THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

UK, 1957, 111 minutes, Black and white.
Hardy Kruger, Michael Goodliffe, Colin Gordon, Alec Mc Cowan, Terence Alexander, Jack Guillam.
Directed by Roy Ward Baker.

The One That Got Away is the story of Franz von Werra, considered the only German prisoner of war who was captured in Britain and escaped from imprisonment, in Canada.

The film recreates the atmosphere of World War Two, common in many British films of this period where the war stories were being remembered and re-enacted. This is the period of such films as Carve Her Name With Pride, The Long and the Short and the Tall. However, Hardy Kruger is a strong screen presence and elicits sympathy from the audience, siding with him in his attempts to escape.

The film focuses on character but also on action. It was directed by Roy Ward Baker who began a long directing career with the thriller October Man with John Mills. After making a number of films in Britain including Morning Departure, he tried his hand in Hollywood with films like Inferno and Don’t Bother to Knock with Marilyn Monroe. However, he returned to England. His film after The One That Got Away was the re-creation of the sinking of the Titanic, A Night To Remember. He continued for the next decades with a great deal of work in television but also a number of horror films ranging from And Now The Screaming Starts to Vault of Horror.

Hardy Kruger had a career in Germany and with The One That Got Away and Bachelor of Hearts and Blind Date made soon after, he became an international screen star. The supporting cast consists of a strong gallery of British character actors.

1. The significance and emphasis of the title? Our knowledge that the hero would escape and our anticipation of this? The prologue and the explanation of Von Werra? Audience expectations from this kind of film?

2. The style of the fifties, black and white, presentation of war, the memory of the fifties, the tribute? The factual style? How credible were the people and the events?

3. The initial impact of Von Werra? His crash, arrest, confrontation of the British, his personality and its style, his brashness, demanding of rights?

4. How much of him was revealed through the interrogation, his lies to the paper, his reputation, his shrewdness in assessing the situation, his shrewdness in discovering British plants?

5. What impression did he make on the prison camp? His desire to escape, his interaction with the others? The effect of prison on him? The effect of the escapes? The significance of the long chase, the way that he effected the escape, the daring, the danger, the people searching?

6. The presentation of British security, its casual style, the personalities of the interrogators, the seeming friendliness, the recordings (and Von Werra's discovering of these?)

7. How does this kind of prison camp interrogation contrast with the German prisons and interrogations in films?

8. The preparations for the big escape? The going along the countryside, arriving at the railway station with the story, the suspense with the checking with the police, with the air field? The build-up to getting the plane? His almost getting away? This as a preparation for his final escape in Canada?

9. How credible was the escape in Canada? The effect of the snow and the ice? Arriving in America?

10. The significance of the end and his death, the epilogue?

11. How satisfactory a film about World War Two?

12. Themes of escape, freedom, heroism?