Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

"Stalag 17" is about 30 minutes of compelling film starring William Holden padded out with about 90 minutes of strained "comedy." Holden plays an inmate in a German prison camp during WWII who comes under suspicion by his fellow prisoners of being a spy because of his "every man for himself" attitude. For about an hour and a half, scenes of the prisoners being grumpy with him are interspersed with long segments of superfluous antics which make being an inmate of a German POW prison seem about as serious as being away at summer camp. Then, in the film's last half hour, Holden decides to find out who the spy really is, and does so without breaking a sweat.Holden's entire performance consists of attitude, which is exactly what the character calls for, but it's not the stuff of an Oscar-winning performance, especially because he seems very much like a supporting character. I wasn't timing things with a stopwatch, but it felt like Robert Strauss, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor as the lunkhead Animal, had more screen time. He's one of the actors included for comic relief, but man does he wear out his welcome early on, as do all of the other actors who are there only to provide what we are supposed to think are hysterical hijinks. The film would feel like an inferior knock off of "MASH" if it hadn't come out first. Billy Wilder joined Holden and Strauss at the 1953 Oscars as a nominee for Best Director. Grade: B-

You get William Holden who was a premium movie star at the time with a good story and who doesn't like a prisoner movie? In this case, prisoners of war during the Nazi reign of terror only the Nazis are not depicted as real bad guys just the enemy for this films purposes. Apparently they wanted to keep the whole thing light-hearted and they succeeded. The movie informs and entertains as a story unfolds about a barracks who had a spy. Good memorable scenes throughout the movie and a really butterfly flutter in the stomach ending that turns into chills and deep satisfaction then does an encore. What more could a film viewer ask for? I did a small bowl of sunflower seeds chomping away watching and enjoying. The movie manages to hold your attention as it slowly grows and then grips making you....

The comic relief in the picture is pathetic. This isn't comedy, it isn't slapstick, its pathetic.

Stalag 17 is directed by the legendary Billy Wilder. It is an adaptation of a stage play and was filmed just seven years after the end of the Second World War.Its an uneasy mixture of drama, suspense and broad comedy. Given how some British movies made in the 1960s were so pompous about the war its refreshing to see an anarchic take of the war few years after the end of hostilities.Stalag 17 is a Prisoner of War camp inside Germany with captured American personnel. The film opens with two men trying to escape who are soon captured and killed. The prisoners think that one of them is a rat and suspicion falls on Sefton (William Holden) the resident black marketeer and hence not the most popular person in the hut. Sefton's character is similar to George Segal's character in King Rat, a man who knows how to live on his wits and his mission is to survive, preferably in some comfort.Some of the comedy did not work for me, I found it irritating. It focuses on Animal who is infatuated with Betty Grable and wants to break into the nearby compound which holds Russian female POWs and his friend Shapiro. The film would had been better if they were the two characters trying to escape at the beginning of the film and shot.Yet there are some serious aspects to the film. The men are held in filthy conditions given new blankets for a few hours when the man from Geneva arrives to inspect the camp for human man rights breaches and are then quickly taken away. They receive letters from back home and find out that they are behind on their rental payments or their spouses might be cheating on them.However it looks not all of the men are American. One of them is a German inside man, placed there to find out all manner of information that could be important to the Germans. Sergeant Schultz who regularly comes into the hut and takes part in the buffoonery with the prisoners is also exchanging messages with the insider. This plot only unfolds as Sefton realises he needs to clear his name quickly and sets about to unravel the rat.I did feel that bit of the plot was not very strong. No one in that hut played chess, yet the chessboard was always out and no one seems to have noticed the knotted/unknotted cord. Also with Sefton now the prime suspect, we see the real insider asking one of the new men for information on a sabotage event that took place. Its clear that the men would eventually realise that Sefton was not the rat, especially if they managed to get Sefton out of the way like kill him.I class Stalag 17 as a curious war film which was sold as a comedy. It is neither a comedy nor a straight drama. It inspired the television series Hogan's Heroes and William Holden won a best actor Oscar for his role.