leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (09/21/85)
THE PASSWORD IS COURAGE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
By this point there have been a fair number of films and TV stories
made about the resourcefulness of POW's held in German camps during World
War II. The best was a British TV series, COLDITZ, but also quite good were
STALAG 17, THE GREAT ESCAPE, THE COLDITZ STORY, and a handful of others.
The worst account was the TV series HOGAN'S HEROES, which turned the POW-
escape story into a stupid farce. I cannot remember any such story coming
from the United States after HOGAN'S HEROES was broadcast unfortunately.
Showtime this month is running a 1963 film I had never heard of, THE
PASSWORD IS COURAGE. It stars Dirk Bogarde as Sgt.-Major Charles Coward and
purports to be the true account of Coward's various escape attempts during
the war. Because the film has so many interesting stories of escape
attempts, it is hard to believe every one of them happened to just one man.
The film begins with Coward just one of a whole line of British soldiers
being marched to a POW camp. Coward's leg has gone stiff and he knows he
will be unable to keep up with the line. In this case, a stiff leg is a
terminal disease so Coward stages his first escape. He spends the rest of
the film escaping in clever ways and being recaptured. Occasionally he
takes a spot of time off for a bit of sabotage. Coward is able to do more
for the war effort captured than he could have ever done before he was
captured.
Part of what makes me think that not everything in the film happened to
one person is the tunnel escape Coward leads. A number of the incidents led
me to believe that this escape was the same as the one that Paul Brickhill
described in the book THE GREAT ESCAPE (on which the movie--also 1963--was
based). But the facts that the escapees were working on only one tunnel and
a few other details would have been mentioned in PASSWORD but were not.
That makes it seem that the attempt in the film was partially based on the
attempt Brickhill described and partially on one or more other escape
attempts. To be fair, the script seems to be based on a biography of Coward
alone. That biography was written by John Castle (according to the
credits). If just one man did all the film claims he did, he must have been
some sort of superman.
Even if this film is a compilation of many escape stories, it is well
worth watching, and what British soldiers were able to do in reality
compares favorably with the fantasy of HOGAN'S HEROES. The film compares
favorably even with the bigger-budget THE GREAT ESCAPE, showing more
"escape-ology" than just about any other source I can think of. Rate the
film a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper