Funny / The Great Escape

• The bit near the begining when Danny and Sedgwick try to escape with a group of Russian prisoners. They don't make it out, but they do know a little Russian!
  Sedgwick: Danny, do you speak Russian?
  Danny: A little, but only one sentence.
  Sedgwick: Well, let me have it, mate.
  Danny: Ya vas lyublyu.
  Sedgwick: Ya ya vas...
  Danny: Lyublyu.
  Sedgwick: Lyubliu? Ya vas lyubliu. Ya vas lyublyu. What's it mean?
  Danny: I love you.
  Sedgwick: Love you!? What bloody good is that!?! ^note The Russians were the only nation in WWII to have female soldiers serving on the front lines, so Danny likely learned it to seduce any lady Soviet POWs he encountered in the camps
  Danny: I don't know, I wasn't going to use it myself.
  • The way they are ushered out is as funny as hell.
    Strackwitz (to Sedgwick): Out. [beat] Out!
    Danny: Nyet, nyet! Tovarisch! (No, no! Comrade!)
    Strackitz: Oh, your friend, eh?
    Danny: Uh, tovarisch. (Comrade.)
    Strackwitz: And who vouches for you, Lieutenant Willenski? Get out, Sedgwick!
  • The whole thing's even funnier in hindsight because Danny and Sedgwick do successfully escape, making their half-assed attempt here that much more entertaining.
• Besides Danny and Sedgwick above, Ives and two other prisoners try to escape by jumping onto trucks carrying cut wood and hiding themselves in the cargo. Strackwitz is having none of it however and starts randomly stabbing at the wood with a pitchfork till Ives comes out. He is then about to check the other trucks when Ives whistles and the others come out themselves. Strackwitz then comes out with this gem:
  I will not take action against you now. This is the first day, and there has been much stupidity and carelessness (looking over at his men) ... on both sides!
  • The funniest part is that in this whole scene, Strackwitz looks extremely bored. He has clearly seen these exact escape attempts many times already and can spot them a mile away.
• The meeting between SBO Ramsey and the Kommandant, Von Luger. Von Luger reels off a list of the escape attempts of the prisoners getting more and more annoyed as he goes on, sounding very much like an unhappy teacher or parent complaining about their wards. Meanwhile, Ramsey quietly listens and grins to himself.
• Hilts and Archibald Ives...The Mole.
  Hilts: What do they call a mole in Scotland?
  Ives: A mole.
• Hilts explaining to Big X how he and Ives are going to attempt to escape by digging a tunnel out of the camp like a mole. Cut to them re-captured and brought back to the cooler after being covered head to toe in dirt. Causes Mood Whiplash when Ives breaks down alone in his cell. Originally director John Sturges was going to show the actual escape but the sight of Steve McQueen and Angus Lennie got such a big laugh in the projection room so Sturges decided not to bother filming it.
• The scene where Strackwitz looks through his prisoner profiles to find the one on Ives.
  Strackwitz: Ives... Ives... Oh, yes. Archibald Ives. Scot. The photograph doesn't do justice.
  Ives: (gives the man an indignant look) I'd like to see one of you under similar circumstances.
• Hilts' reaction when Big X and the S.B.O. tell him about their escape plan.
  "You're crazy! You oughta be locked up! You, too."
  • All three men are in a German prisoner-of-war camp. They're already "locked up".
• After Hilts finishes taking the boards out of the beds, he starts to head out with the stack, only for Cavendish (who had been leading "choir practice" as a distraction) to pass him on the way in.
  Cavendish: Five gold rings, four calling birds... bloody singing, never worked so hard in all my life. Hiya, Hilts!
  Hilts: Say, Cavendish...
  Cavendish: (ignoring him) four calling birds, three french hens, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear — alley-oop! (jumps on to the top bunk and falls through all three)
  Hilts: (sees that Cavendish has fallen through bed) ...Never mind.
  • The look on poor Cavendish's face!
• The tasting of the moonshine.
  Hendley: (tasting the moonshine with a cautious finger, then speaks in a hoarse tone) Wow!
  Hilts: (tasting the moonshine with a cautious finger, then speaks in a hoarse tone) Wow!
