User Reviews

THE WOODEN HORSE is another decent WW2 prisoner-of-war movie, this time set in an internment camp for British officers run by the German air force. Once again it has the hook of being a true story to make it completely irresistible for viewers, and once again there's very little to dislike about this picture: it's well shot, well acted, and generally entertaining.

The story is about a group of prisoners who decide to escape by digging a tunnel beneath the exercise ground of their internment camp. Their cover will be the titular item, a horse used for vaulting by the exercising prisoners. What follows is laden with suspense and decent performances with the likes of Leo Genn, Anthony Steel, and David Tomlinson doing their bit as the prisoners determined to escape. While the story does lose some of the momentum in the latter section, it remains engaging right up until the closing credits. It's not quite ALBERT, R.N., but it's watchable all the same.

A Wessex Film Production, made at London Film Studios, Shepperton, England, and on locations in Germany and Denmark. Filmed with the co-operation of the British War Office and Air Ministry. Print under review is presented by J. Arthur Rank with release through Rank's General Film Distributors. However, the film was originally presented by Alexander Korda's London Films and released through British Lion. Copyright in the U.K. and Australia by Wessex Productions. Not copyrighted in the U.S.A. New York opening at the 72nd Street Trans- Lux: 28 August 1951. U.S. release through Snader Productions: 28 August 1951. U.K. release through British Lion: 16 October 1950. Australian release through Universal-International: 8 June 1951. 9,225 feet. 102 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: A meticulously accurate transcription of a thrilling and highly ingenious escape from a German POW camp, telling of the sweat and toil spent to enable three R.A.F. men to reach Britain in safety.

NOTES: Number four at the British box-office for 1950, following The Blue Lamp, The Happiest Days of Your Life, and Annie Get Your Gun. Number seven at the Australian box-office for 1951, following Samson and Delilah, Show Boat, Harvey, The Happiest Days of Your Life, A Place in the Sun, and The Great Caruso. Number four in the Daily Mail's annual poll of 1,379,849 British picture-goers, following Odette, The Blue Lamp and Morning Departure. Winner of a Picturegoer Seal of Merit.

COMMENT: Comparisons with the later Stalag 17 and The Great Escape are now inevitable. This POW camp is very clean and tidy — with sheets on the beds yet — which gives it quite a different atmosphere to the grimy Hollywood Stalag 17.

Nonetheless within its different confines, The Wooden Horse is equally realistic. As might be expected with Eric Williams himself penning the screenplay, this film emerges as a very faithful transcription of the novel. Even the opening narration by Leo Genn is lifted direct from the book. The events are true. They are here re-staged with scrupulous accuracy which extends not only to the naturalistic acting and totally unobtrusive direction, but to the meticulously realistic sets and costumes.

There is of course no female interest. This is both a plus — in that it contributes to condensing the plot and making it more immediate — and a minus — in that it lessens the movie's overall appeal. Genn, Steel, Tomlinson and the others like Anthony Dawson, Bill Travers and Peter Finch (in a small role as a hospital patient) play very smoothly, but one can't help hankering for some real star power.

Aside from the scenes in the tunnel where the cramped and confined nature of the excavation is very effectively conveyed (I suppose by shooting through glass into a tank), the direction, as said, remains uninteresting and routine. Like the acting, it's smoothly capable but lacks vigor. It says much for the slackness of Lee's directorial rein that the film's most exciting and suspenseful episodes take place outside the POW camp where extensive location shooting in Denmark and Germany widen its impact. Here also the photographer really comes into his own, his charismatic skill making seemingly light work of difficult location assignments such as the night scenes at the dock.

My only disappointment with the location sequences is that the action outside the camp does not follow Tomlinson's adventures. A bit of cross-cutting between the escapees would have brought more force to the climax.

In fact, "The Wooden Horse" is too soberly realistic in writing, direction and playing for its own good. It's not exciting enough. But that's just my opinion. The movie achieved an enormous public and critical success.

