People who watch The Colditz Story have probably seen The Great Escape as well and should bear in mind the fact that that camp where Steve McQueen, James Garner, and the rest was built to house all the big escape artists. Those really persistent offenders got incarcerated at the castle called Colditz. Those that is that didn't get summarily executed by the Gestapo as we well remember from The Great Escape.
What an incredible waste of manpower, but those guards had to be lucky because they could be at the Russian front. In The Colditz Story there are more guards than prisoners. When you think about it, it would have been easier for the Nazis to let this bunch be exchanged.
The protagonist of the story is later historian Pat Reid and he's played here by John Mills. Mills's character is the official British escape officer, there are French, Dutch, and Polish officers among those nationalities. Getting international cooperation here is about as easy as the alliance that defeated Nazi Germany with all the cracks and fraying in that endeavor.
There are two other standout characters, the senior British officer Eric Portman and Scot's Guard Christopher Rhodes. Rhodes had an interesting career, he and Stanley Baker probably were up for a lot of the same parts in British cinema. He played some very rough characters on film, some outright villains. Here he's just an incorrigible prisoner who's very rebelliousness endangers the escape plans of many. His is the best performance in The Colditz Story.
Made over 50 years ago, The Colditz Story holds up very well for today's audience. No flamboyant heroics like in The Great Escape, but some real situations in a story told simply and well.
