performance: down in the trenches

How do you make a film about prisoners of war funny and stylish? Enter the genius of Billy Wilder. The master of the discombobulated Hollywood genre picture, Wilder has a way of inflecting the many genres he covered with a sly sense of humor. It's never overt, but it's always there. I was surprised to find how acerbic and delicate the humor was in his 1953 prisoner of war film, "Stalag 17." Amidst the muddy, cold camp of German World War II prison barracks, the suspicion of a mole consumes a group of American airmen who love cigarettes, Betty Grable, and the idea of escaping. Comedic moments such as when the airmen don their best Hitler mustache or a dazed and sexually confused Christmas Eve dance party amusingly, but not distractingly cut through the tension of what's really at stake. William Holden stars as the number one suspect, but everything is not what it seems. Holden has a knack at playing the guy's guy who isn't quite as glamorous as Cary Grant, as everyman as Gary Cooper, or as hard boiled like Robert Mitchum, but his masculinity is as thick as the wool peacoats the SS guards wear and as badass as the leather shearling jackets the airmen wear. The style in the movie is impeccable from start to finish. Chinos tucked into boots, epaulette details on jackets and coats, henley's that look worn in, and button downs that are functional and utilitarian. Sound familiar? One could say it's very on trend or it was a prescient form of dressing for these times when a man needs to feel secure, protected, and ready to take on the evils of the world. Yes, even if they're Otto Preminger.