Escape To Victory Ott
Elisabetta Buendia
Escape to Victory (or simply Victory) is a 1981 sports war film[3] directed by John Huston and starring Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, Max von Sydow and Pel. The film is about Allied prisoners of war who are interned in a German prison camp during the Second World War who play an exhibition match of football against a German team.
A team of Allied POWs, coached and led by English Captain John Colby, a professional footballer for West Ham United before the war, agree to an exhibition match against a German team, only to find themselves involved in a German propaganda stunt.
Colby is the captain and essentially the manager of the team and chooses his squad of players. The American POW, Robert Hatch, serving with the Canadian Army, nags Colby to let him on the team as the team's trainer, as Hatch wants to facilitate his own upcoming escape attempt.
Colby's superior officers pressure him to use the match as an opportunity for an escape, but Colby declines, fearing that such an attempt will only result in getting his players killed. Hatch plans his unrelated escape attempt. Colby's superiors agree to help him if he will agree to journey to Paris, to get the French Resistance to help in the escape of the football team.
Hatch finds that the Resistance think the idea too risky, but then learn the match will be at Colombes Stadium. The escape will be via a tunnel from the Parisian sewer system to the players' changing room showers. But Hatch must be the courier of the plan to the POW camp British officers by letting himself be recaptured.
Recaptured, Hatch is placed in solitary confinement, unable to tell the POWs of the French Resistant's plan. Colby makes contact with Hatch by insisting Hatch is the replacement goalkeeper. tells the Germans that he needs Hatch on the team because Hatch is the backup goalkeeper. The Germans want proof of an injured goalkeeper; Hatch breaks the goalkeeper's arm.
After Hatch preserves the draw, the crowd storms the field and swarms the players. Some of the spectators help the Allied players disguise themselves in the chaos so that they can escape, and they all burst through the gates to freedom.
Filmed in Hungary,[7] the film is based on the 1962 Hungarian film drama Kt flidő a pokolban ("Two half-times in Hell"), which was directed by Zoltn Fbri and won the critics' award at the 1962 Boston Cinema Festival.[8]
The film was inspired by the now discredited story of the so-called Death Match when FC Dynamo Kyiv defeated German soldiers while Ukraine was occupied by German troops in World War II. According to myth, as a result of their victory, the Ukrainians were all shot. The true story is considerably more complex, as the team played a series of matches against German teams, emerging victorious in all of them, before any of them were sent to prison camps by the Gestapo. Four players were documented as being killed by the Germans but long after the dates of the matches they had won.[9]
Escape to Victory featured a great many professional footballers as both the POW team and the German team. Many of the footballers came from the Ipswich Town squad, who were at the time one of the most successful teams in Europe.[10] Despite not appearing on screen, English World Cup-winning goalkeeper Gordon Banks and Alan Thatcher were closely involved in the film, working with Sylvester Stallone on his goalkeeping scenes. Sports Illustrated magazine said "the game is marvelously photographed by Gerry Fisher, under second unit director Robert Riger."[11]
Escape to Victory was filmed in and around Budapest, Hungary, portraying Paris and German-occupied France. The climatic football match of the Allies vs the German Wehrmacht team was filmed at the now demolished MTK Stadium in the 8th district of Budapest, standing in for Colombes Stadium in Paris. MTK Stadium was chosen because it was the largest stadium without floodlights (which were largely unknown in the 1940s) the producers could find and was also structurally similar to Continental stadiums that were around during World War II. [12][13][14]
The POW camp scenes were filmed in a field in Ft, approximately 13 kilometers northeast from Budapest, situated behind the Mafilm Studios. The set with the POW barracks and soccer field took two months to construct. Other Budapest locations in the film included Keleti Railway Station, the historic Metro Line 1, and soundstages at Mafilm's main studio complex in the 14th district.[15]
American composer Bill Conti wrote the score, which borrows heavily from the first and last movements of Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7, the Leningrad Symphony, particularly the march theme of the first movement, which is quoted almost verbatim. (Conti would later employ a similar practice when repurposing much of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto for the film The Right Stuff.) Though Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 was purportedly meant to represent the resistance to repressive Nazism when it debuted during World War II, he privately commented that it was a musical criticism of all tyranny and oppression, including in his native Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote that the movie "...wavers between insulting and uproariously stupid."[17] Film historian Leonard Maltin seemed to agree: "...Only the rightly-celebrated soccer scenes redeem this silly bore."[18]
