Deining
The use of the actual road shown here with my bike today between Egling and Deining lends an immediate verisimilitude to the scene as the landscape itself, with its rolling fields, traditional farmhouses, and tree-lined roads, provides a convincing backdrop for wartime Germany, grounding the subsequent events of the film in a tangible, believable world. The decision to film on location, rather than on a studio backlot, was central to the film's epic scale and its commitment to authenticity. The sequence serves to introduce not only the prisoners but also their captors and the vast, seemingly inescapable territory in which they are now imprisoned. I can't however share Mr. Whistance's enthusiasm
for Steve McQueen who was put up in a chalet in Deining, and whose
incessant selfish behaviour and self-absorbed petulance sums up his
personality for me, as related later by his former wife Neile McQueen
Toffel in her book My Husband, My Friend: A Memoir (99-100):To house Steve, me, and our children, the company had found us a beautiful chalet in Deining, Bavaria. The forty-minute drive to the Geiselgasteig Studios was good for Steve, for it provided him his "creative thinking time, but not so good for the farmers who used the narrow roads: Steve made up his own rules as it suited him. John Sturges and company spent half their time keeping him out of jail. Every time Steve came on the set the German police would be right behind him. John would quickly reprimand him with, “You cannot drive through a flock of chickens and you cannot drive into the woods and then come back onto the road to pass somebody. You cannot drive faster than makes sense or you will hurt yourself.” But when Steve was troubled, driving around was the answer. It helped to calm him. And troubled he was during the first three weeks of the picture...
As
costar James Garner would relate, he and Steve Coburn would have to beg
McQueen to cooperate after refusing to work until his part was
rewritten, asking "What's your problem, Steve?" Apparently "after a few
hours of talking, Steve wanted to be the hero but didn't want to do
anything heroic."
The convoy later continues just outside the next town,
Egling, along a road that no longer exists. Whistance provides a 1954
map showing the original layout with its location today. Marc Eliot's
biography references Deining, as well as relating the need for the
studio to pay for a minder to try to stop him from driving over the
(already liberal) speed limit around the area:
When Steve was told about the locale change, he was both excited—he had, since his merchant marine days, always loved to travel to new countries—and concerned. He enjoyed being overseas, but it meant he would be away from Hollywood for a solid year, except for the few weeks following the completion of The War Lover. He didn't want to become one of those American actors who only worked abroad. Sturges calmed his fears by reminding him he had top billing for the first time in his career and assuring him that he and the family would be put up in a beautiful chalet in Deining, Bavaria. Plus, Sturges pointed out, there were no speed limits in Germany. Technically that wasn't true-only the autobahn had no speed limit; limits on local roads were strictly enforced—but it was enough to get Steve to consent to the German shoot. To prevent Steve from speeding anywhere besides the autobahn, and potentially being arrested and delaying the production, Sturges hired a private escort to make sure he stayed within the legal limit when he drove.
Füssen
Füssen of course provided the main location for the film The Great Escape. Here the town is first shown in the background behind the Lechhalde bridge as Flight
Lieutenants William Dickes (John Leyton) and Danny Velinski (Charles
Bronson), having escaped from Stalag Luft III, attempt to row down the
Rhine. The production used the actual river current; the boat was tethered by hidden wires so it wouldn't drift too far downstream. The German patrol on the bridge is positioned on the real roadway; the soldiers are Bundeswehr troops on loan. For the filmmakers, Füssen and the surrounding area offered ideal filming locations: a small airfield that was important as a prerequisite for escaping by plane, an almost medieval-looking old town without war damage with narrow streets and roof landscapes, a varied nature in the Allgäu with the famous Neuschwanstein Castle, which was also known in America to be in Germany. The diverse landscape types near Füssen enabled the director to do numerous tricks: the village of Pfronten becomes the border town in front of Switzerland, in the swampy Schwansee Park two refugees cross the border to Spain, at the Theresienbrücke members of the Resistance work in a replica French café, et cet. Two of the fleeing allies escape on the Lech reach a ship in the port of Hamburg with their rowing boat. Hendley and the forger Blythe fly over Lake Constance to Switzerland with a stolen plane, in fact actually flying over Weißensee, past Neuschwanstein Castle and along the Hohen Straussberg. Because they don't understand the German air control system, they crash in the Miesbach district near Frauenried am Irschenberg near the Mariä-Geburt-Kirche.
Meanwhile Flying Officer Louis Sedgwick (James Coburn), having escaped after making off with a bicycle in a scene shot at Markt Schwaben, has arrived in what is supposed to be a French town but which St. Mang unmistakably identifies as Füssen. Based loosely on a
true story based on Paul Brickhill's 1950 book about the real-life mass
escape by British Commonwealth PoWs from Stalag Luft III in Sagan (now
Żagań, Poland). Sturges wrote the
screenplay and worked with Bavaria Film in Geiselgasteig, where 15,000
square metres of forest had to be cleared next to the studio premises in
Perlacher Forst, so that a prison camp true to the original like in
Sagan, Poland could be set up as a backdrop. In the fall of 1962,
outdoor recordings took place in Füssen and the surrounding area The
first part of the film focuses on the escape efforts within the camp
and the process of secretly digging an escape tunnel. The second half of
the film deals with the massive effort by the German Gestapo to track
down the over seventy escaped prisoners individually attempting to make
their way to England. 
St. Mang serving as the backdrop when Coburn is seen at Café Suzette (built for the film) before the assassination of these German officers.
The cafe as seen here was in the area now holding flagpoles, and Coburn was sitting
against the stone wall, now a metal railing. The bridge too has been
replaced but otherwise the 1963 film location is easily recognisable on
the south bank of the Lech. The black car above is actually a 1947 Citroën 11 Légère 'Traction' in a movie set in 1944. Steve
McQueen's motorcycle stunts and many other scenes in The Great Escape were filmed in and around the town. During
six weeks of filming, Hollywood stars Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson
and James Coburn stayed in hotels in Füssen, Hohenschwangau, Hopfen and
Speiden as Füssen was transformed back to the time of the war with the
train station, the narrow streets in the old town and the roof
landscapes providing ideal backdrops for car chases. Many citizens acted
as extras or watched the filming from the roofs of Spitalgasse. This
ended up causing a sensation due to the props involving Nazi flags,
weapons and uniforms. 
