The first full-length study of the iconic 1960s film The Great
Escape and its place in Hollywood and American history.
Escaped POW Virgil Hilts (Steve McQueen) on a stolen motorcycle jumps an
imposing barbed wire fence--caught on film, the act and its aftermath
have become an unforgettable symbol of triumph as well as defeat for
1960s America. Combining production and reception history with close
reading, Dreams of Flight offers the first full-length study of The
Great Escape, the classic film based on a true story of Allied
prisoners who hatched an audacious plan to divert and thwart the
Wehrmacht and escape into the nearby countryside.
Through breezy prose and pithy analysis, Dana Polan centers The Great
Escape within American cultural and intellectual history, drawing a
vivid picture of the country in the 1960s. We see a nation grappling
with its own military history, a society undergoing significant shifts
in its culture and identity, and a film industry in transition from Old
Hollywood's big-budget runaway studio films to the slow interior cinema
of New Hollywood. Dreams of Flight combines this context with fan
anecdotes and a close study of filmic style to bring readers into the
film and trace its wide-reaching influence. Polan examines the
production history, including prior adaptations in radio and television
of celebrated author Paul Brickhill's original nonfiction book about the
escape, and he compares the cinematic fiction to the real events of the
escape in 1944. Dreams of Flight also traces the afterlife of The
Great Escape in the many subsequent movies, TV commercials, and
cartoons that reference it, whether reverentially or with humor.
