Synopsis
During the First World War, a number of captured British officers attempt to escape a prisoner-of-war camp.
Who Goes Next?
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Theatrical
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UK
Releases by Country
UK
01 Mar 1938
- Theatrical
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An interesting film from Maurice Elvey set in a POW camp in the Great War. A group of prisoners are planning to break out, and while they are shown as considerate and calm and full of bonhomie, the Germans are almost figures of fun presented as incompetent, humourless and almost comic.
Barry K Barnes has the leading role - he was set for stardom but sadly his career was curtailed after contracting illness in service in the Second World War - and he's adequate. Jack Hawkins is the chap we see on the home front, romancing Sophie Stewart (who had been Lady Blakeney to Barnes's Pimpernel the year before).
Who Goes Next, made the year before hostilities began in the…
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A group of British soldiers attempt to dig their way out of a German Prisoner of War camp during the First World War. Meanwhile back at home the wife of the Senior Officer, who he married only days before being shipped out, has fallen for another man.
Although the film opens in the camp it soon switches back to London to show us a rather persistent soldier trying to win the heart of the woman who we already know is married. The fact that she soon starts to succumb to his charms implies that the married couple had not known each other that long before the husband was sent to France.
The film is not unique is showing us life…
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Who knew that the Brits were making POW escape stories before the Second World War? Who Goes Next?, set in 1916, contains all of the ingredients that would become generic staples in British (and American) cinema from the late 40s to the late 60s - plucky officer class types standing up to the Bosch; cunning ruses to conceal tunnel digging; a prisoner losing his marbles from the stress of it all; a bald, monocled, autocratic German commandant in the Erich von Stroheim/Otto Preminger mould. We don't have anybody zooming across fields on a motorbike but that was probably only budgetary.
The treatment is entertaining but rather staid, and Maurice Elvey's direction fails to squeeze out the tension inherent in the…
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I think maybe Maurice Elvey could be accused here of trying to merge too many storylines into what could have been quite an efficient little great escape caper. Set during the Great War, we find "Hamilton" (an adequate Barry K. Barnes) swapping the delights of life in the sodden and perilous trenches for one in a POW camp where, together with loads of his compatriots, they focus on trying to escape. They find loads of innovative ways of not just digging a tunnel but of covering their tracks whilst under the slightly over-egged supervision of Meinhart Maur's camp commandant. Meantime, we discover that his beloved wife "Sarah" (Sophie Stewart) had an assignation at home with the caddish "Beck" (a wooden…
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A solid enough WW1 POW story which manages, with no small contrivance, to add a little marital infidelity to the mix. A young Jack Hawkins plays the kind of officer role with which he would soon become familiar, while Barry K. Barnes gives a decent account of himself as the officer who discovers his wife at home is playing away. Only Meinhart Maur’s buffoonish portrayal of the cruel camp commandant strikes a bum note.
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Inspired by the real-life story of the escape of 29 officers through a tunnel from a Prisoner-Of-War camp in Germany in July 1918, this British drama directed by Maurice Elvey concerns a number of captured British officers who attempt to escape a prisoner-of-war camp in.
All of the cast give good performances in their respective roles, most notably: Barry K. Barnes as Maj. Hamilton, Sophie Stewart as Sarah Hamilton; Jack Hawkins as Captain Beck; Charles Eaton as Captain Royde and Andrew Osborn as F/O Stevens.
The direction from Elvey is good because he allows the facial expressions to be seen to a good effect throughout, while the script is written to a decent standard by J.W. Drawbell, David Evans and…