The German officers arriving with Coburn sitting behind.
The officers order from the waiter a Pernod, an anise-flavoured pastis
apéritif. In fact the production of pastis was prohibited by the Vichy
regime under the August 23, 1940 Loi Contre L'Alcoolisme which prohibited the
manufacture and sale of aperitifs based upon alcohol distilled from
anything other than grapes. This was followed by a subsequent enactment
in September 1941 that completely banned such alcohol being advertised. Even after the war the French banned the advertising of aniseed drinks in 1951.What follows is a scene in which the officers are then massacred
that defies belief, immediately before the attack on the officers the
waiter who is part of the plot lures Coburn away by claiming he has a
phone call. Coburn is confused and knows nothing about what's going on-
for all the waiter knows he could be a German agent or informant who is
now going to be able to implicate the assassins. In fact, immediately
after the three officers are machine-gunned to death in broad daylight
in the centre of town, the cafe owners openly celebrate with cognac
amidst the carnage.
The
poster used in the foreground is rather anachronistic as it dated from
the very start of the German occupation with the legend "Abandoned
populations, trust the German soldier !”
The assassins' car, a 1939 Opel Kapitän, drives down Lechhade bridge, turning on Tirolerstraße.
MacDonald and Bartlett fleeing the Gestapo south down Hintere Gasse, the narrow lane behind the bakery, upon being identified. The constricted mediæval alleyways create a claustrophobic and confusing environment, perfect for a disorienting chase scene.
The same scene, looking from the very end of Hintere Gasse
MacDonald
getting hit by a cyclist as he's chased down Drehergasse which follows
the old city wall, with my own bike as reference. This was a real collision that was kept in the final cut because
Jackson’s startled reaction was perfect. Bartlett, now separated, turns
into Franziskanergasse (the lane beside the Franciscan monastery) and is
seen watching the chase from the corner. The geography is accurate for a
few seconds before the editing compresses space.
As MacDonald is pursued, Bartlett- somehow seeing all this from Franziskanergasse- makes his own attempt at escape
Bartlett meanwhile trying to escape via Füssen's rooftops as he arrives at an der Stadtmauer; the production used the actual tiled roofs of the old tanner’s houses; stunt doubles performed the climbing, but Attenborough filmed close-ups on a partial mock-up built against the wall. The
famous continuity error occurs when he descends: he is clearly on the
pavement in one angle and inexplicably in the middle of the street in
the reverse shot.
Here is only somehow manages to return to Drehergasse [!] before ending up at Brunnengasse; Sturges decided to keep it because the
schedule was tight.
He's finally caught on the corner of Hutergasse and Brunnengasse by Untersturmführer Steinach, played by Karl Otto Alberty, who arrives in a Mercedes 170V staff car, shouts “Halt!” and Bartlett is marched away at gunpoint. The entire Füssen foot-chase lasts just under two minutes on screen but required five days of shooting because of rain interruptions in late August 1962. There is another continuity error in this scene as Attenborough's character Bartlett
tries to walk nonchalantly along the pavement. When the German yells at
Bartlett from his car to stop Bartlett does so, still on the pavement.
However when cut to a different angle it appears that Bartlett has in
fact stopped in the middle of the street. Such individual incidents in
the film were mostly based on fact, but rearranged both chronologically
and regarding the people involved as noted at the start of the film. In
reality, of the 76 who escaped, three had managed to succeed whilst
fifty were murdered in reprisal, but in small groups and not all at
once. As one sadly expects from American films, the nationality of most
of the prisoners
were changed to emphasise the role of Americans at the expense of
British Imperial heroes. Indeed, the real escape was by British and
other allied personnel, none by Americans. Whilst Americans in the PoW
camp did initially help to build the tunnels and work on the early
escape plans, they were moved to their own compound seven months before
the tunnels were completed. A
large part had been played by Canadians, especially in the construction
of the tunnels and in the escape itself. Of the 1,800 or so PoWs in the
compound of whom 600 were involved in preparations for the escape, 150
of these were from the Dominion of Canada; Wally Floody, an RCAF pilot
and mining engineer who was the real-life “tunnel king”, was engaged as a
technical advisor for the film. Fourteen Germans were executed after
the war for their roles, which ended up being among the charges at the
Nuremberg War Crimes trial. Another actor, Donald Pleasence, had
actually been an RAF pilot who had been shot down, held prisoner and
tortured by the Germans. After offering advice to the film's director
John Sturges, he was politely told to mind his own business. Later,
when another star informed Sturges that Pleasence had actually been a
RAF Officer in a Stalag camp, Sturges requested his technical advice and
input on historical accuracy from that point forward. Other actors had
been PoWs- Hannes Messemer in a Russian camp and Til Kiwe (playing the
German guard "Frick" who discovers the escape) and Hans Reiser were
prisoners of the Americans during the war. Kiwe had been a German paratrooper officer who was captured and held
prisoner at a PoW camp in Colorado and himself had made several escape attempts, being captured in the
St. Louis railway station during one such attempt. He won the Knight's
Cross before his capture and was the cast member who had actually done
many of the exploits shown in the film. Former
PoWs in fact requested that the filmmakers exclude certain details
about help they received to prevent the film jeopardising future
escapes, a request which was honoured.
Füssen's railway station also plays a critical role in the film, serving as the location for one of its most tragic moments. The station is where several escapees, including Ashley-Pitt, attempt to board a train. In a selfless act of sacrifice, Ashley-Pitt deliberately draws the attention of German guards to himself to create a diversion, allowing other prisoners, including Bartlett, to get away. He is shot and killed by the guards on the station platform. The use of a real train station, with its tracks, platforms, and moving trains, provides a stark and realistic setting for this act of heroism and sacrifice. The
train station was demolished recently in
2015 after having been purchased by the company "Hubert Schmid
Bauunternehmen GmbH" for roughly 300,000 euros with the intention of
replacing it with a modern convenience centre. The train itself was a genuine DRG Class 86 locomotive borrowed from the Deutsche Bundesbahn.