In June 2014, it was announced that Doug Liman was in talks to direct a remake also titled Victory, with Gavin O'Connor writing the script, and Gianni Nunnari, Bernie Goldman, and Jon Berg will produce for Warner Bros..[21] In March 2019, it was announced that Jaume Collet-Serra will direct a remake also titled Victory. A draft was written by Gavin O'Connor and Anthony Tambakis in 2017, with Tambakis doing a rewrite, and Gianni Nunnari and Bernie Goldman are still attached to produce the remake.[22]
The whole audio recording of the second half of the match played in the film has been broadcast from a radio inside the Italian Pavilion of the 59 Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte La Biennale di Venezia, made by Gian Maria Tosatti and curated by Eugenio Viola.[citation needed]
Can a sport ever overtake the global love that soccer has? Michael Jordan and the American marketing machine brought basketball to the world. The dribbling in basketball has a beauty that rivals the dribbling of soccer. Basketball also has the quickness that a modern media-consuming audience, myself included, thirsts for. But, soccer has simplicity. Because the scores are so low, soccer has suspense. Further, soccer has the rivalry of two teams, yet when the scorer approaches the net, it is a one-on-one competition between the shooter and the goalie.
Today we celebrate our athletes in the way we used to celebrate war heroes, with giant parades. I was by accident caught downtown in the 2016 celebration of the Chicago Cubs world series victory. I was meeting a friend for breakfast, we scheduled the meeting a week or two prior. I get on the train that morning, and everyone was dressed in blue. The last time I saw so many people crowding together, where the crowd was larger than what my eyes could register, I was in Mecca for the pilgrimage, though without all the alcohol. I suppose that is a fitting analogy, because sports can be religion for many, and religion can be sport for many.
We see contrast in this film, not between sport and religion, but between patriotism and nationalism. In championships, we root for our own team and share in their victory or loss. In war, regimes fill their populaces with nationalist pride (rather, rage), so as to justify the bloodshed of villains.
Omer M. Mozaffar teaches at Loyola University Chicago, where he is the Muslim Chaplain, teaching courses in Theology and Literature. He has given thousands of talks on Islam since 9/11. He is also a Hollywood Technical Consultant for productions on matters related to Islam, Arabs, South Asians.
Colby is courageous and pragmatic. He strives to make both his German opposition and British superiors treat everyone with fairness and respect. Hatch is brave but occasionally dishonest. However, when he lies it is to help the Allies' war effort. Many of the soccer players are highly skilled and work hard in training.
British, German, and American characters among the main cast. German, English, and French spoken. Class divides evident between the British soldiers and their ranks. Some ethnic diversity among the supporting cast. But the cast is predominantly male and White, as are the director and the writers. Discussion of Eastern European prisoners' status as stateless during WWII.
Language used includes "bloody," "bulls--t," "up yours," "bastards," "bleeding," and "hell." "Christ" used as an exclamation. Germans referred to as "Gerry." The rude British "V" sign hand gesture is also used.
Parents need to know that Victory -- also known as Escape to Victory -- is a sporting drama set during World War II with strong messaging around teamwork, perseverance, and courage. It's loosely based on real events, and tells the story of a group of Allied prisoners of war -- led by Michael Caine's Captain John Colby -- who use a soccer match against their German captors as an opportunity to escape. Released in 1981, the film also stars Sylvester Stallone and has cameo roles for real-life soccer stars Bobby Moore, Pele, and others, who get a chance to show off their skills. Violence is occasional and not graphic, but one failed prison attempt results in a soldier being shot to death. Other characters are hurt off-screen, with a bloody broken nose the most graphic of their injuries. Nudity is brief and non-sexual, when prisoners shower together in their camp or exercise shirtless in the yard. Language is more frequent, with "bulls--t," "bastards," and "bloody" the most often used curse words. Smoking and drinking are occasional, both in moderation, the latter with food in bars and restaurants. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
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