My all-time favorite movie is the classic World War II film The Great Escape (1963), with Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough. How come?
When you think about it, it’s really a strange war movie: hardly any violence, little action to speak of, and few references to the war itself. Yet every time I watch it, I’m hit by its stark reality. Not so much physical reality perhaps (why do I have a hard time believing James Garner’s hair would have stayed that perfect in a real POW camp?), but emotional honesty. It struck me the last time I watched it how much this movie is able to convey with so little histrionics. And I think that’s the key to its timelessness: the writers, the director, and the actors never overplay their emotional hand.
James Garner in The Great Escape, directed by John Sturges, produced by The Mirisch Company
Realism as the Foundation for Honesty
This is a movie teeming with characters and subplots. As the movie progresses, the viewer comes to care deeply for all of these characters and their various goals and obstacles. We care that these men escape the German prison camp, we care that Big X’s plot to foul up the German works behind the lines succeeds, we care that these pilots not only live to fly another day but that they contribute as much as they can to winning the war.
The war is barely mentioned in this movie. The Nazis, for the most part, are shown, not as devils incarnate, but as relatable human beings. The viewer is never subjected to a litany of Germany’s war crimes or a recitation of the Allies’ virtues. Not once does a character stand to deliver a melodramatic “Oscar speech” about patriotism or the lofty reasons these men are fighting and dying and suffering in a prison far from home. And that, right there, is one of the greatest secrets to this movie’s success.
Did The Great Escape Have an “Agenda”?
The Great Escape, unlike so many war movies (or maybe I should just say unlike so many stories period), never tries to force an agenda into its narrative. The characters are never asked to act or speak in ways that are unrealistic or less than honest. When they toast the tunnel on the Fourth of July, they make no elaborate speeches about the rightness of their cause and how they deserve to escape because they’re the good guys and the Germans are the bad guys. No, they toast, quite simply, “To getting home.” How’s that for stark, staring, bleeding honesty?
Steve McQueen, Jud Taylor, and James Garner in The Great Escape, directed by John Sturges, produced by The Mirisch Company
But the really wonderful thing about this honesty is that, in the end, the agenda is gotten across even more powerfully than it would have been had screenwriters James Clavell and W.R. Burnett spelled it out for us.
“Emotion” Is the Key in Emotional Honesty
Emotional honesty travels in the other direction as well. It involves not only not dragging in melodramatic theatrical reactions, but also digging deep and highlighting the emotions the characters are feeling.
I’ve read too many books and seen too many movies that featured solid plots, engaging characters, and excellent technique, but which missed out on greatness for the simple reason that they fell flat emotionally. They blocked me from seeing past the characters’ façades into the realness of their beings—into the why behind their actions—unlike The Great Escape, which perfectly balanced its demonstration of the characters’ emotions, needs, and goals against the temptation to force emotions upon the characters for the sole reason of (hopefully) wringing a sympathetic reaction from the viewer.
Go watch The Great Escape. You’ll learn lots about how to craft an emotionally resonant story, and if you read between the lines, you may also get good glimpse of what not to do.
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What is your favorite movie or book? What has it taught you about storytelling? Tell me in the comments!
