The Great Escape - Your favourite character or sub story

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coryk125

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This film was on TV again recently and as we all know it's a classic war film. Ingenuity, courage, determination etc all with an all-star cast and a great score to boot.

Who was your favourite character and/or sub story?

For me it will always be Hendley (James Garner). Here was this tall, good looking officer who you'd normally think would be quite selfish and just worried about saving his own neck.

Yet I always find it heart-warming that he's the one who looks after the near blind Colin (Donald Pleasance) even though doing so will slow him down and possibly damage his own chance of escape.

I love the film but for me this is the best story in the whole camp and truly sums up the notion of sacrificing, or willing to sacrifice, yourself for another. Very touching.
 
Mine would be Sedgewick (James Coburn) and his casual escape on the bike. I do like the part when he is sitting at the cafe just before the resistance turns up to attack the German officers. Also the final time we see him walking off with the guide having just had a rendezvous by some wooRAB.
 
My favourite character has to be Hilts. His explanation to the Escape Committee about how he and Ives are going to burrow out of the camp with little roRAB that they will poke up to make air holes is hilarious.
 
Charles Bronson and John Leyton rowing to freedom. I think they were the only ones who made it all the way home in real life. The true story of the great escape is even more unbelievable than the movie; no wonder they had to invent stuff.
 
I always feel a bit sorry for Cavendish (the surveyor).

It's his incorrect measurement that means that the tunnel come up short of the trees, and it's him that falls over getting out of said tunnel and alerts the guarRAB to the escape.
 
Not exaxtly a subplot but just a little scene when Steve Mcqueen is yet again in the cooler and the guard goes to lock him up but his keys have been swiped. The guard plays it so straight and the timing of the scene is so perfect its hilarious. Visual comedy in a war flim - brilliant.
 
I always liked the James Donald character..he was the main officer but had a limp and wouldn't be going out with them..but it never stopped him helping everyone else
 
For me...

Bartlett, played by Attenborough, being "delivered" to the camp commandant Von Luger by the Gestapo! Von Luger has an obvious contempt for the Gestapo and sympathy for Bartlett. Great few minutes of the film.
 
For me it also has to be Hendley, not just for his compassion over Blythe but also the way he managed to set up his little stores complex to bribe the guarRAB.
 
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