The Great Escape from Stalag Luft III

[johnfowles]

Every day I receive the digital UK Daily Telegraph email and I find that some of the more interesting items are the frequent obituaries
of old survivors from the Second World War especially ex RAF (there are still a few of the Few who fought in the Battle Of Britain)
and those who escaped or tried to escape from either Colditz Castle or the famous tunnels Tom Dick and Harry at Stalag Luft III in Poland (the latter in 1943)

http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/images/great_escape_1963_poster.jpg[img]
The original picture is at:-
http://www.impawards.com/1963/posters/great_escape.jpg
[IMG]http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/images/great_escape_shaft.jpg
The original picture is at:-
http://www.ateal.co.uk/greatescape/shaft.jpg
An image from an interesting page at:-
http://greatescape.cjb.net/

I also found a fascinating article "digging' out some facts at:-
http://www.forum.militaryltd.com/world-war-ii/m41431-great-escape-tunnels-greater-than-thought.htm

today I read of the death at 91 of
Squadron Leader Frank "Fearless" Day
see:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2304606/Squadron-Leader-Frank-Day.html?DCMP=EMC-new_18072008
one who just missed getting out in the Great Escape
but who after 1942
"went on to become a caterpillar, a penguin and a goldfish"

[RM]

Mr. Fowles,

Assuming you have seen the movie "The Great Escape", how historically accurate would you consider it ? Let's say on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the most accurate).

[johnfowles]

Mr. Fowles,

Assuming you have seen the movie "The Great Escape", how historically accurate would you consider it ? Let's say on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the most accurate).
A very good question Ron.I would guess about 7/10
No doubt to please Steve McQueen they invented some details,like did he really find a motorbike to go storming around on.
In my experience precious few tales get filmed accurately
I will make my case with two film versions each of two books by my favourite author by far (even exceeding my namesake) whose magnificent and long (617 glorious pages in hardback form) novel The Magus remains my overall favourite novel
see thumbnail below:-
The film of which starring Michael (not many people know that) Caine was filmed as a ridiculous 2 hour film which in no way paid justice to the twists and turns of the book's plot.
See the letter that the author kindly wrote to me at:-
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/johnfowles/04.johnfowles1978letter.jpg
Oops it's quite a large scan jpeg (90KB) so I'll attach it below as a thumbnail
I have naturally a page about him at:-
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/johnfowles/
and my favourite author??
The UK born Nevil Shute who died near Melbourne in 1960.
His two most famous books were "On The Beach" the original film of which starrring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner caused Nevil much pain because producer Stanley Kramer insisted in more than hinting that the two leading characters had an actual affair, whih did not go down well with the intensely moral Nevil Shute.
YouTube - ON THE BEACH [TRAILER] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5G1_VBwAqk)
However such messing about with the plot in that fashion pales into insignificence when compared to the entirely cobbled together ending of the revised version from 2000 where instead of the submarine captain going down with his ship to avoid radiation sickness and death he reappears as shown in this youtube clip.. eeek!!!
YouTube - On The Beach Ending Scene (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrOyurbcHyI)
Original 7/10 revised 1/10
The other Shute novel is of course "A Town Like Alice", (Alice Springs or simply "The Alice") scene of 2007's worldwide Shutist gathering
From which the first adaptation starring Peter Finch contrived to cover only the first half of the book thereby omitting the heroine's valiant attempt to change the hick town of Willstown (Burketown) into err umm A Town Like Alice, and rendering the film title meaningless to anybody who had never read the book.
Fortunately the Aussie director Peter Stevens came along and made a magnificent 5 hour telvision miniseries that proved that with Nevil's books there was absolutely no point inventing even dialogue as it is all there perfectly written in the books.
virtually every scene and incident in the book made it faithfully to film this time with extremely little changed and Bryan Brown convincing as the Australian soldier
2/10 for the first version but definitely 9/10 for the second.
another adaption of a John Fowles novel
The French Left-tenant's Woman however was very much more successful and IIRC introduced Merryl Streep to the world: and now she is singing in a musical based on the songs of ABBA!!!
Mama Mia indeed!!
Please note that my original posting of this reply was accomplished using a broadband connection with my Nokia N800 "wondertoy" (because the best my stoopid dial up could achieve after a 10 long minutes thinking about it was a ridiculous, pathetic and lying "done" message in my status bar
but this revision and the thumbs attachments were successfully done at a tortoise's pace on the desktop's dial up

[Peter Bro10]

Thanks Sir John. an interesting bit of reading!
I especially appreciated the link to the artical about Frank Day at telegraph.co.uk.