Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 is filled with tonal dissonances that never quite gel in the way his best films (The Apartment, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard) do. As high as the stakes may be at the outset, the broad comedy throughout the remainder of the film keeps those stakes from feeling real. Unlike some of the great WWII POW films, most of the characters are either too bland to tell apart from the others, or such over-the-top caricatures that they (and their hijinks) feel out-of-place in this life-and-death situation. Still, Wilder is a master filmmaker, and his direction elevates the middling narrative with light, fluid camerawork and a fast-paced banter that clips along in spite of the dissonances. The film’s exploration of the ways in which disillusionment can fuel selfish entitlement is compelling, but the film is too jumbled to do much with it or give our nominal protagonist any kind of an arc.
