David Parkinson can’t escape from this 1970s television drama which enhanced Colditz’s romantic reputation as a prisoner-proof bastion, with a first-rate cast including David McCallum.
Boys of a certain age, who spent long hours playing Major Pat Reid's Escape from Colditz game, will be delighted by the overdue release of this exemplary series. They already knew Guy Hamilton's The Colditz Story (1954) from afternoon screenings on sick days from school. But the 28 episodes transmitted by the BBC between 1972-74 brought German prisoner of war camp Oflag IV-C to life and enhanced its romantic reputation as an escape-proof bastion.
It's now clear why this was such a superior programme, as the writers included such luminaries as Ian and Troy Kennedy Martin, NJ Crisp, John Kruse, John Brason and Bryan Forbes, who had played Jimmy Winslow in the British Lion feature. But, at the time, it was the first-rate ensemble that made the stories so compelling. Jack Hedley exuded dignified authority as the senior British officer, while Edward Hardwicke combined pluck with pragmatism as the head of the escape committee. David McCallum and Christopher Neame stood out among the supporting cast, which was periodically bolstered by such guest inmates as Robert Wagner, Dan O'Herlihy, Jeremy Kemp (who concocted an audacious scheme to fly a homemade glider off the castle roof) and Michael Bryant, who excelled as a wing commander who feigns madness in the hope of a compassionate release.
However, the Germans were just as memorable, with Bernard Hepton recalling Erich von Stroheim's gentlemanly Kommandant in Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937), while Hans Meyer combined steel with honour as his loyal Hauptman. But no one left a deeper impression than Anthony Valentine. He was truly terrifyingly malevolent as Major Horst Mohn, a former Luftwaffe ace who had served on Hitler's personal staff, and his sadistic delight in confounding meticulously planned schemes brought an extra frisson to the already tense escape episodes.
Co-produced by the BBC and Universal TV, the series boasted suitably cramped sets that reinforced the oppressive sense of enclosure. But the most impressive aspect was the avoidance of caricature that had undermined so many British POW pictures in the war's immediate aftermath.
Special Feature: An Interview with Author Major P.R. Reid.
Film Description
A TV gem from the early 1970s, Colditz is set in the supposedly escape-proof Colditz Castle during World War II, and shows the Allied prisoners' many attempts to escape captivity, and their German captors' attempts to find them out. A continual tussle of psychological warfare is the result...