Captain Virgil Hilts (Steve McQueen) stringing a wire across what is actually the road between Füssen and Hopfen am See (today’s B 310),
the town clearly seen in the background; in fact, McQueen himself
played the German motorcyclist who crashed into the wire. If one looks
closely at the scene one can clearly see two shadows on the ground
caused by the camera lights. In addition, the motorcycle he makes off
with is obviously a postwar British-made Triumph rather than the BMW or Zundapp which the Wehremacht would have used. Serving in large part as a Steve McQueen vanity
project, his character Hilts was based on an amalgamation of several
real-life individuals including Major Dave Jones, a flight commander
during Doolittle's Raid shot down and captured and Colonel Jerry Sage,
who was an OSS agent in the North African desert when he was captured.
Sage managed to don a flight jacket and pass as a flier otherwise he
would have been executed as a spy. Another inspiration was probably
Squadron Leader Eric Foster who escaped no less than seven times from
German prisoner-of-war camps. In fact, during the filming the town's
police had set up a speed trap near the set in which several members of
the cast and crew were caught, including McQueen. Apparently the Chief
of Police told McQueen "Herr McQueen, we have caught several of your
comrades today, but you have won the prize [for the highest speeding]."
McQueen was arrested and briefly gaoled.
Neuschwanstein
As seen in The Great Escape
when Hendley (James Garner) and Blythe (Donald Pleasance) try to reach
Switzerland escape by stealing a light aircraft, with Hohenschwangau
castle on the lower right. In fact, the photo of Neuschwanstein
indicates that they're actually flying straight in the wrong direction
as I took it facing south with the plane travelling from right to left;
this would mean that they are actually heading east away from the Swiss border which is about forty miles west of the castle. Its inclusion in the film was intended to serve as a powerful visual signifier of the characters being deep within the heart of Germany, its romantic silhouette providing an ironic contrast to the grim reality of their escape and pursuit.
Just outside Pullach is the former railway station located at Bahnhofsplatz 2 in the Großhesselohe district of Pullach which, as with Füssen and Markt Schwaben, provided scenes for The Great Escape, shown here as Gestapo and SD arrive to search for the missing prisoners.with the site today. Shooting in Großhesselohe took place over four days, from August 27, 1962 to August 30, 1962, under the direction of second-unit director John Sturges himself, with principal photography handled by cinematographer Daniel L. Fapp. It had been part of the Munich–Holzkirchen railway line, about an hundred metres west of the Großhesseloher bridge. About 400 metres west of the station there is still the old railway bridge, on which the Isar Valley Railway used to cross the tracks leading to the Großhesseloher Bridge. The station was built during the construction of the Bavarian Maximiliansbahn. The Munich -Großhesselohe section was put into operation in 1854. Since the continuation of the route was delayed by the necessary construction of the 300 metre long Großhesseloher bridge over the Isar, Großhesselohe was the end of the route for about 3 years. The next section, Großhesselohe -Rosenheim, wasn't opened until 1857, and Großhesselohe station became a through station. With the completion of the Braunau railway bridge in 1871, the Großhesselohe station lost its importance for long-distance traffic, as a large part of the long-distance connections were made over the shorter new route. It was here in 1962 that the train station was used as a backdrop for the film The Great Escape. For this purpose, the station building and the platform roof were provided with a sign "Neustadt."
The production didn't need to build any sets; only period German railway signs were added and a 1930s-era passenger coach and steam locomotive (a Bavarian Class 70 0-6-0 tank engine borrowed from the Deutsches Bundesbahn) were positioned on the tracks. Here
Flight Lieutenant Robert Hendley (James Garner) helping the almost
blind Flight Lieutenant Colin Blythe (Donald Pleasence) onto the
platform. Pleasence had
actually been an RAF pilot who had been shot down, held prisoner and
tortured by the Germans during the war. After offering advice to the
film's director John Sturges, he was politely told to mind his own
business. Later, when another star informed Sturges that Pleasence had
actually been a RAF Officer in a Stalag camp, Sturges requested his
technical advice and input on historical accuracy from that point
forward. A number of individual incidents shown in the film were mostly
based on fact, but rearranged both chronologically and regarding the
people involved as noted at the start of the film. In reality, of the 76
who escaped, three had managed to succeed whilst fifty were murdered in
reprisal, but in small groups and not all at once. 
After
the escape and now masquerading as French businessmen, Flight
Lieutenant Sandy MacDonald and Squadron Leader Roger
Bartlett climb the stairs onto the platform at
Neustadt station, now completely gone at the now closed Großhesselohe
Staatsbahnhof. Whilst waiting to pass through a Gestapo checkpoint at a
railway station, Bartlett is recognised by Kuhn, a Gestapo agent;
Ashley-Pitt sacrifices himself by killing Kuhn, and is shot and killed.
Bartlett and MacDonald slip away, but MacDonald blunders by replying in
English to a suspicious Gestapo officer. MacDonald is quickly
apprehended, and Bartlett is recognised and recaptured by
Untersturmführer Steinach, an SS agent.The scene was first filmed on August 27, 1962 with establishing shots of the train arriving from the Munich direction (north). Attenborough and Pleasence, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying forged papers, are seen walking along the platform pretending to be French workers. Long lenses were used from the western side of the tracks to capture the train against the wooded hillside.
