Stalag 17

Stalag 17 (1953)

4 suggested corrections

(5 votes)

Other mistake: When Shapiro goes to get the teabag out for Dunbar's tea, you can see that there is a wet spot where it was in his pocket, suggesting multiple takes.

Movie Nut

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Suggested correction: Or he'd simply used the teabag before using it in Dunbar's tea.

Continuity mistake: When Price gets his "love note" out of the black queen and reads it, he quickly puts it and the queen in his left pants pocket. However, later Sefton reaches into Price's jacket and gets it out.

Movie Nut

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Suggested correction: It's the next day. It's perfectly reasonable that Price could have moved it. It's also reasonable that Sefton, who was watching him closely, would have seen where he put it.

Factual error: At the start when Manfriedi and Johnson are ambushed outside the wire, check out the "German" crew served machine gun. It is actually a U.S. mod. 1919 air cooled 30 Cal. Browning. Germans used MG 34 and later MG 42s. But for a rear area POW camp they would surely use 34s to save the newer faster 42s for the front.

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Suggested correction: Captured weapons would have been used because it would have been even cheaper than using 34s.

Other mistake: 2 prisoners from barrack 2 bring in a phonograph for the exchange of Sgt Sefton's brew distillery, but where is the music coming from, given the phonograph is fake?

Don Hendrick

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Suggested correction: The phonograph isn't fake. Why would they exchange a fake phonograph for a working distillery?

Continuity mistake: When William Holden is laying on his bunk and first notices the shadow of the hanging electric bulb, he turns around to look at the bulb, but there is no light source beyond the bulb to cause such a shadow.

More mistakes in Stalag 17

Duke: What'd you give the Krauts for that egg?
Sefton: Forty-five cigarettes. The price has gone up.
Duke: They wouldn't be the cigarettes you took us for last night?
Sefton: What was I going to do with them? I only smoke cigars.

More quotes from Stalag 17

Trivia: One of the actors in the movie was Edmund Trzcinski. He was actually an American POW in a German Stalag, and wrote a play based on his experiences there. From there, the movie was made, based on the play, and he was actually cast in a role, as himself, re-creating it for the silver screen.

Robert Cotton

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Question: I've heard that, because the film was shot in sequential order, some of the actors were unaware who the spy is until the last three days of filming. When they were offered their roles, wouldn't they have received a copy of the script to read in advance to learn their lines?

Cubs Fan

Answer: The cast would have received copies of the script but with parts of the last scene omitted. They would be given the missing pages during the last days of the shoot, in which time they learn their lines, rehearse, then film the ending. Considering the time involved in filming a movie, actors do not necessarily memorize the entire script beforehand, but do so as each scene is shot. Also, it's questionable as to whether or not any of the cast did not know the ending as the movie was based on the Broadway play.

raywest

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