I saw the classic war movie either on television years ago, or during my days in college, it may be one of the less remembered escape movies, compared to films like The Colditz Story, and The Great Escape, but I remember it being enjoyable, so I watched it again to find out. Based on the true story, in Stalag Luft III, the prisoner of war (POW) camp, the prisoners are faced with the problem of digging an escape tunnel with the accommodation huts being a considerable distance from the perimeter fence. They come up with an ingenious idea, to dig a tunnel in the middle of an open area relatively near the perimeter fence and using a wooden vaulting horse (constructed largely from Canadian Red Cross parcels plywood), to cover the entrance. The plan is that each day the men will carry the horse out to the same spot, with a man hidden inside. The prisoners begin gymnastic exercises using the vaulting horse, while the concealed man is digging down below it, placing the contents into sandbags. At the end of each session, the digger places wooden boards to fit the hole, and fills the space with sandbags. The hole space is covered with dry sand to hide the tunnelling activity, and the men's landing footprints serve to find the same space. The digger is then brought back hiding in the horse, along with the many bags of wet sand. As the tunnel lengthens, two men, First Lieutenant Peter Howard (Leo Genn) and Captain John Clinton (Anthony Steel), are eventually hidden inside the horse to continue digging, while a larger group of men exercise. They recruit a third man, Phillip "Phil" Roe (Mary Poppins' David Tomlinson), to assist them, with the promise that he will join the escape. At the final break-out, Clinton hides in the tunnel during roll call, before three men are carried out in the horse. The men in the accommodation huts cause a distraction, and all three men successfully escape without being detected. Howard and Clinton travel by train to the Baltic port of Lübeck. Phil elects to travel alone, posing as a Norwegian margarine salesman and travelling by train via Danzig. He was the first to reach the neutral territory. Howard and Clinton with the help of French workers meet Danish resistance worker "Sigmund" (Helge Erickssen), who smuggles them onto a Danish ship. They then transfer to a fishing boat and arrive in Copenhagen, before being shipped to neutral Sweden. There they are reunited with Phil, who arrived earlier. Also starring David Greene as Nick Bennett, Peter Burton as Nigel, Patrick Waddington as Group Captain Wardley - Senior British Officer, Michael Goodliffe as Robbie, Dr. No's Anthony Dawson as Pomfret, James Bond's Walter Gotell as Francois - The Follower, and Network's Peter Finch as Australian in Hospital. The acting is fine, the story is compelling, and it looks and feels authentic, the preparation for escape is interesting, while the process of getting out of the country is slightly slower, but overall it is a fairly good Second World War drama. It was nominated the BAFTA for Best British Film. Worth watching!

Upon seeing a film entitled The Wooden Horse, one including myself might think it was about some fake object like the famous Trojan wooden horse that was used to smuggle in people or objects like weapons. The horse we're talking about in this film is the kind used in every gymnasium in the world.

But this one aids indirectly in the smuggling out of prisoners from a German POW camp called Stalag 3. It's quite simple, it's too long a dig from the prisoner barracks to outside the camp for a tunnel. So the horse is placed over a midway point and diggers are smuggled in and out. It also serves as a place where fresh air can come into the men working in the tunnel.

It's quite an ingenious scheme and Leo Genn, Anthony Steel, and David Tomlinson are the three that escape. The rest of the film plays a lot like The Great Escape as the three escaped prisoners try to make it to the neutral country of Sweden.

Though The Wooden Horse doesn't have the budget that The Great Escape did it tells its story in a fast moving and compact fashion with no frills. Location shooting in Denmark and Germany make it quite authentic. The British occupation zone was in the northern part of the new Federal Republic of Germany and many extras were hired among the locals. And the film holds up well after sixty years.

I'll bet Kurt Thomas never thought of a gym horse being used this way.

This is an old but still-watchable POW escape movie. Stalag Luft III was the POW camp where the Great Escape took place. Before that, however, there had been a more small-scale escape of three men in tunnels built with the assistance of a vaulting horse. This well-made movie tells the story of that overshadowed 1943 adventure, which involved a small number of British and Commonwealth officers going to extraordinary lengths to deceive their guards and the three escapees making their way through Germany to freedom.

Made just seven years after the event, and only five years after the end of the war, this British movie has an immediacy, accuracy and realism that seem remarkable now. (We now see the Nazis as murderous monsters, but in this movie the officers sing "Deutschland is kaput" in the showers to taunt their guards.) The culture of that period, the camaraderie and the sense of quiet determination shine through in the film, probably because many of the actors were of that generation and had served themselves. Almost all of them went on to have long acting careers.

This was a stalwart generation that had committed to total war. Afterwards a flood of movies (still continuing today) has sought to process this cataclysm. This is an early example of that genre. The feeling is still not that "we were heroes", but that "we survived" and "we did amazing things". Made during the bleak period that followed the war in the UK, this is a matter-of-fact kind of film that avoids flashiness, sensationalism, cliché and even stereotype -- so some modern viewers may find the movie a little slow.

It begins in a leisurely way, with British POWs in a camp, chatting and grumbling and being a little impudent with the German guards. On the whole it fits into the often splendid genre of post-war British films.

The POWs are more bored than abused. The sleeping quarters each house about four men. They sleep on comfortable bunks and wear pajamas. There's even a piano somewhere playing Mozart. In the hospital there are Beethoven records. But, driven by a desire to spend money, find a girl, and get a good meal, they begin to build a tunnel out of the camp.