The next day interior carriage shots were actually filmed on a stationary coach at Großhesselohe; the windows were masked and a rear-projection plate of the Isar Valley scenery, shot earlier from a moving train, was used to create the illusion of movement. August 29, was the filming of the dramatic moment when German soldiers board at a previous stop (filmed at Großhesselohe by simply having the train pull in again) and begin checking papers. Pleasence’s character realises his forged Ausweis is inadequate because he's wearing glasses not shown in the photograph. Attenborough whispers “Run for it” in the carriage. The train slows to a halt at Großhesselohe station and Attenborough and Pleasence jump from the carriage onto the gravel beside the tracks and begin running south along the embankment. German soldiers open fire. Pleasence is hit in the back and collapses in the long grass immediately east of the platform; Attenborough is recaptured moments later. The entire escape attempt lasts forty-two seconds on screen but required multiple takes because of the difficulty of coordinating the locomotive’s steam and the extras’ gunfire. The production used real Bundeswehr soldiers as German troops and fired blank ammunition; local residents in Pullach reported hearing prolonged gunfire on the evening of August 29, 1962. In fact, apparently one soldier suffered minor burns from a blank cartridge fired too close. The most significant and thematically resonant scene filmed in the Großhesselohe area was probably the "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" sequence from the 1971 film Cabaret, staged at a traditional Bavarian beer garden located in the countryside near Großhesselohe. The sequence begins idyllically, with Brian Roberts (Michael York) and Baron von Heune (Helmut Griem) enjoying a drink in the sunshine. The atmosphere is peaceful and bucolic. The scene's power is derived from its gradual and chilling transformation. A young, blond, cherubic-looking boy in a Hitler Youth uniform begins to sing the song "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." Initially, his voice is pure and innocent, and the song has the quality of a patriotic folk ballad. Fosse's direction carefully builds the scene's intensity. As the boy sings, the camera pans across the faces of the other patrons in the beer garden. At first, only a few people join in, but as the song progresses through its verses, more and more of the ordinary, middle-class Germans rise to their feet and join the chorus with increasing fervour.
Based
loosely on a true story based on Paul Brickhill's 1950 book about the
real-life mass escape by British Commonwealth PoWs from Stalag Luft III
in Sagan (now Żagań, Poland), the first part of the film focuses on the
escape efforts within the camp and the process of secretly digging an
escape tunnel. The second half of the film deals with the massive effort
by the German Gestapo to track down the over seventy escaped prisoners
individually attempting to make their way to England. As
one sadly expects from American films, the nationality of most of the
prisoners were changed to emphasise the role of Americans at the expense
of British Imperial heroes. Indeed, the real escape was by British and other allied personnel, none
by Americans. Coburn actually plays an Australian. Whilst Americans in
the PoW camp did initially help to build the tunnels and work on the
early escape plans, they were moved to their own compound seven months
before the tunnels were completed. A large part had been played by
Canadians, especially in the construction of the tunnels and in the
escape itself. 
Of the 1,800 or so PoWs in the compound of whom six
hundred were involved in preparations for the escape, 150 of these were
from the Dominion of Canada; Wally Floody, an RCAF pilot and mining
engineer who was the real-life “tunnel king”, was engaged as a technical
advisor for the film. Fourteen Germans were executed after the war for
their roles, which ended up being among the charges at the Nuremberg War
Crimes trial. In an effort to make the movie plot and its characters more inviting and palatable to an American audience, the writers invented Flight Lieutenant (F/L) Bob Hendley, an American in the RAF, as the scrounger inside Stalag Luft III. Sturges cast US screen and TV star James Garner to play the part. In fact, the scrounger was a twenty-eight-year-old Blenheim bomber pilot from Calgary, Alberta, named Barry Davidson. For the key roles of the tunnel designers and diggers, Sturges’s creative team invented RAF F/L Danny Velinski and RAF F/L Willie Dickes and cast American actor Charles Bronson and British actor/singer John Leyton in the roles. The actual tunnel king was a downed Spitfire pilot, twenty-five-year-old Wally Floody, originally from Chatham, Ontario. His tunnel digging partners were fellow RCAF fighter pilots: twenty-four-year-old John Weir from Toronto, Ontario, and twenty-six-year-old Hank Birkland, from Spearhill, Manitoba. When it came to portraying the chief forger—the POW who designed many of the fake documents used by the air officers during the escape—the screenplay writers manufactured another British flyer named Colin Blythe and cast seasoned British film and TV actor Donald Pleasence (who had actually been a POW during the war) in the role. The actual forger behind much of the document fabrication, however, was twenty-four-year-old Whitley bomber pilot Tony Pengelly, from Truro, Nova Scotia. Next, the Hollywood production team imagined one of the intelligence chiefs in the camp and parachuted into the script a British air officer named Andy MacDonald, casting Scottish-born actor Gordon Jackson to play him. In fact, among the officers conducting much of the intelligence activities was thirty-two-year-old Kingsley Brown, a journalist and father of four from the Toronto area. To portray an officer in charge of the security of the three tunnels—“Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry”—the movie producers conceived an RAF F/L Sorren and cast British actor William Russell in the role. In fact, the security team inside the wire at the North Compound included thirty-three-year-old RCAF air gunner George Harsh, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and twenty-four-year-old RCAF bomb-aimer George Sweanor, from Port Hope, Ontario. And that doesn’t include the air officer in charge of security at the entrance of the main tunnels, the so-called trapführer, twenty-six-year-old Patrick Langford from Edmonton, Alberta.Ted Barris The Great Escape: A Canadian Story
A couple of scenes from The Great Escape
were shot here outside Markt Schwaben located east of Munich. Flight Lieutenant Colin Blythe and
Flight Lieutenant Robert Hendley hiding from the Germans
during the Great Escape; the clock tower of the parish church St.
Margaret in Markt Schwaben serving as a reference point. Its use as a visual anchor was a deliberate choice to provide a strong vertical element in the composition, dwarfing the two figures and symbolising the established, monolithic German society from which they are hiding. The scene was likely filmed in the early morning or late afternoon to take advantage of the long shadows and atmospheric light, enhancing the feeling of concealment and paranoia. The camera would have been positioned to frame both the actors in the foreground and the distinct architecture of the church tower in the background, constantly reminding the audience of their location deep within enemy territory. Pleasence had
actually been an RAF pilot who had been shot down, held prisoner and
tortured by the Germans during the war. After offering advice to the
film's director John Sturges, he was politely told to mind his own
business. Later, when another star informed Sturges that Pleasence had
actually been a RAF Officer in a Stalag camp, Sturges requested his
technical advice and input on historical accuracy from that point
forward. 
