The One That Got Away (1957) Hardy Kruger

[Ollie]

Directed by Roy Ward Baker, this film preceded his A NIGHT TO REMEMBER with its own foreshadowing of good techniques. This is the story of German fighter pilot Franz Von Werra, supposedly the only German who escaped from Allied POW camps in England and Canada to return to fight again in Germany.

This isn't a spectacle of a film, nothing bombastic or outrageous, and no nuclear-style petroleum-based FX explosions. He climbs thru windows, hides in the rain and mud, running, always running, unless he's wondering if he can float downstream on ice-bricks.

This too is part of the mid-May Brit War Films collections released in North America. This film shares a lot of the 'feel' of Powell & Pressberger's 49TH PARALLEL, but without the famous cast or the villainy.

[stuart.uk]

Ollie

Sadly the character Hardy Kruger played was shot down and killed later on in the war. i wonder if he'd have known of the outcome wheather he still would have escaped

[moira finnie]

I enjoyed the small scale war movie, The One That Got Away very much when it was shown last night (Thur.5/29) on TCM. Hardy Krüger, perhaps best remembered for his marvelous, low key role in The Flight of the Phoenix (the good version, directed by Robert Aldrich in 1965), gave a fine, almost wordless performance as Franz von Werra.

By avoiding the ideological issues involved but simply concentrating on the moment by moment experiences of the Krüger character as "an officer who saw it as his duty to escape", just as American & British soldiers were depicted in The Colditz Story, Stalag 17 & many other films, Roy Ward Baker managed to humanize a man who would normally be demonized in films of that period.

According to Krüger's IMDb bio, he was a child actor who had been forced into the Hitler Youth at "age 15...[but] Hardy made his film debut in a German picture ('The Young Eagles')...his acting career was interrupted when he was drafted into the German Infantry in 1944 at age 16. Years later, Hardy related how he 'hated that (Nazi) uniform.' During the filming of 'A Bridge Too Far' (1977) in which he portrayed a Nazi General, Hardy wore a topcoat over his SS uniform between takes so as 'not to remind myself of my childhood in Germany during WWII.' It is said that during his war years, Hardy was captured and taken as a POW by the Americans but managed to escape three times, the third time successfully!"

So perhaps this role wasn't such a stretch for the actor?

[stuart.uk]

Moira

i was thinking of Anton Walbrook in The life And Death Of Colonel Blimp. he played a German, who fled Germany to escape the Nazi's, but only managed to stay in the UK because of his friendship with his Brit counterpart Robert Livesley. it was said Churchill disliked the film because it dared to show a German in a sympathetic heroic role.

i remember Hardy Kruger in The Defector with Mony Clift. he was also in The Wild Geese with Roger Moore, Richrad's Burton and Harris

[MikeBSG]

I always thought that Churchill disliked "Colonel Blimp" because of its message that guys who had Boer War experience were too old to handle the Second World War, and Churchill was a hero of the Boer War (having been captured and escaped) so he viewed the film as a veiled attack on his leadership.