Product Description DVD Special Features: Dolby 5.1 Sound Audio Commentary by cast and crew An American Icon History versus Hollywood" documentary The True Story of The Great Escape documentary Trivia Track Theatrical trailer Photo galleries .co.uk Review A stirring example of courage and the indomitable human spirit, for many John Sturges' The Great Escape is both the definitive World War II drama and the nonpareil prison escape movie. Featuring an unequalled ensemble cast in a rivetingly authentic true-life scenario set to Elmer Bernstein's admirable music (who writes contrapuntal march themes these days?), this picture is both a template for subsequent action-adventure movies and one of the last glories of Golden Age Hollywood. Reunited with the director who made him a star in The Magnificent Seven Steve McQueen gives a career-defining performance as the laconic Hilts, the baseball-loving, motorbike-riding "Cooler King". The rest of the all-male Anglo-American cast--Dickie Attenborough, Donald Pleasance, James Garner, Charles Bronson, David McCallum, James Coburn and Gordon Jackson--make the most of their meaty roles (though you have to forgive Coburn his Australian accent). Closely based on Paul Brickhill's book, the various escape attempts, scrounging, forging and ferreting activities are authentically realised thanks also to the presence on set of technical advisor Wally Flood, one of the original tunnel-digging POWs. Sturges orchestrates the climactic mass break out with total conviction, giving us both high action and very poignant human drama. Without trivialising the grim reality, The Great Escape thrillingly celebrates the heroism of men who never gave up the fight.On the DVD: The Great Escape special edition is indeed a special event. The anamorphic 2.35:1 picture is good if a tad grainy, and the remastered Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is a fitting vehicle for Elmer Bernstein's magnificent contribution. Accompanying the feature there's a reasonable cut-and-paste group commentary culled from interviews with various cast and crew, plus text trivia captions about the actors and the real-life camp. The second disc features a first-rate Granada TV documentary from 2001, "The Untold Story", which tells of both the escape itself and the subsequent post-war search for the Gestapo officers who butchered 50 of the 76 escapees. This has an appendix of further valuable interviews with survivors, and there's also an American making-of documentary, "Heroes Underground", which is good though annoyingly divided into separate chapters and featuring non-anamorphic clips from the film. Perhaps best of all though is the 25-minute life of American POW David Jones, "The Real Virgil Hilts", whose career both during and after the war is extraordinary and inspirational. A classic movie finally gets the DVD treatment it merits.--Mark Walker
M**Y
The Great Escape DVD
What a great purchase. Bought for an elderly gentleman who has wanted to see this film for ages. Picture and sound quality is excellent.
M**Y
Better late than never
Arrived late but brilliant movie
A**R
The Great escape one film Holds people.
This film action of witch people want to watch.
P**M
Steve McQueen , what else could a woman want
Great film and a classic
M**K
Vid
Ideal for cover when nowt on at xmas Exellent film
D**A
Film Like Presentation!
The Great Escape is one of those classics that is shown every year here, featuring pretty much an all star cast of well known actors and a dramatisation of a real event I think it’s the sort of film that just does not get made anymore, if they try and make this today it would be too serious, lack fun and have too much CGI because film makers today rely on CGI for their stunt work too much.The video presentation is superb, film grain is appropriate and present, the encode looks very good, I saw no issues to speak of and I view via projection and to me the only thing missing is HDR, this is a 4k SDR presentation, so the colours may not be as good as they could be, no DCI-P3 colours but other than that I thought everything looked really good.The audio is in either 2 channel mono or 5.1 channel, the 5.1 channel was a remix created in 2002, it does open up the sound stage but I believe the high frequencies are attenuated, still I do prefer the 5.1 mix over the mono, it just gives everything a wider sound stage and the main theme music sounds better in 5.1, you have the 2 channel mono to fall back on if you hate remixes.Lots of extra content is available including an excellent audio commentary featuring some of the original cast as well as the producer of the film, most of the features are on the accompanying blu ray.Overall 5 stars for the video presentation, 3 for the audio as I want higher frequencies retained, they do the same with CD albums, always removing higher frequencies and reducing the dynamic range, that’s why Vinyl sounds better these days, as they retain higher frequencies and keep the dynamic range intact, anyways I knock a star off because of this annoying practice.Highly recommended release.
S**N
Classic
The German military in world war 2 built a camp to hold enemy captured flyers from Europe and britains commonwealth . the camp was all to hold the prisoners who had the most escape attempts and was staffed by specialist German guards who would look out for tunnels and so on,to make thinks lenient it was administered by the German air force officers. Most of the escape attempts are real most of the escaping officers names would be changed for the film for ' bartlett 'a name is incorrect his real name was BushellAnd not all the escapees were British ,some were the conquered nations under nazi GermanyWhen most of the escapees were captured around 70 of them Hitler wanted them all executed, but goeringBalked at this and they finally agreed at or Hitler agreed at 50,I presume the German air force wanted nothing to with it or the SS and Gestapo took it out of their hands, they weren't all machined gunned down as in the film but we're taken out in one,twos or there's and taken out to be executed the cars would stop for a break and the prisoners would be shot in the back and taken to a crematorium ,the remains were then taken back to the campAfter the war the RAF Hunted down those responsibleI was really pleased that the disc works because it's reason A and surprisingly even though it's not a region free player it does play discs from the USA. Work that one out ??4k transfer okHas subtitlesHas extras
N**
Excellent
One of the great movies of its time
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