Flying
Officer Louis Sedgwick (James Coburn) stealing a bike on Ebersberger
Straße in Markt Schwaben, named Neustadt in the film. This sequence was designed by Sturges to be a moment of quiet, character-driven action that contrasts with the more frantic escape scenes. The location on Ebersberger Straße was chosen for its typical Bavarian small-town appearance, providing a backdrop of mundane civilian life. The production dressed the street with period-appropriate signage to create the fictional town of "Neustadt." The action was choreographed to appear completely natural. Coburn, as Sedgwick, was directed to project an air of complete confidence and belonging, as if he were a local resident. The bicycle was a standard German model of the era, sourced by the props department. The shot was likely filmed with a long lens from a concealed position across the street to enhance the sense of voyeuristic observation and to capture the action without alerting the background extras, thereby maintaining a naturalistic atmosphere. 
The successful
escape of Coburn's Australian character, Sedgwick, via Spain was based
on Dutchman Bram van der Stok. Coburn, an American, was cast in the role
of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Flying Officer Louis Sedgwick who
was an amalgamation of Flight Lieutenant Albert Hake, an Australian
serving in the RAF, the camp's compass maker, and Johnny Travis, the
real manufacturer. As
one is forced to expect from American films, the nationality of most of the
prisoners were changed to emphasise the role of Yanks at the expense
of British/Commonwealth heroes. Indeed, the real escape was by British and other allied personnel, none
by Americans. Coburn actually plays an Australian. Whilst Americans in
the PoW camp did initially help to build the tunnels and work on the
early escape plans, they were moved to their own compound seven months
before the tunnels were completed. A large part had been played by
Canadians, especially in the construction of the tunnels and in the
escape itself. Of the 1,800 or so PoWs in the compound of whom six
hundred were involved in preparations for the escape, 150 of these were
from the Dominion of Canada; Wally Floody, an RCAF pilot and mining
engineer who was the real-life “tunnel king”, was engaged as a technical
advisor for the film. Fourteen Germans were executed after the war for
their roles, which ended up being among the charges at the Nuremberg War
Crimes trial.
Coburn making his way down the other way, showing how much has changed since the film was shot.
Schleisssheim
For his part, in his biographer of Kubrick, Michael Herr (48) wrote how he had admitted that "he owed it all to Kirk Douglas. Douglas once called Stanley ''a talented shit,' and this may be one of the nicer things he said about him." Their partnership began in 1955, when Douglas hired Kubrick to direct the film “Paths of Glory and it didn't take long for the two to begin clashing, a result of Kubrick having made major script rewrites without Douglas’ approval or knowledge. In the end, Douglas forced the director to use the original version. “Difficult? [Kubrick] invented the word,” Douglas complained. Nevertheless,
[b]ecause Douglas gave one of his best performances ever in Paths of Glory, he wanted to work with its director again. He got the chance when Kubrick took over as director of Spartacus, a spectacle about slavery in pre-Christian Rome. But this time their association would prove to be less amicable and less fruitful than it had been while they were making Paths of Glory.Gene D. Phillips (60) Stanley Kubrick: A Film Odyssey
Considered one of the best anti-war films ever,
it in fact only casually discusses the cruelty and futility of the war.
An anti-militarist film, above all it is a bitter parable on governance
structures and a commitment against the death penalty. 
With
this film Kubrick achieved the final international breakthrough.
Kubrick initially struggled to find a production company for the project
until Kirk Douglas expressed his interest in playing the lead and United Artists
agreed to back the project for $935,000; not a big budget by studio
standards, but it astronomical compared to those that Kubrick had
previously worked with. The film was released under the banner of
Douglas’s independent company, Bryna Productions, which was one of the
star’s stipulations for appearing in the movie.
With
this film Kubrick achieved the final international breakthrough.
Kubrick initially struggled to find a production company for the project
until Kirk Douglas expressed his interest in playing the lead and United Artists
agreed to back the project for $935,000; not a big budget by studio
standards, but it astronomical compared to those that Kubrick had
previously worked with. The film was released under the banner of
Douglas’s independent company, Bryna Productions, which was one of the
star’s stipulations for appearing in the movie.
The film was made between March and May 1957 in the Bavaria Film Studios Geiselgasteig and here in Schloss Schleißheim with the battle scenes filmed in a field near Puchheim. It was during the filming that Kubrick met his future third wife Susanne Christiane Harlan, who sings he German folk song The Faithful Hussar in
the final scene. At first, scriptwriter Jim Thompson had developed a
softer, positive ending in which General Broulard pardoned Dax at the
last second and punished the three soldiers with only thirty days imprisonment instead
of execution. Kirk Douglas and the third scriptwriter Calder Willingham
convinced Kubrick, however, to give the film a negative and thus
commercially less promising, but more credible end. The soldiers were supplied by 9,733 conscripts who had been born in 1937. Although
they could handle weapons, they sprang from the trenches far too
cautiously and heroically. On September 18, 1957, the film premièred in
Munich.
 |
| Drake Winston standing in for Kirk Douglas |
Whilst
the movie was never officially banned, as similar massive protests were
expected from military personnel and, on the other hand, students
demonstrating against the Algerian war, as in Belgium (which often led
to performance stops in Brussels), no attempt was made by the
distributor to submit it to the censorship authority. The
title sequence of the film is underlaid at the beginning with the
Marseillaise. However, when the French government protested against the
use of the national anthem, it was replaced by percussion instruments in
countries considered particularly Francophile. In the French sector of Berlin, the responsible city commander issued in June 1958 a performance ban. He also threatened to withdraw the French festival contributions from the Berlin International Film Festival if Paths of Glory were
to be shown in West Berlin cinemas during the festival. Governing Mayor
Willy Brandt publicly described this as a "step back to 1948". After
appeals by the Berlin Senate, United Artists finally took the film from
the festival programme. Provided with an embarrassing preface stating
how the incidents shown in the film were not to be considered
representative of the army or the people of France, the film was allowed
to finally premiere in November in the French sector.