The hut nearest the wire is too far away to use as a base, so the men construct a wooden horse to use on the fields outside; that is, a vaulting platform with a padded top, the sort of thing many of us had to cope with in high school gym class. Each day, when the men are not busy peeling potatoes, one of them will be hidden inside the hollow box-like structure and work on the tunnel, disguising the entrance with dirt-covered sandbags. During the practice runs, most of the POWs leap the horse easily but one continues to lose his nerve at the last minute and smash belly first into the structure. He's demoted to cheerleader.

The German guards are not the raving maniacs of the war years. Most are reasonable and, as in real life, a bit old for combat and worn out. This doesn't stop one of the Unteroffiziers from examining the vaulting horse in private and, after looking around to make sure no one is watching, he leaps across the top lengthwise, outdoing all the Brits, and grins with silent pride.

The work proceeds and there are moments of tension, as there must be in any movie about men crawling fifty feet through a tiny tunnel of dirt. No power on earth could get me to do it.

As it turns out, two men, Leo Genn and Anthony Steele, escape to the forest, thence to Lübeck, an ancient and distinctive northern city that gave us Günther Grass and Thomas Mann. Some location shooting was obviously done around the city's landmarks. The pace picks up. Narrow escapes up alleys and over fences. Evil forces are closing in on them but they finally make their way to a Danish freighter where they are welcomed aboard. Danish freighters can be fun. I accompanied two linguists aboard a freighter this size in Nova Scotia. The object was to see how the pronunciation of a sentence in French would be altered by a Danish accent. "Selon notre dernier rapport la besoin est très bon." I don't know about the business but the festivities were gay and we staggered off loaded on Akvavit. (I just threw that in for lagniappe.) Copenhagen, of course, was occupied by the Germans in World War II and conditions remained dicey for the pair. The first violent scene takes place in the boatyard of a nearby fishing village when Genn kills a German guard, an act that leaves him chagrined.

The escape are close but Genn and Steele finally make it to Sweden, which, unlike neighboring Norway, remained neutral for reasons having to do with the transport of raw materials. Safe at last in the arms of the British embassy.

The opening scenes, the tunnels and so forth, have now become familiar fare in these escape movies, but the twists and turns of their escape through Germany and Denmark are engaging enough. I admire the photography too, and the treatment of the enemy, who are rendered as human instead of as cartoon figures.

Said my father sagely as we strode out of the Plaza Arcade and across the High Street into the teatime darkness,I hoping to get a glimpse of the day - old chicks in "Sainsbury's" window,he hoping to get a cup of tea and a hot apple pie in "Lyon's" before they closed. To be fair to staff at Stalag Luft 111,that was his default position for any perceived failure by those in authority. The Polio epidemic wouldn't have occurred if Rommel had been in charge of the Health Service and those contemporary fear - figures the Cosh Boys(later to be followed by Teddy Boys,Mods and Rockers and,ultimately Punks)could never have flourished in a justice system with Rommel at the helm. Having fought the German Field Marshal in North Africa(not hand to hand you understand,although he often distilled the "Last bit of unpleasantness with the hun" as he termed it,down to Desert Rat (him) Vs Desert Fox (Rommel)for whom he felt a most un - British reverence. Certainly the Germans guarding Messrs Genn,Steele,Tomlinson et al seemed to be sleeping on the job as our heroes casually dumped the soil excavated from their escape tunnel from their trouser pockets and literally kicked over the traces. "The Wooden Horse" was the first of a seemingly endless series of films showing British officers kicking scruffy footballs about like demented 9 year - olds,dressing up as women to entertain their chums and digging holes in the ground. In retrospect the POW genre veered from the sublime - "Bridge on the River Kwai" to the bizarre - "Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence" via the frankly camp(sorry) "The password is courage" to the overblown and noisy "The Great Escape". But it's gestation came with the true story of an ingenious escape engineered by some necessarily athletic officers that required them to engage in hearty gymnastics whilst tunnelling a jolly long way under the perimeter fence. 65 years have added a piquancy to this cheaply - made workmanlike effort by a journeyman director. The actors are fondly - remembered - except for Mr A.Steele who appears to have been unfairly forgotten after an Icarus - like career. There followed a deluge of books telling of more and more unlikely escapes from the clutches of the Master Race that made one wonder how they contrived to make the war in Europe last six years (well,four if you're a Yank). This film should be shown to Angela Merkel to remind her that her Vaterland didn't always have things all its own way. as we walked down a poorly - lit Swan Lane father kept an eye open for lurking Cosh Boys and I envisioned day - old chicks tunnelling their way out of our chicken run at home. No,nobody could make a film out of that - could they?

This is the true story of how three British soldiers escaped from the German Prisoner Of War (POW) camp, Stalag Luft III, during the Second World War. This is the same POW camp that was the scene for the Great Escape which resulted in the murder of 50 re-captured officers by the Gestapo (and later was made into a very successful movie of the same name).

