'The McKenzie Break' is very much in the tradition of the POW movie that seemingly dominated British screens in the 1950s. There is the same elaborate tunnelling; the same stand-off between Brit and Nazi, prisoner and commandant; an introduction of a theatrical scene to emphasise the idea of role-playing to deceive one's enemy. There is the same pitting a maverick officer against his staid, by-the-book superior. There is the tense, suspenseful escape scene, and a rejection of easy, American-style heroics. Character is reduced to short-hand.
Despite the greater mobility and fluidity of the camerawork, making certain scenes very vivid, the film's violence belongs more to the 1950s than the blood-soaked era of Peckinpah and Penn; and there is absolutely no swearing, even in those more permissive times. The whole film has that admirably dour emphasis on the literal mechanics of plot - of getting the job done - which is unglamorous, but has an integrity that gives you an illusion of realism, and makes the lollipops of escape, suspense or action all the more satisfying.
So with the exception of colour, there is very little difference between 'Break' and all those 1950s films invariably starring John Mills and Richards Attenborough and Todd. It even begins with a time-honoured shot, a god's eye view of the camp from the surveilling post, emphasising the see-all power of the confining power. Of course, this surveillance has only access to the surface of things; the escape route is under ground.
This is also a metaphor for the game of wits, between the Germans and their respective captors, Major Parry and Captain Conner. Parry, like his sentry, can only see the surface of things, and hence his impasse, symptomatic, as he admits, of his general mediocrity. Conner's job is to look behind the surface: as a crime reporter he is used to infiltrating the underworld; now he must literally search under this world of the first shot. Conner's former job gives the film the air of a transposed policier, with the wily old Inspector trying to nab a fiendishly clever criminal. This point is brought out by the decoy use of police made by the prisoners in the escape.
There are a couple of incidental, non-structural changes to the old format that completely revolutionise it. The prisoners are German. Further, they are not sympathetic, non-Nazi Germans as in 'Das Boot', but the kind of glassy fanatics with no compunction in slitting an honourable colleague's neck. And yet they are subversive, attempting to overthrow an established order - the opening scene where they group like striking workers and tackle the soldiers regrouping like shielded police, that must have had an ironic frisson only two years after 1968.
In the 1950s POW movies, there was never any attempt to make the soldiers likable - they were tough professionals doing their job; the fact of their Britishness and the shared experience of the war gave the audience the involvement and emotion absent from the films themselves. Narrative logic suggests that we will be on the side of the prisoners, the people who are trying to provoke action - the essence of film - not contain it. And when they do break out there is a sense of excitement, a gush of fresh air (AND surrealism, a small army of disguised Nazis driving through a sleepy Scottish town). But these are Nazis. Rarely has personal morality and narrative demands clashed so disturbingly, in so downbeat a fashion.
Further, this typical British movie marginalises the British. The one major figure - played by England's most underrated supporting player, Ian Hendry - is decent enough, but practically useless. The film is a game of chess between a Nazi and an undisciplined Irishman with little gra for order, justice or the English, just a gambling man's love of impossible odds. Maybe it's some hidden patriotism on my part, but Brian Keith is a wonder, a drunken Irishman who seems to be the only one able to establish order, but actually (deliberately?) creates chaos.
Seeing as the Irish spent the war in inglorious neutrality, and the IRA supported the Germans, you wonder what exactly the very Irish (and not Anglo-Irish, despite the Trinity College interiors) Conner's motives are - as his German rival says, the Brits have been murdering his ancestors for centuries. It is surely no accident that it was Ireland and Germany who, through a long struggle for Independence, and two World Wars, effectively destroyed the British Empire, hence their superimposition at the end. England may have won the battle...This seems to me the true subject of this excellent film.
Despite the greater mobility and fluidity of the camerawork, making certain scenes very vivid, the film's violence belongs more to the 1950s than the blood-soaked era of Peckinpah and Penn; and there is absolutely no swearing, even in those more permissive times. The whole film has that admirably dour emphasis on the literal mechanics of plot - of getting the job done - which is unglamorous, but has an integrity that gives you an illusion of realism, and makes the lollipops of escape, suspense or action all the more satisfying.
So with the exception of colour, there is very little difference between 'Break' and all those 1950s films invariably starring John Mills and Richards Attenborough and Todd. It even begins with a time-honoured shot, a god's eye view of the camp from the surveilling post, emphasising the see-all power of the confining power. Of course, this surveillance has only access to the surface of things; the escape route is under ground.
This is also a metaphor for the game of wits, between the Germans and their respective captors, Major Parry and Captain Conner. Parry, like his sentry, can only see the surface of things, and hence his impasse, symptomatic, as he admits, of his general mediocrity. Conner's job is to look behind the surface: as a crime reporter he is used to infiltrating the underworld; now he must literally search under this world of the first shot. Conner's former job gives the film the air of a transposed policier, with the wily old Inspector trying to nab a fiendishly clever criminal. This point is brought out by the decoy use of police made by the prisoners in the escape.
There are a couple of incidental, non-structural changes to the old format that completely revolutionise it. The prisoners are German. Further, they are not sympathetic, non-Nazi Germans as in 'Das Boot', but the kind of glassy fanatics with no compunction in slitting an honourable colleague's neck. And yet they are subversive, attempting to overthrow an established order - the opening scene where they group like striking workers and tackle the soldiers regrouping like shielded police, that must have had an ironic frisson only two years after 1968.
In the 1950s POW movies, there was never any attempt to make the soldiers likable - they were tough professionals doing their job; the fact of their Britishness and the shared experience of the war gave the audience the involvement and emotion absent from the films themselves. Narrative logic suggests that we will be on the side of the prisoners, the people who are trying to provoke action - the essence of film - not contain it. And when they do break out there is a sense of excitement, a gush of fresh air (AND surrealism, a small army of disguised Nazis driving through a sleepy Scottish town). But these are Nazis. Rarely has personal morality and narrative demands clashed so disturbingly, in so downbeat a fashion.
Further, this typical British movie marginalises the British. The one major figure - played by England's most underrated supporting player, Ian Hendry - is decent enough, but practically useless. The film is a game of chess between a Nazi and an undisciplined Irishman with little gra for order, justice or the English, just a gambling man's love of impossible odds. Maybe it's some hidden patriotism on my part, but Brian Keith is a wonder, a drunken Irishman who seems to be the only one able to establish order, but actually (deliberately?) creates chaos.
Seeing as the Irish spent the war in inglorious neutrality, and the IRA supported the Germans, you wonder what exactly the very Irish (and not Anglo-Irish, despite the Trinity College interiors) Conner's motives are - as his German rival says, the Brits have been murdering his ancestors for centuries. It is surely no accident that it was Ireland and Germany who, through a long struggle for Independence, and two World Wars, effectively destroyed the British Empire, hence their superimposition at the end. England may have won the battle...This seems to me the true subject of this excellent film.