In
this scene one can see how Kubrick often creates a harsh dichotomy
between the misery on the front to the luxury of baroque castles. The
narrowness of the trenches is in contrast to the vastness of old
castles. When shooting this scene Kubrick used high-key technology in
which the lighting is surprisingly bright. On the checkerboard-like
floor where the court martial is held, the actors act like playing
pieces. In contrast the dark prison, filmed in the stable of the castle,
was filmed with few bright hatches sharp contrasting contrasts. The judgement of the judges in the procedure is left out, instead a black
aperture appears. This same ballroom later transforms after the trial
into the place where General Broulard, together with other high-ranking
people, celebrates a splendid ballnight. 
The Schlosswirtschaft (palace restaurant) on
April 1, 1937 during the commemoration of the air field's 25th
anniversary with high-ranking Nazi officials and, as I later found out
by chance, as it appeared in Paths of Glory. The Schloßwirtschaft
Oberschleißheim Biergarten is located on the palace grounds, with
seating for over a thousand guests. Its roots can be traced back to
1597, when the founder of the Hofbräuhaus brewery retired to a farm
there. Following the building of the New Schleissheim Palace in the 17th
century, the Schloßwirtschaft provided catering to its workers and
servants and later supported a royal brewery followed
which, along with the introduction of a railway link to Landshut,
allowed the Schloßwirtschaft to gain popularity. With the establishment
of the airfield in 1912 the Schloßwirtschaft became a regular meeting
place amongst pilots although the brewery itself has since closed. Kubrick used this location after
opting to script and shoot a scene that did not appear in the book.
It involved the regiment relaxing in a tavern and becoming increasingly belligerent until the tavern owner offers them entertainment in the form of a young German girl who has been captured by the French. The girl, portrayed by Kubrick’s future wife Christiane, is forced to sing a folk song, “Der Treue Husar” (The Faithful Soldier). Harris argued that the scene did not belong in the film and was only an excuse for Kubrick to cast his new girlfriend in the film, but Kubrick, becoming more and more sure of himself as a director, insisted and the scene, fortunately, was shot. While the young girl is dragged onto the stage, the soldiers jeer her with humiliating catcalls, driving the girl to tears. When she first begins to sing, the men are so loud that her song cannot even be heard.However, as the girl continues singing, the men are moved to silence, then to tears, and finally begin humming with her. Unknown to the men, Dax is outside the tavern listening. Having just left Broulard and Mireau, Dax is disillusioned with humanity. He hears the commotion in the tavern and goes to investigate. As evidenced by his grimace, he is at first disgusted that the men in his squadron are as heartless as the generals. However, as the men begin to quiet down and eventually sing with the young girl, the grimace becomes a slight smile. When informed that it is time for the regiment to return to the front lines, Dax pauses before uttering the last line in the film, “Give the men a few minutes more, sergeant.” The film ends with Dax’s faith in humanity restored.Stanley Kubrick Essays on His Films and Legacy Edited by Gary D. Rhodes
The room also served as the office of Christoph Waltz's Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers (2011) .
The movie also provided the setting for Alain Resnais’s purposely enigmatic Last Year in Marienbad (1961)
The movie won the Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice film festival whilst at the same time decried as an "aimless disaster" by Pauline Kael. It has been included in both Michael Medved’s "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (And How They Got That Way)" and Steven Shneider’s “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” which demonstrates how much the film has continued to divide contemporary critics and audiences. Schleissheim's castle and grounds helped create one of the most exquisite films of all time, fitting the opening monologue's description of the site which seems to foreshadow Kubrick's The Shining:
Silent rooms where one’s footsteps are absorbed by carpets so thick, so heavy, that no sound reaches one’s ear, as if the very ear of him walks on… once again along those corridors, through these salons and galleries in this edifice of a bygone era, this sprawling, sumptuous, baroque, gloomy hotel, where one endless corridor follows another, silent empty corridors, heavy with cold, dark woodwork, stucco, moulded panelling, marble, black mirrors, dark-toned portraits, columns, sculpted door-frames, rows of doorways, galleries, side corridors, that in turn lead to empty salons, salons heavy with ornamentation of a bygone era…as if the ground were still sand or gravel or flagstones over which I walked once again…as if in search of you between walls laden with woodwork…among which even then I was waiting for you…far from this setting in which I now find myself standing before you waiting for the man who will not be coming now, who is not likely to come now to part us again, to tear you away from me. Will you come?
The interplay of light and shadow is also crucial as seen in these then/now GIFs. Vierny often uses harsh, high-contrast lighting that flattens the image and emphasises the architectural lines, transforming the opulent palace into a stark, almost abstract series of planes and shapes. This deliberate de-realisation of the space prevents the audience from ever feeling comfortable or grounded, reinforcing the idea that what we are witnessing is not objective reality but a subjective, internalised experience of memory and desire. The choice of Schleissheim Palace over a real grand hotel was a deliberate artistic decision to strip the setting of any sense of contemporary life or function. There are no other guests, no functioning staff, only the isolated principal characters who seem to exist outside of time. This allows the palace to function purely as a symbolic space. The opulence of the architecture—the heavy brocade, the gilded carvings, the marble floors—becomes oppressive rather than luxurious. It is the ornate decoration of a beautiful prison. The characters are impeccably dressed in formal attire, their clothing echoing the formality and artificiality of their surroundings. By using the real, historical spaces of Schleissheim and then subtly altering the visual rules within them, Resnais creates a world that is simultaneously recognisable and dreamlike. The palace is not meant to be "Marienbad"; rather, the physical reality of Schleissheim becomes the raw material from which the purely cinematic and psychological space of "Marienbad" is constructed.
The staircase as it appears in Last Year in Marienbad and with the wife today. The majority of the exterior and many interior scenes in the film were shot between September 19, 1960 and December 22, 1960 with additional baroque palaces at Nymphenburg, Amalienburg, and the Residenz in Munich used only for a handful of supplementary shots. The palace’s vast, symmetrical baroque façade, its long enfilades of mirrored galleries, and above all its formal gardens laid out by Dominique Girard provided the film’s defining visual architecture. Resnais and cinematographer Sacha Vierny exploited the rigid geometry of the gardens and the endless reflections in the palace’s halls to create the deliberately disorientating, timeless space that is central to the film’s effect.
