Post by Keith Heitmann on Jul 10, 2003 14:29:35 GMT -5
I just watched the fifth and last of the 5 DVDS for $30 I bought from BestBuy.com last month. It's always great to see a truly good movie no matter how many times you've seen it before. ;D
I noticed something on the widescreen aspect of the movie that usually is not visible in most tv broadcasts and 4:3 formatted copies of the video.
When McQeen, Hilts, gets put in the "cooler" for the first time, shortly after he gives cell keys back to the guard and the door is closed you can see someone just offset behind the door wall in a little space between the edge of the film and where the open end of the cell door wall ends on the set. When Hilts approaches the door you can see somone move on the other side of the door around the wall of the cell. Then if you keep watching it looks like a hand holding some sort of shaft, probably a sound engineer holding a boom mike near the cell door grill work that McQueen uses to talk to "Ives" through in the next cell.
I never noticed that before in any of the previous viewings of the movie over all these years and I saw the film in 1963 in the theaters when it was first released too.
After that I watched the 30 minute documentary on the story behind the movie. The movie was based on the book of the same name first published in 1950. The real camp was Stalag Luft 3 in Zagan, Poland (today) but once was part of Germany. Although the character names in the movie are ficticious and the time involved was compressed for the film, the story of the escape is essentially as it happened. One of the camp survivors, a RAF POW, served as technical advisor, and even Donald Pleasance had a few suggestions, as he had been a POW during WWII in Stalag Luft 1 after being shotdown over France.
One of the most interesting bits of movie trivia is that Steve McQueen did not make the famous jump over the fences at the Swiss border. One of his motorcycle racing buddies did the actual jumps due to insurance regulations, and McQueen was edited into most of the other parts of the scene for the close ups and the non-jumping sections of the scene.
Almost totally unknown to most movie buffs is that no one on the set could ride a bike as good as McQueen. save for his friend, and when you see some of the scenes where Hilts is being chased by a German motorcyle (without the sidecar) it is actually McQueen in a different uniform and wearing goggles chasing himself.
The motorcycle chase was not in the script or the book, in fact a lot of the scenes were just storyboarded and not totally scripted and were almost totally adlibbed. At one time there were 11 different scripts for the movie.
McQueen didn't like the way his part was written and forced the studio to send in three writers to re-write his part. He wanted to be the "hero" but didn't want to appear to be doing anything obviously heroic. So they included the bits with irrevent chat with von Luger at the beginning of the movie after the fence event, and the part where he deliberately gets caught after gathering information about the local area for the real escape.
I noticed something on the widescreen aspect of the movie that usually is not visible in most tv broadcasts and 4:3 formatted copies of the video.
When McQeen, Hilts, gets put in the "cooler" for the first time, shortly after he gives cell keys back to the guard and the door is closed you can see someone just offset behind the door wall in a little space between the edge of the film and where the open end of the cell door wall ends on the set. When Hilts approaches the door you can see somone move on the other side of the door around the wall of the cell. Then if you keep watching it looks like a hand holding some sort of shaft, probably a sound engineer holding a boom mike near the cell door grill work that McQueen uses to talk to "Ives" through in the next cell.
I never noticed that before in any of the previous viewings of the movie over all these years and I saw the film in 1963 in the theaters when it was first released too.
After that I watched the 30 minute documentary on the story behind the movie. The movie was based on the book of the same name first published in 1950. The real camp was Stalag Luft 3 in Zagan, Poland (today) but once was part of Germany. Although the character names in the movie are ficticious and the time involved was compressed for the film, the story of the escape is essentially as it happened. One of the camp survivors, a RAF POW, served as technical advisor, and even Donald Pleasance had a few suggestions, as he had been a POW during WWII in Stalag Luft 1 after being shotdown over France.
One of the most interesting bits of movie trivia is that Steve McQueen did not make the famous jump over the fences at the Swiss border. One of his motorcycle racing buddies did the actual jumps due to insurance regulations, and McQueen was edited into most of the other parts of the scene for the close ups and the non-jumping sections of the scene.
Almost totally unknown to most movie buffs is that no one on the set could ride a bike as good as McQueen. save for his friend, and when you see some of the scenes where Hilts is being chased by a German motorcyle (without the sidecar) it is actually McQueen in a different uniform and wearing goggles chasing himself.
The motorcycle chase was not in the script or the book, in fact a lot of the scenes were just storyboarded and not totally scripted and were almost totally adlibbed. At one time there were 11 different scripts for the movie.
McQueen didn't like the way his part was written and forced the studio to send in three writers to re-write his part. He wanted to be the "hero" but didn't want to appear to be doing anything obviously heroic. So they included the bits with irrevent chat with von Luger at the beginning of the movie after the fence event, and the part where he deliberately gets caught after gathering information about the local area for the real escape.
