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Quotes

Sedgwick: Danny, do you speak Russian?

Danny: A little, but only one sentence.

Sedgwick: Well, let me have it, mate.

Danny: Ia vas liubliu.

Sedgwick: Ia vas...

Danny: Liubliu.

Sedgwick: Liubliu? Ia vas liubliu. Ia vas liubliu. What's it mean?

Danny: I love you.

Sedgwick: I love you? What bloody good is that?

Danny: I don't know. I wasn't going to use it myself.

See more...

Mistakes

When the Australian POW is stealing a bicycle, he wire cuts a padlock. As he gets on the bike in the next shot, the padlock has completely vanished. See more...

Trivia

In the scene following Hilts' theft of a German motorcyle, he rolls into a German town, where he is stopped by a police officer; the officer says something to Hilts, who then kicks him away and rides off. He was asked for identification papers he didn't have. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

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The Great Escape (1963) - 11 corrections

Directed by John Sturges, starring Charles Bronson, David McCallum, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Steve McQueen (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, History, Thriller, War

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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In the scene where the Americans are making moonshine, they are simultaneously mashing potatoes and distilling the moonshine, but there's no sign of any fermentation going on, so it's not clear how the alcohol is created. [It's mentioned earlier that they've been collecting the potatoes and doing something secret in that shed for days, so the batch that's distilling currently has had time to ferment and the potatoes that are still mashing are likely preparing for another batch later.]
Edit Corrected by Captain Defenestrator
When Ramsay, Bartlett, Cavendish and Mac are discussing the distances 'Tom' and 'Harry' have been dug, Cavendish is smoking a pipe. Although he has the right end in his mouth, the part with the tobacco in it is facing east instead of north. It stays like this for about 3 seconds before he realises and corrects it. [The fact that the pipe bowl is turned to the side for a couple of seconds is certainly not a 'movie mistake', since this can occur to any pipe smoking individual, such as my late uncle, when not paying attention. Then, as you say, he realized its position and turned the stem to place the bowl upright. It happens.]
Edit Corrected by lmao Time
The 'Australian' has no Australian accent whatsoever. [So? Coming from another country doesn't automatically mean a deep accent.]
Edit Corrected by Grumpy Scot
Bartlett is waiting for Ashley-Pitt to attend a meeting about getting rid of the dirt from the tunnels. When Pitt arrives, Bartlett says, 'Don't they teach you promptness in the RAF?' Ashley-Pitt was in the Navy. [He actually said "Don't they teach you promptness in the RN", as in Royal Navy.]
Edit
Ives never got shot, in fact he was one of the three out of all who escaped to make it back to England. [Duplicated, and already corrected : Nobody called Ives escaped from Stalag Luft III. The three 'home runners' - successful escapees - were Flight Lt Peter Bergsland, Jens Muller (a Norwegian civilian) and Flight Lt Bob van der Stok. The character of 'Ives' most closely resembles Flight Lt H W "Piglet" Lamond in terms of character, but Lamond escaped through the tunnel and was recaptured (and survived). Thus 'Ives' is at best a semi-fictional character and his being shot is not a film mistake.]
Edit
Ives never got shot, in fact he was one of the three out of all who escaped to make it back to England. [Nobody called Ives escaped from Stalag Luft III. The three 'home runners' - successful escapees - were Flight Lt Peter Bergsland, Jens Muller (a Norwegian civilian) and Flight Lt Bob van der Stok. The character of 'Ives' most closely resembles Flight Lt H W "Piglet" Lamond in terms of character, but Lamond escaped through the tunnel and was recaptured (and survived). Thus 'Ives' is at best a semi-fictional character and his being shot is not a film mistake.]
Edit
Why is Hilts not wearing a uniform? A serving officer captured behind enemy lines in civilian clothing would be shot as a spy. If a prisoner's uniform was too worn or damaged to wear, it was routine for the German authorities to replace it - a P.O.W. in civilian clothes is an obvious escape risk. [The character of Hilts was based (in part) on the life of a British OSS agent who managed to pass as pilot by stealing a flight jacket (revealed in the DVD). We can only assume that since the Germans believed the camp was escape-proof, it didn't matter what Hilts was wearing, since he wouldn't be going anywhere.]
Edit
When Hilts tells Bartlett and MacDonald that the tunnel is 20 feet short of the trees, they call for 30 feet of rope to set up the signal system where the men wait in the last chamber for a tug on the rope to come up. The tunnel is 30 feet below the surface, meaning they'd need at least 50 feet of rope, yet the 30-foot length suffices. [The escape chamber is not '30 feet below the surface', but only a few feet down. Men climbing out are only halfway up the ladder when their heads pop out of the exit hole.]
Edit
After the Great Escape, Hilts is the ONLY prisoner out of 26 brought back to the camp who is sent to the Cooler. [There were not 26 escapers brought back to the camp. That is the number of escapees that were not shot; 8 were sent to other camps instead of being returned to Sagan and another 3 made it to England. Only 15 of the escapees were returned to Sagan. In the context of the film (as Hilts is not based on a real person) maybe he was sent to the cooler for his antics while on the run (assaulting German troops etc.) and not for the escape itself.]
Edit Corrected by david barlow
After the men escape they are all standing at the train station because the train was late, or there was a hold up of some kind. Was this possibly a ribbing kind of gesture at the term used in Nazi Germany "The government stinks but at least the trains run on time"? [That wasn't about Nazi Germany, it was about Fascist Italy. The phrase "He made the trains run on time" was coined by one of Mussolini's propagandists, and became widely believed, although there was little or no truth to it (source: Montagu, A. and Darling, E. (1967) The Prevalence of Nonsense, Dell/Delta, New York. Page 19).]
Edit Corrected by J I Cohen
While the men are in the truck toward the end of the movie, Big X says that he hopes he hadn't just blotted 70-odd ledgers. How did he know that only about 70 men had gotten out? [Big X and McDonald had been covering the "exit station" of the tunnel until they moved out themselves. So they knew how many men had escaped before them. They also knew that they were the last ones who made it, because they actually witnessed how the exit was discovered just after they had gotten out. Remember they were still hiding in the forest when the first shots rang out.]
Edit