YMMV / Stalag 17

• Angst? What Angst?: Quite funny for a POW film. The film's success actually led directly to the creation of Hogan's Heroes.
  • Slightly Truth in Television, as POWs really will try anything — including pulling pranks — to keep morale up.
  • On a more individual level, Sgt. Bagradian adjusts rather quickly to the lifestyle within the camp, not showing any frustration with the sudden change in his circumstances and making friends quite quickly with his barracksmates.
• Award Snub: The film was up for three Academy Awards, with William Holden winning Best Actor, but it wasn't nominated for Best Picture or Adapted Screenplay.
• Awesome Music: "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" is performed pretty nicely. It gets added points for the chilling Mood Whiplash of the scene as the mole's identity is revealed to the audience while the other prisoners merrily sing a patriotic song in the background and even invite him to join in.
• Consolation Award: William Holden's Best Actor Academy Award for this film might be seen as compensation for his failure to earn one for his performance in Sunset Boulevard three years earlier. His wife even admitted to believing this on their way home from the ceremony.
• Genius Bonus: When Sefton is telling Price that he never played chess and starts trying to remember how the pieces move, he sets up a perfect Fool's Mate. He later outmaneuvers Price into "losing the game" and outing himself as the spy.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • When Schulz forces Sefton out of the barracks for the "air raid," he asks him, "Do you want to be killed?!" Sefton dry responds, "Not particularly..." and pretends to leave, but actually hides in another part of the barracks where he can spy on the conversation between Schultz and Price. One later surmises that this is the point where Sefton figured the whole thing out, and knew the mole was delivering more information to The Commandant (which Sefton would be blamed for) and Sefton would probably be killed this time. He knew he needed to act, and SOON, to save his own life.
  • Peter Graves plays a character who is The Mole for the Germans and the Big Bad, before becoming more well known as the heroic Jim Phelps in Mission: Impossible. Then comes Mission: Impossible (1996), where it is revealed Phelps (played by Jon Voight) is The Mole and the Big Bad too, which was something Graves disapproved for how his original character was depicted on film.
  • In addition, Graves' first season on Mission: Impossible featured an episode titled Trial By Fury, which was basically a Whole-Plot Reference of Stalag 17 transplanted to a South American prison camp.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During Mail Call, Marco repeatedly calls out for a prisoner by the name of McCain; during the 2008 Presidential elections, Republican candidate John McCain sure did like reminding the American people that he was a prisoner of war.
  • There's also Sefton proclaiming that if he escapes, he'll be sent to the Pacific and wind up in a Japanese POW camp. Four years later William Holden did exactly that.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • That's Jim Phelps!
    • Sure you don't mean Captain Oveur?
  • Dunbar is Liz Taylor's husband from Father of the Bride (1950).
  • Animal is Charlie Leach, Sam's would-be blackmailer from Bewitched.
  • Harry Shapiro is Eric Von Zipper from the Beach Party movies.
  • Hoffy the barracks chief is Leonard from Community.
  • Marco the Mailman is Jack's cooking-school dean from Three's Company.
  • Schulz is Groucho's foil from A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races.
    • He's also Betty and Judy's landlord at the beginning of White Christmas.
  • That guy who sings "I Love You" during the barracks Christmas party? He's an uncredited Ross Bagdasarian Sr., who later recorded as "David Seville" and created Alvin and the Chipmunks.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Sefton's barracks mates criticize him for his self-interested, mercenary behavior... and then brutalize him and decide he's a German informant based on zero concrete evidence. (And of course they're completely wrong about him.) They proceed to then ostracize him and physically threaten Cookie just for being the guy's friend.
• The Woobie: Joey. So much so that everyone in the barracks including the cynical Sefton do everything they can to take care of him.

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