While the other POWs in Stalag Luft III are busy working on their three massive tunnels (known as Tom, Dick & Harry), two enterprising British prisoners came up with the idea to build a wooden vaulting horse which could be placed near the compound wire fence, shortening the distance they would have to tunnel from this starting point to freedom. The idea to build their version of the Trojan Horse came to them while they were discussing 'classic' attempts for escape and observing some POWs playing leap-frog in the compound.

Initially containing one, and later with two POWs hidden inside, the wooden horse could be carried out into the compound and placed in almost the same position, near the fence, on a daily basis. While volunteer POWS vaulted over the horse, the escapees were busy inside the horse digging a tunnel from under the vaulting horse while positioned near the wire, under the wire, and into the woods.

The story also details the dangers that two of the three escaping POWs faced while traveling through Germany and occupied Europe after they emerged from the tunnel. All three POWs who tried to escape actually hit home runs (escaped successfully to their home base.). The Wooden Horse gives a very accurate and true feeling of the tension and events of a POW breakout. The movie was shot on the actual locations along the route the two POWs traveled in their escape. Made with far less a budget than The Great Escape, The Wooden Horse is more realistic if not more exciting than The Great Escape and never fails to keep you from the edge of your seat rooting for the POWs to make good their escape.

The story line is crisp and the acting rings true and is taut enough to keep the tension up all the way through the movie. The Wooden Horse is based on the book of the same name by one of the escapees, Eric Williams, and is, by far, the best POW escape story ever made into a movie. Some of the actual POWs were used in the movie to reprise their existence as prisoners in Stalag Luft III. I give this movie a well deserved ten.

In the summer and autumn of 1943 the British prisoners of Stalag Luft III, a German prison camp housing captured air force officers, began to show a particular interest in gymnastics, especially vaulting. (Stalag Luft III was also the POW camp featured in "The Great Escape"). The reason was not just a concern for physical fitness. The prisoners had designed a special vaulting horse which could conceal men, tools and containers of soil. Each day the horse was carried out to the same spot near the perimeter fence and, while the prisoners vaulted over it, the men inside set to work on digging a tunnel. At the end of the day, these men would conceal the tunnel entrance with a wooden board covered in soil, before being carried back to their huts inside the horse. Remarkably, these arrangements were never detected by the Germans, and by October the tunnel was ready. Three prisoners, Michael Codner, Eric Williams and Oliver Philpot made their escape, and all eventually made it back to Britain.

"The Wooden Horse", based on a book by Williams, tells the story of the events. The first part of the film deals with the escape from the camp, the second with the adventures of Williams and Codner (renamed here Peter Howard and John Clinton) in making their way back to Britain. The adventures of Philpot (renamed Philip Rowe), who travelled separately from the other two, are not shown in any detail. In reality, Williams and Codner made their way to the German port of Stettin, from where they escaped by boat to occupied Denmark and then, with the help of the Danish resistance, to neutral Sweden. In the film they take a similar route but via Lübeck rather than Stettin. The reason was that in 1950 Stettin, under the name Szczecin, had become part of communist Poland, and the British film-makers doubted whether they would be allowed to film by the Polish authorities.

The film started something of a vogue for prisoner-of-war films in Britain, leading to the likes of "The Colditz Story" and "Danger Within". The Americans also got in on the act with "Stalag 17", and in my view all the best films in this genre- "Bridge on the River Kwai", "King Rat" and "The Great Escape"- were made by American studios about British POWs. "The Wooden Horse" is not really in the same class as any of those three masterpieces, but then it was made on a much lower budget without any big-name stars. (Many of the cast were in fact amateurs). It is a patriotic "how we won the war" tale of a sort popular on both sides of the Atlantic during the late forties, fifties and early sixties, and as such it works very well, conjuring up a good deal of tension. Nearly three quarters of a century after it was made, it still repays watching. 7/10.

The first part of the movie is devoted to guys jumping over a wooden box while hiding the fact that they're building a tunnel to escape their imprisonment in a Nazi war camp. It's just jump, jump and more jump. This becomes tedious at best.

The film finally takes off after their escape as they desperately try to flee Germany and go to neutral Sweden. With some good luck and harrowing experiences, they're able to achieve their objective, but by the film's end, you're wishing for much more and are probably relieved by those famous words-The End. The last scene in Sweden is somewhat amusing, but by then you really don't care.

Leo Genn, a brilliant British actor, seems rather bored in the part. David Tomlinson, looks like he is thinking about 14 years later, when he was so wonderful with Julie Andrews in "Mary Poppins." Had they been only able to fly away, this film would have been much better.