  Goff: (tasting the moonshine with his whole hand, then weakly says with a cough) Wo! Wow!
  • After a Time Skip to when the moonshine is bottled, all three men try a small mug of the finished product, and the reactions are exactly the same but Goff goes into a full coughing fit.
• Sedgwick's dogged determination to keep his steamer trunk.
  Sorren: What the hell have you got in there, a piano?
  Sedgwick: Oh, that's very funny, mate.
  Sorren: Sedgewick, you won't get this thing through.
  Sedgwick: (pulling the trunk into the tunnel anyway) I'll cope!
  • And:
  Goff: Was that Sedgewick with his steamer trunk?
  Cavendish: Who else?
  Goff: I wish he was back in Australia with his kangaroos.
  • If you're a fan of British science fiction, you'll notice that Sorren happens to be Ian Chesterton.
• Just as the digging crew manages to hide everything from the approaching guards, Danny and Sedgwick have to come up with reasons for their presence. Danny starts taking a shower. As for Sedgwick?
  Sedgwick: I'm watching him. I'm a lifeguard.
• The 4th of July party.
  Ramsey: Up the rebels!
  Goff: Down the British!
  • The exchange between Bartlett and Mac while trying the moonshine (Ramsey is there, but doesn't say anything), a bit of a joke about Mac being Scottish.
  Bartlett: In the three years, seven months and approximately two weeks that I've been in the bag, that's the most extraordinary stuff I've ever tasted. It's shattering! (both he and Ramsey are clearly overwhelmed by the stuff)
  Mac: I think it's rather good! (seems almost unaffected).
  • Later in the sequence, Hendley asks Colin if he knows what it is. Colin's reply?
  Colin: ...it isn't Napoleon brandy.
  • It's mentioned early on that Hilts, Hendley, and Goff are the only Americans in a camp filled with mostly either British or Commonwealth airmen. Them staging a celebration for American Independence Day is so audacious that even the Germans seem to appreciate it a little bit.
  • The one fellow responding to "Down the British!" with "Up the colonies!" carries the same good-natured, tongue-in-cheek ire as someone posting "Happy Treason Day, you ungrateful colonists!" on a forum today.
• The end when Hilts got placed in the cooler for the umpteenth time. While the ending was mostly bittersweet, it seems the guards are used to him so much that one actually waits till he hears the sound of Hilts bouncing the baseball off the cooler walls, before walking away.
  • Also the start of that running gag where the soldier ushers Hilts in and shuts the door, then wordlessly reopens it and glares at Hilts because he stole the keys on the way past - all synced up to the music.
• Near the end, when the still escaped Sedgwick was at a French cafe, members of the Resistance have to get him away from some German soldiers. It takes him a second to realize why the people who called him over to the bar were suddenly hiding under the bar, and his reaction to the aftermath taken in classic James Coburn style.
  • Shortly thereafter, his reaction to realizing the cafe owners speak English (he'd been trying to stumble through an explanation in broken French): "Oh, bloody good!"
  • How does the waiter get Sedgwick behind the bar? Telling him there is a telephone call for him.
  Sedgwick: [shocked and confused] Telephone for moi?
• A scene that was in the book, though not in the movie. At one point, a German officer visits the camp and heads for the camp head's office. His driver wants guards to keep the POWs away, but the officer says "Oh, let them get a look at some good German engineering!". The poor driver is then subjected to the POWs practically crawling all over the car, constantly distracting him, and removing almost everything that wasn't attached to the car. The tone of the scene gives you the feeling that if you had given them long enough, the prisoners would have eventually stolen the entire car piece by piece.
• The first conversation between Hilts and von Luger perfectly sets the tone for pretty much the whole film.
  von Luger: Ten days isolation, Hilts.
  Hilts: [shows his insignia] Captain Hilts.
  von Luger: Twenty days.
  Hilts: … right.
  • Before the previous exchange, we have a moment with von Luger, Strackwitz and Ives:
  von Luger (to Hilts): I have had the pleasure of knowing quite a number of British officers in this war, and I flatter myself that we understand one another.
  [Ives off to the side blows a loud raspberry at von Luger. Strackwitz and von Luger glare at Ives who smiles sweetly at them.]

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