The
Grand Canal and the central axis of the garden appear repeatedly as the
location for the famous tracking shots in which Delphine Seyrig,
dressed in white or black, walks with Giorgio Albertazzi or stands
motionless whilst he approaches. 
These shots were filmed in late autumn
1960; the bare trees and low sunlight give the garden its cold, mineral
quality. The long, straight bosquets and parterres with their clipped box
hedges and gravel paths are the setting for the outdoor conversations
and the recurring game of “losing” or “winning” the matchstick (or
domino) game. Resnais had the gravel raked daily to maintain perfect
uniformity.
The Grosser Saal an adjacent Viktoriensaal with their endless mirrors and gilded stucco were used for the interior ballroom and corridor sequences. The camera glides along the polished floors whilst reflections multiply the chandeliers and statues infinitely, reinforcing the theme of uncertain reality. The Maximilianszimmer and the smaller baroque cabinets provided the hotel’s “private apartments” where Seyrig is seen brushing her hair or standing by the window. The exterior façade of the palace, especially the central corps de logis with its three-storey arcade and the two symmetrical wings, is shown in long, static wide shots that establish the overwhelming scale and immobility of the building.
These shots were filmed in late autumn
1960; the bare trees and low sunlight give the garden its cold, mineral
quality. The long, straight bosquets and parterres with their clipped box
hedges and gravel paths are the setting for the outdoor conversations
and the recurring game of “losing” or “winning” the matchstick (or
domino) game. Resnais had the gravel raked daily to maintain perfect
uniformity.The Grosser Saal an adjacent Viktoriensaal with their endless mirrors and gilded stucco were used for the interior ballroom and corridor sequences. The camera glides along the polished floors whilst reflections multiply the chandeliers and statues infinitely, reinforcing the theme of uncertain reality. The Maximilianszimmer and the smaller baroque cabinets provided the hotel’s “private apartments” where Seyrig is seen brushing her hair or standing by the window. The exterior façade of the palace, especially the central corps de logis with its three-storey arcade and the two symmetrical wings, is shown in long, static wide shots that establish the overwhelming scale and immobility of the building.
The room also provided the set for the film's hotel lobby. Only two brief interior shots (the theatre box and the bar) were filmed elsewhere, at the Residenz theatre and Nymphenburg’s Amalienburg hunting lodge respectively. Every other image recognisably set in the “hotel” is Schleissheim. Resnais chose Schleissheim precisely because its baroque rigidity and vast scale allowed him to erase any sense of lived time or individual presence. The palace and gardens, empty of tourists in winter, became the perfect objective correlative for the film’s theme of memory, repetition, and the impossibility of distinguishing past from present. The location is therefore not simply a backdrop but the structural principle of the entire work.
The Amalienburg and Stone Hall sequences were completed in natural daylight supplemented by minimal artificial sources in order to preserve the delicate colour palette of the rococo interiors. Like Schleissheim, Nymphenburg’s architectural rigour and reflective surfaces were exploited to create spatial ambiguity and to serve the film’s central theme of uncertain memory. The palace thus functions not merely as background but as an active participant in the construction of the film’s labyrinthine, timeless world. It's interesting to compare the narrative function of the scenes filmed at Nymphenburg with those at Schleissheim. If the latter's long corridors represent the linear, yet endlessly repeating, pathways of memory, Nymphenburg’s circular and self-reflecting rooms represent the obsessive, looping core of the central contested memory. 
It's often in these spaces that the most intense and claustrophobic encounters between the characters ‘X’ and ‘A’ occur. The ornate, almost suffocating detail of the Amalienburg’s interiors mirrors the psychological pressure ‘X’ exerts on ‘A’ as he tries to force her to remember their supposed past affair. The characters seem to merge with the décor; the woman, ‘A’, often stands motionless, her patterned dress seeming to blend into the complex designs on the walls behind her, as if she is becoming part of the architecture of the memory being imposed upon her.
The park of Nymphenburg also appears in a single exterior shot: the grand canal viewed from the palace steps at dusk, with the symmetrical wings of the palace reflected in the water. This image is used as a brief transitional moment between Schleissheim garden scenes, further blurring the distinction between the various palaces and reinforcing the idea that the “hotel” is an impossible composite of multiple baroque sites.
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The film has as its main character David Locke, a disaffected television journalist in northern Chad, looking to interview rebel fighters who are involved in the ongoing civil war. Struggling to find interviewees, he is further frustrated when his Land Rover gets stuck in a sand dune after being abandoned by guides. After a long walk through the Sahara back to his hotel, an exhausted Locke discovers that a fellow guest, an Englishman with whom he had struck up a casual friendship, died in his room overnight. Locke decides to switch identities with Robertson and reports his own death at the front desk, the plan going off without a hitch. Locke collects Robertson's belongings, which include a pistol, an appointment book and passport. He alters the passport to carry his own photo and with it, flies into Munich where he finds an airport locker which contains a folder with a price-list and several photocopied pages illustrating armaments. Acting on a whim, he drives down Hompeschstraße to the intersection with Möhlstraße, following this white horse and carriage. .gif)
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Locke arriving at the entrance to St.
George's Church at Bogenhauser Kirchplatz 1, which was the mother
church of the east of Munich. The transformation of the former village
church into a “rococo jewel” took place between 1766 and 1771 according
to plans by Johann Michael Fischer. Among other things, the pointed roof
of the tower was replaced by the characteristic double-laced onion
dome. Johann Philipp Helterhof designed the interior. The four-column
high altar with the sculptures of St. George, St. Donat and St. Irene
comes from Johann Baptist Straub; the side altars and the pulpit were
created by his famous student Ignaz Günther. Because of the large influx
to Bogenhausen, the little church was threatened by demolition plans in
1933. This allowed the new Nazi leadership to portray itself as a saviour: Gauleiter Adolf
Wagner donated money for a new building and Mayor Karl Fiehler gave the
church the building site at Scheinerstrasse 12, where the new parish
church of St. Blood was built in 1934. .gif)
The cemetery surrounding St.
