Stalag 17 (1953)

Billy Wilder's Christmas classic Stalag 17 is a Christmas movie in the depressing way that it is all feel-good, consolation and a comforting sense of merry togetherness. You wouldn't perhaps expect that of a film that takes place in a POW prison, and initially I wondered whether Stalag 17 would take up similar themes as Life is beautiful, Roberto Benigni's film about a father who tries to protect his son from the horrors of the concentration camp. It turned out Stalag 17's agenda is lighter than that; it seems to aspire to little more than entertainment, and the cruel reality is seen in rare flashes, and the shock of those scenes is stored away within a bustling film about a zany band of characters, all of which remain at the level of stereotypes (the one with Ideas, the traitor, the crazy one, the woman-lusting man etc.). The story mostly relates to the traitor in the barrack. Early on, we know that the wrong guy is accused but the real culprit is not known to us. But rather than suspense and psychological drama, Wilder opts for pranks and adventures, only hinting at other, darker aspects. What is a bit troubling is that Stalag 17 is unnerving when it doesn't intend to be: in one scene, for example, two of the American prisoners venture out, trying to get a glimpse of bathing Russian female prisoners. This scene is of course filmed as though it contains endless comedy about "desperate men" who longs for women, any woman, but what I saw in this scene was only yet one example of sexism in the history of film where the viewer is supposed to ally with the heroes in a certain perception of women, and men.