17, despite often being labeled as one of Wilder's "lesser" films, is a bona fide classic, and an example of how an accomplished director can meld many elements into a workable whole. Read full review

Mike Clark

One of the greatest mixes ever of gritty war drama and roll-on-the-floor hilarity. [29 Mar 2002, p.2A]

The GuardianPhilip French

Wilder takes the Broadway play, as well as the genteel camaraderie familiar from the British POW films, shakes it all up, makes it tougher, funnier, cruder and subtler. Read full review

Bosley Crowther

A humorous, suspenseful, disturbing and rousing pastime. Read full review

EmpireDavid Parkinson

Interesting depiction with a pretty decent performance from Holden and supported by a credible cast. Read full review

John McMurtrie

Although the mix of buffoonery and earnestness often doesn't work, it's priceless to see director Otto Preminger (who was Jewish) play a peevish Nazi commander who has his boots put on simply for a phone call to Berlin. [19 Mar 2006, p.32]

Staff (Not Credited)

The legit hit about GI internees in a Nazi prison camp during the Second World War is screened as a lusty comedy-melodrama, loaded with bold, masculine humor and as much of the original’s uninhibited earthiness as good taste and the Production Code permit. Read full review

Don Druker

It's chock-full of typical Wilder cynicism and the offhand transvestite humor that would reach its apotheosis in Some Like It Hot, but its wit falters as the melodramatic tension builds. The resulting letdown is terrific, but along the way there is some of the funniest men-at-loose-ends interplay that Wilder has ever put on film. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

The problem is that the two moods aren't properly cross-fertilised, with the resolute bleakness of the settings and Wilder's direction positing a reality that is constantly undercut by the comic opera crew of Germans headed by Preminger. A fascinating film, nevertheless. Read full review

Pauline Kael

The gallows humor is entertaining, despite some rather braod roughhouse effects.