The Birdmen (1973)

Good movie but grossly overrated

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Right from the git-go I just couldn't accept Richard Basehart as the German Commanding Oficer of the Colditz Castle prison. Sometimes he speaks English, sometimes he speaks German, which is distracting, and Basehart played more like a camp counselor that a prison warden. I think Klaus Kinski would have been a much better choice for Basehart's part, but then this is only a TV movie, so I guess that is just wishful thinking on my part. Doug McClure is also rather bland, actually normal for him, in his role as the man responsible for getting a valuable scientist out of Germany. In reality, this is nothing more than a small television film, that tries to be much more than it really is. - MERK

This TV film has gone by different titles, among them: "The Birdmen," "Escape of the Birdmen, and "Colditz: Escape of the Birdmen." I have the latter. Nowhere does the name, Colditz Castle, appear in the movie. The film centers around a fictional German camp called Bechstadt or something like that. But, the script refers to it as the German POW camp for Allied officer escapees; so, obviously, it would be Colditz – the only such camp. This film seems to be a mix of two or more wartime movies I've seen. It borrows themes and sub-plots here and there and puts them together in this one movie of action and escape. But it has too many far-fetched situations to be believable. It has a Norwegian scientist posing as a Norwegian pilot who has been on the lamb for a year trying to get over to the Allies. But, the movie takes place in 1943, and the Germans occupied Norway in April 1940. So what was the scientist doing and where was he the first two years of German occupation? Next we have an American major in the OSS (military secret service) who intentionally gets captured so he can help the Norwegian escape. But, how did the two happen to hook up in a northern German POW camp? In the opening scene, a German patrol boat intercepts a radio message to London. The message reads, "Chess board in position," and that is what accounts for the setup for this film. Then we see the hero, American Major Harry Cook (played just fairly by Doug McClure) working in the supply room of a German POW camp near the Baltic Sea. How and where did he get captured? The Norwegian scientist-pilot, Halden Brevik, is a brand new arrival at that camp drawing his supplies. When and where did he get captured? How did the Allies know in advance of Brevik's capture? How could they put one of their own in the very POW camp Brevik would go to – and ahead of him? How did the two know the password to identify each other?Next we see a diversion back in London. Plans are taking shape for a bombing raid. One scene has a phony voice-over of a briefing with an officer pointing to a target on a blackboard. The production quality is terrible. Then, during an Allied bombing raid, Cook and Brevik escape the POW camp together. Soon they are re-captured. Since they are escapees, they are now sent to the special maximum security prison for such Allied officers. That would be Colditz Castle, but they call it Bechstadt here.In reality, Colditz had British, French, Belgian, Dutch and Polish POWs, with a smattering of others. Just a few Americans were sent there near the end of the war. But, most of the main characters in this film are Americans. The ranking POW officer is one – Col. Morgan Crawford, played very poorly by Chuck Connors. Indeed, most of the real British officers from Colditz are made into or replaced by Americans. The film has a number of well-known actors for the period, but no one gives a very good performance. Another big discrepancy is a number of prisoners killed, and a graveyard within the castle. Only one prisoner was killed trying to escape from Colditz during its six years as a prison. One recurring thing in this film has no basis in history. But, I suppose the filmmakers saw in this some great pull with the American TV audience. We see and hear men singing a 19th Century German folk song, "Die Gedanken sind frei." Crawford tells Cook that it's a song about freedom of thought that Jewish prisoners sing in the concentration camps. This is 1943, and the Allied forces knew about the existence of concentration camps but very little more. How in the world would Allied pilots who have been imprisoned since 1940 to 1943 know anything about a song that Jews were singing in concentration camps? I've never read or heard anything like this. Today this seems to be just a piece of gratuitous fiction thrown into the script for this movie. It's a good example of why we shouldn't trust movies for our knowledge of history. The castle in this film is located near the Swiss border. In a couple of scenes, Commandant Schiller (played fairly well by Richard Basehart), admires the view of the Swiss Alps "just 10 miles away." But we don't see it ourselves. In reality, Colditz Castle is located about 25 miles SE of Leipzig in eastern Germany. That's more than 300 miles from the Swiss Alps. It is about 35 miles from the Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) border, and about 45 miles from Poland.At the very end of this movie, Crawford and Brevik escape together in a glider that the prisoners launched from a roof of the castle. The Colditz prisoners actually had built and concealed a glider, with plans to launch it from the roof for an escape in the direction of Poland. But, by that time, the U.S. Army captured the town and liberated the Colditz prisoners in April 1945. This movie has some good early action and bombing scenes. But, I can't rate it higher than five stars. The acting is just fair at best; the production qualities are very poor, and the setup is just too far- fetched. Again, the script and plot imply a location and historical events, but the film hardly resembles the real place and events. For a very good film about the famous Colditz Castle POW camp, see the 1955 British movie, "The Colditz Story." It's based on a book by Patrick Reid, one of the first escapees to get back home to England.

The song that the prisoners sang was "Die Gedanken sind frei" Which roughly translates to My thoughts are free. It told the Germans that although you have my body in prison, you will never imprison have my spirit. This movie is one of my all time favorites. As a kid growing up, I loved movies and songs that showed American ingenuity. The premise of building a glider to escape from prison fascinated me. You can see the German words to the song at the following website: http://www.online.ee/~pikka/voorlaul.html#50 If you want to know what the words mean, copy and paste the test to Google's translation program.

I think this movie is one of the best made for the period and about the war. The determination of the POW's to escape and the importance of one man to the world, and the US government is shown in the drama. The actors include Chuck Connors, and others fit like a glove into their roles.