Stalag 17 is a German World War II prison camp where hundreds of sergeants in the United States army are penned and fed while the war in Europe rages. The crafty group in one of the barracks attempts an elaborate escape, but when the two P.O.W.s get out of their carefully dug tunnel they are met by waiting Nazis with machine guns. Slowly, the survivors realize that the Germans are always one step ahead of all their plans for escape and it dawns on them that one of their own must be a spy. The most logical choice is Holden’s Sefton, a cynical and crafty conniver, who hoards goods and trades them to the Nazi guards for trips to the Russian women delousing camp. Sefton himself would admit he’s a slimy character, but is he a spy? And if it is not him, who the hell is it?

STALAG 17 functions on a whole bunch of levels, thanks to the peppy, effortless direction of director Billy Wilder. The spy mystery is not only competent and impossible to predict, it is logical and satisfying even after a person you will never suspect is revealed as the German spy. The whole affair is infused with Wilder’s gallows pole humor, so much so that the film could find a home as conformably in the “Comedy” section of a video store as in the “War” or “Classics” section. In the best scenes, the humor and horror of war mesh seamlessly, like in the mail call scene where the soldiers each eagerly anticipate a letter from home. Suave “Sugar Lips” Shapiro (Harvey Lembeck) gets an endless stream of mail, while his scruffy pal Animal (Robert Strauss) doesn’t even get a postcard. Letter after letter, the delivery boy shouts “Shapiro! Shapiro!” until in the middle of the gag he comes across one for one of the men who died in the failed escape attempt. The men turn silent, the letter is slowly stuffed into a pocket and the gag resumes with six more “Shapiro!” letters.

Wilder (whose incredible directing resume also included DOUBLE INDEMNITY, SUNSET BOULEVARD, SOME LIKE IT HOT, and my own personal favorite, THE FORTUNE COOKIE) knew that often the funniest moments are those that are plucked out of the abyss of near-certain tragedy, and what better place for such moments than at a Nazi prison camp? Here, a guard can notice a stray cord running through the yard (which the Americans are using as part of an antenna for their secret radio), and be drawn into a game of volleyball with his captives, eventually becoming so enraptured with the game that he can make one of the prisoners hold his gun so he can play. He also tends to reward the viewer’s careful attention, like in the scene where the Nazi Colonel in charge of the camp interrogates a suspected American saboteur. He paces back and forth in his socks, then as he dials Berlin to inform them of his discovery, has an assistant help him into his obscenely shiny black boots. As soon as he has performed the requisite heel clicks that must accompany his “YAVOL!”s the boots are immediately removed and the interrogation continues.

The tone is anchored and maintained by Holden, whose early cool and carefree air is replaced later by bitter, quiet menace as he channels the contempt he felt for this role into a performance that calls on him to hate his skeptical countrymen almost as much as his captors. He deserves that Oscar because we hate him and empathize with him and root for him with equal intensity. Wilder favored heroes who were closer to shades of gray - and his best films were always the ones filmed in black and white - than any simplistic division of good or evil. STALAG 17 is such a rewarding movie; funny, brutal, suspenseful as hell. I’ve seen a lot of Billy Wilder films in the last year. Then again, I’ve seen a lot of movies by a lot of directors this year. The ones that compel me to write about them for you are the ones that whisper at me in a quiet sexy voice: “People need to see this.”

People need to see STALAG 17.