The One That Got Away (1957)

That was an excellent one.

hyped garbage

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Hardy Kruger is excellent as Lieutenant Franz Von Werra, the only German POW to escape and make his way back to Germany in Roy Ward Baker's exciting, funny and very enjoyable war film "The One that Got Away". The formula isn't that much different from war movies where it was British POWs who were planning their escape but it was unusual to have a German as the hero particularly as the war had only ended some 12 years before. Baker, who the following year, gave us the superb "A Night to Remember" about the sinking of the Titanic, handles the material beautifully, (you really want Kruger to make it), while the splendidly crisp black and white cinematography is courtesy of Eric Cross.

"The One That Got Away" stars Hardy Kruger playing German fighter pilot Lieutenant Franz Von Werra shot down during the blitz. It is a 1957 movie based on the true story of the only German prisoner to escape from a British POW Camp. After a couple of escape attempts he is eventually shipped to Canada from where the authorities believed there would be no escape. Whilst travelling by train across Canada to his new camp he escapes by jumping from the train. He makes his way to the USA before it's entry into WW2 & then on to Mexico from where he got passage back to Germany. In reality Von Werra was a staunch, die-hard Nazi but in the movie his character is that of an apolitical, arrogant & cocky man, presumably to make him more appealing to British & American audiences. Kruger plays him with a mixture of boyish charm & dash so that well before the end of the movie even us Brits are rooting for him to succeed. The filming, scripting & the pacing of this suspenseful movie are all first rate & I have read that it is also a very popular movie in Germany. Presumably, this is because it depicts a German getting one over on the British. In real life Von Werra returned to active duty as a pilot but was shot down again & killed before the wars end. All in all, this is a cracking good story very well filmed & told.

POW escape movies form almost a genre of their own and there were quite a few released in the late 1950s and in the 1960s. They mostly dealt with Allied POWs, naturally, and the drama was partly masked by expression of camaraderie and rough humor. This one, in simple black and white, has little of that. It's about Franz von Werra (Hardy Kruger), a German pilot who managed to escape from the grasp of the UK after his BF 109 was shot down in England in 1940.In his first escape attempt, Kruger simply rolls over a stone wall and hides from his guards during an exercise period. He drives himself to exhaustion and is recaptured, half-dead, during a freezing downpour.In his second attempt, he tunnels out of a prison camp and makes his way to a British training airfield, posing as a downed Dutch aviator. He bluffs his way into the cockpit of a British Hurricane and is about to take off before being prevented at the last minute at gunpoint.Kruger is then sent to Canada where he throws himself unobserved out the window of a speeding train into a very effectively portrayed Canadian winter. He manages to make his way to the St. Lawrence River, mostly frozen, steals a boat to cross the open section of the river, and collapses on American soil -- America being a neutral country at the time.Though the movie is over, Kruger is not yet finished and he crosses the border into Mexico, thence to South America where he finagles his way back to Germany. He crashes into the sea during a patrol and is never seen again.The role of Franz von Werra stretches Kruger's acting talents to the limits. He must scheme, impersonate others, and suffer. And he does much of it in too obvious a fashion. The most difficult scenes involve his imposture as a Dutch pilot, making up details of his identity and experiences to suit his changing circumstances. He must be happy-go-lucky in a British manner. Tut tut, old boy. Spot of trouble with the old Wellington, don't you know. The British he meets along the way, both civilian and military, mostly buy his story -- but you and I wouldn't.The most amusing scenes have Kruger demonstrating determination in the face of effusively polite RAF interrogators. The most gripping show Kruger crossing the miles-wide St. Lawrence, half frozen, pushing and pulling his stolen boat up and down heaps of ice, his body threatened with momentary implosion. It's a positive relief when he staggers into Ogdensberg.The movie has an unexpected tension. Not just because of the story itself but because this is a British movie made only eleven or twelve years after the war, and it has a likable, if still wildly nationalistic, German protagonist. Britain suffered abominably during the war. When this was released, some neighborhoods in the docks were still burned out shells left over from the Blitz, and they'd remain that way for a couple more years. The war cost England a great deal in terms of lives and money, so in a sense this is a courageous movie. Twelve years between lethal enmity and the disinterest on display in this film. Should there be a statute of limitations on international hatreds? It's only a rhetorical question but it's raised by the nature of this film.

'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?