The One That Got Away (1957)

Did you people see the same film I saw?

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This true story is about Franz Von Werra, the only German to escape from a British POW camp and return to fight again in Germany. (Unfortunately, we learn this in the opening credits, so a lot of suspense is spoiled right off.) As Werra, Hardy Kruger is handsome, charismatic, likable and a good actor. He's quite similar to Steve McQueen's character in, "The Great Escape." His experiences make being a POW look like going to scout camp but with better food and less supervision. It's odd that Britain would make a movie with a German hero and fairly incompetent Brit guards so soon after WWII, but he is quite endearing and I was rooting for him.It is a thrilling and enjoyable story and inspired me to read about the real Von Werra. Recommended.

This is the true story of the only German POW to successfully escape from British custody during World War II. Since it is a true story and those who made it had a great regard for the facts, it was not only very watchable but compelling because this German actually went through such extreme lengths to escape. During the film, he actually escapes three times. The final time was successful and is amazing when you consider that many men would have died during his insane trek through Canada during the winter!! An amazing story of human endurance and dedication--even if he did fight for the bad guys!! As a history teacher and lover of old films, this film was a natural choice for me. The story is odd but true and highly watchable--if this is the sort of film you are inclined to watch. Unfortunately, while I liked it and many others will, it's exactly the sort of film I have a hard time believing teens or young adults would generally enjoy. There are no special effect--just some tense moments as you follow the First Lieutennant on his journey to freedom. However, a patient person will be amply rewarded by an excellent and very unusual film and I can't think of another quite like it.

After the Cold War broke out, it was necessary to reconcile the newly democratic, Nazi-free West Germany to its former enemies. Hollywood did its bit with a sympathetic account of Erwin Rommel in "The Desert Fox". After "Frieda", the British movie business followed a spate of PoW escape films with one about a Luftwaffe pilot who had been as hard to hold as the heroes of "Albert RN" and "The Wooden Horse".Early in the Second World War most Germans captured while bombing Britain did not try to escape: they thought the Wehrmacht would soon arrive to free them. "Baron" Franz von Werra was an exception. No Nazi, he was a Swiss boy who had been brought up by aristocratic German relations and felt he owed his adopted country his services; he was also a show-off who idolised von Richthofen and relished the glamour of being a flying ace.Roy Baker (thus billed on screen) said he wished to get away from "beer-swilling krauts or homosexual Prussians". He saw von Werra as a maverick, and shot him moving from right to left across the screen whenever possible because typically film characters move in the other direction.The film is pretty faithful to his story, as was established years later by a documentary called "Von Werra" (Werner Schweizer, 2002) which his impersonator, Hardy Kruger, presented. Kruger's own past was more Nazi than Franz's: he was at Sonthofen, the Party's "order castle" school for the future elite, and his blond good looks are said to have been admired by Dr Goebbels, fuhrer of the German film business.Pitted against a string of barely differentiated British officer-class character actors, Kruger has a whale of a time in what is virtually a one-man show. It lets him display charm, cunning and endurance in buckets. First he outwits his interrogators, then he twice goes on the run in England (the second time almost taking off in a stolen Hurricane) and finally he flees from a Canadian train in below-zero temperatures. He zigzags 30 miles to the St Lawrence River and paddles through floes in pitch darkness into the neutral USA, arriving with badly frostbitten ears.Concentrating on his time in captivity, the script neither pleads for sympathy for an enemy nor arraigns him, It does not give us any background on the man, and his second epic escape-- from the US extradition authorities, via Central and South America, the Atlantic and Italy back to the Reich-- is not covered either. True to his gentlemanly self-image, von Werra used his brief fame to compare conditions for the British in German camps unfavourably with those he had experienced-- even the primitive Grizedale Hall-- and got them improved. (The Canadian camp he avoided was luxurious.) He flew on the Eastern Front in the early days of 'Barbarossa', downing obsolete Soviet aircraft, but disappeared on a routine flight later in 1941.Baker would soon make 'A Night to Remember', the film all true 'Titanic' buffs prefer to James Cameron's version. Here too the virtues of understatement are evident-- crisp monochrome photography, short scenes which always drive the story on, thrifty but credible art direction. Von Werra's ordeals in the rain-soaked Lake District and the icy Canada/USA border are gruelling, and the doughtiest British spectator will not begrudge him his cheeky postcard after completing his home run. Baker used a documentary cameraman, Eric Cross, and shot the St Lawrence scenes in Sweden.

'The One That Got Away' is the story of the only German to escape allied captivity. That much is evident from the title, but the main interest for me is the accurate portrayal of the British interrogation centres for enemy offices in, and around, London. Even in the 1950's when this film was made, much of this side of wartime intelligence work was concealed.I like the film- but I admit I always enjoy POW films- but I question the way we are manipulated to think of Von Werra as 'a good German'. It was necessary as we were rehabilitating West Germnay into a democratic Europe and NATO at the time the film was released, however, the the scriptwriter has erased most references to Nazi Germany, which obviously helped form the central character's personality and belief system. To say that Von Werra believed in nothing but himself is a cop-out.And of course, as a historian, I suspect the whole premise of 'The One...' surely others escaped, especially from temporary 'cages' in battle zones?