CIFF Student Classic Film: “The Great Escape” (1963)

On Sunday April 27 at 1 pm, the 2025 “War That Shaped Our World” CIFF Student Classic Film Series continues with director John Sturges’ 1963 classic, The Great Escape. Featuring an all-star ensemble cast and a memorably iconic score by Elmer Bernstein, The Great Escape is notable as actor Steve McQueen’s breakout lead role as “cooler king,” Captain Virgil Hilts. It is no coincidence that McQueen later went on to become known by movie insiders as “the King of Cool.”

Director John Sturges’ war thriller is today recognized as a masterpiece of the POW and action genres. It is based on a 1950 book of the same name by Australian Paul Brickhill, who was part of the March 1944 mass escape from the Nazi POW compound, Stalag Luft III. While the film has its critics as a clichéd chronicle of the escape, it stands as a testament to the daring and ingenuity of British and Allied aviators and aircrew who labored for almost a year to devise and execute an audacious plan to flee captivity and tie up Nazi troops trying to track them down. It stands today as a memorial to the 50 POWs executed in the aftermath of the breakout. As Charles Clarke, an RAF Officer shot down and interned at Stalag Luft III succinctly put it, “Without the film, who would remember what a magnificent achievement it was?”

The opening of the film informs the audience, “This is a true story. Although the characters are composites of real men, and time and place have been compressed, every detail of the escape is the way it really happened.” Movie lovers won’t want to miss this opportunity to screen this most enduring of WWII themed action classics.

The screening is FREE and open to the public.

The complete 2025 Student Classic schedule and reservations are available on the CIFF website under the “Year-Round” dropdown tab.