Editing War film (section)

=== Prisoner of war ===
{{further|Prisoner of war#In popular culture}}
[[File:Model Stalag Luft III.jpg|thumb|Model of [[Stalag Luft III]] used in filming ''[[The Great Escape (film)|The Great Escape]]'' (1963)]]

A popular subgenre of war films in the 1950s and 1960s was the [[prisoner of war]] film.<ref name=BFI-Wigley>{{Cite web |last1=Wigley |first1=Samuel |title=10 great prisoner-of-war films |date=18 April 2013 |url=https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/10-great-prisoner-war-films |publisher=British Film Institute |access-date=6 March 2015}}</ref> The genre was popularised in [[United Kingdom|Britain]] with major films like [[Guy Hamilton]]'s ''[[The Colditz Story]]'' (1955) and [[John Sturges]]'s American film ''[[The Great Escape (film)|The Great Escape]]'' (1963).<ref name=BFI-Wigley /> They told stories of real escapes from [[Nazi Germany|German]] prisoner of war camps such as [[Stalag Luft III]] in the Second World War. Despite episodes of danger and human tragedy, these films delight in a continual boyish game of escape and ingenuity, celebrating the courage and the defiant spirit of the prisoners of war, and treating war as fun.<ref name=BFI-Wigley /><ref>{{Cite web |last1=O'Neill |first1=Esther Margaret |title=British World War Two Films 1945–65: Catharsis or National Regeneration? |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/19576241.pdf |publisher=University of Central Lancashire (PhD Thesis) |pages=57 and passim |date=October 2006}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=MacKenzie |first1=S. P. |title=The Colditz Myth British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany |date=2004 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-926210-6 |page=20 and passim |quote=stung by criticism of the schoolboyish tone of his original account ... Reid ...}}</ref> [[David Lean]]'s ''[[Bridge on the River Kwai]]'' (1957) was judged best picture at the Oscars; it took the genre from chilly German prisons to the heat of a camp in Thailand. It was the first, too, to use lush colour to bring out the British [[stiff upper lip]] of the colonel, played by [[Alec Guinness]] in an Oscar-winning performance.<ref name=BFI-Wigley /> The "definitive" Oscar-winning prisoner of war film was [[Billy Wilder]]'s ''[[Stalag 17]]'' (1953), while the brief but powerful prison camp scenes of ''[[The Deer Hunter]]'' (1978) lend an air of tragedy to the whole of that film.<ref name=BFI-Wigley />