George's Church is famous. On the right one can see the grave Locke is looking at having additional names added to the headstone. According to the cemetery statutes, one must have been a “particularly well-known
personality” in order to have a grave here today. In addition to
long-established Bogenhausen families, including the large farmers and
brickworks owners Selmayr and Kaffl (tombs on the south wall of the
church), celebrities rest here: for example, the writers Erich Kästner,
Annette Kolb and Oskar Maria Graf, the conductor Hans Knappertsbusch,
the film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the film producer Bernd
Eichinger, the music manager Monti Lüftner and the actors Liesl
Karlstadt, Walter Sedlmayer, Helmut Fischer
(“Monaco Franze”), Siegfried Lowitz and Margot Hielscher. Scientists
such as the directors of the Bogenhausen Observatory Johann Georg von
Soldner, Johann von Lamont and Hugo von Seeliger as well as the
physicist, nuclear weapons opponent, pacifist and women's rights
activist Freda Wuesthoff were also buried here. On July 31, 2020, due
to the Covid-19 pandemic madness, the funeral of the former mayor of Munich
and honorary citizen Hans-Jochen Vogel took place in a
small circle in the family grave. A memorial stone at the church commemorates the former church rector Alfred
Delp. As a member of the Kreisau Circle, the Jesuit priest resisted the
National Socialists. He was arrested after the service in St. George's
Church on July 28, 1944 and murdered in Berlin-Plötzensee on February 2,
1945. Also remembered are chaplain Hermann Joseph Wehrle and the career
officers Ludwig Freiherr von Leonrod and Franz Sperr, who were also
arrested and executed following the failed assassination attempt on July
20, 1944. .gif)
Locke ends up inside the chapel, where he waits at the back of the
congregation. Once the wedding finishes, two men who observed Locke at
the airport confront him and ask for "the documents." After Locke hands
them the papers from the locker, they give him an envelope of money and
tell him that the second half is to be paid in Barcelona. It becomes
apparent that Robertson was an arms dealer for the same rebels whom
Locke had been trying to contact in Chad. Amongst other recognisable Munich sites shot in Munich in August 1973 is the area around Odeonsplatz and the adjacent Theatinerstrasse. The
sequence involves two Africans henchmen of the dictator in the
fictitious country where Robertson/Locke has been supplying arms,
arriving to eliminate the rebel leader who has been negotiating with
Robertson. Here they're shown in the passage directly between the Feldherrnhalle and Theatinerkirche with the Hofgarten and Ludwigstrasse behind and today with my bike. .gif)
The rebel leader, played by French actor Ambroise Mbia, is shown sitting inside Café Arzmiller, which at that time occupied premises inside the Theatinerhof passage. The henchmen enter Theatinerstraße from the Odeonsplatz end, walk north along the east pavement, then turn into the covered arcade entrance of the Theatinerhof which is the glass-roofed passage that connects Theatinerstraße with Perusastraße. The camera follows them through the arcade as they locate the rebel leader at an outdoor table of Café Arzmiller at Theatinerstraße 20–22, although the café no longer exists but its premises are now occupied by a different business. When they reach the café tables, one agent casually places a hand on the rebel’s shoulder whilst the other produces a pistol fitted with a silencer. The rebel is forced to stand as his newspaper falls to the ground. They march him quickly back through the arcade toward a waiting Mercedes in Perusastraße at the rear exit of the passage.
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With Drake Winston in front of the conning tower from Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 film Das Boot at Fimstadt where the surfacing and the final sinking in La Rochelle harbour scenes were staged in a large exterior water tank on the Bavaria backlot, using a separate full-size tower section mounted on a floating barge.
The wife and kid inside, matched with the same view seen in the film. The production relied almost entirely on this interior set constructed at the Bavaria Atelier Gesellschaft studios in Geiselgasteig, a suburb south of Munich. Between February 1980 and January 1981 the crew occupied two of the largest sound stages then available in continental Europe, stages 2 and 5, for a continuous shooting period that lasted eleven months. The decision to film inside a studio rather than on board an actual submarine or at sea stemmed from technical necessity as much as from directorial intent. A real Type VIIC U-boat offered neither the space for camera equipment nor the possibility of controlled movement, whilst the North Atlantic weather would have rendered any realistic filming schedule impossible. Petersen and his producer Michael Götz therefore commissioned a full-scale replica of U-96, built to exact Kriegsmarine specifications and mounted on one of the biggest hydraulic gimbals ever constructed in Germany. Construction of the replica began in late 1979 under the supervision of naval architect Rolf Zehetbauer, who had already designed the submarine interiors for the 1972 British-German television series War at Sea. The new set measured sixty-two metres in length and reproduced every compartment from bow torpedo room to stern engine room. Unlike earlier submarine films which used partial sections, Petersen insisted on a complete, traversable interior so that the camera could follow the crew through the entire length of the boat without visible cuts. The set was erected on a platform capable of tilting twenty-five degrees in any direction, rolling, and shaking violently to simulate depth-charge attacks. Hydraulic rams and water tanks beneath the floor allowed the floor plates to flood with real seawater during the damage sequences. The confined space, combined with constant motion and the heat generated by arc lamps, produced the extreme physical discomfort that is palpable on screen. Actors remained inside the set for weeks at a time, sleeping in the bunks between takes and eating their meals aboard, a method that contributed decisively to the film’s claustrophobic atmosphere. The completed U-boat set survived the production and was retained by Bavaria Film. Since 1982 it has formed the centrepiece of the studio tour at what is now marketed as Bavaria Filmstadt. Today one can walk through the same narrow corridors and engine room that appear in the film, and the hydraulic platform is demonstrated daily to illustrate the motion effects. The preservation of the set in its original location at Geiselgasteig remains unique amongst major German film productions of the postwar era and continues to serve as the most tangible legacy of Petersen’s technical achievement.
Nymphenburg Palace
The palace was another of the location sites for Last Year at Marienbad including the iconic scene where the people cast long shadows but the
trees do not because the shadows were painted and the scene shot on an
overcast day. Resnais and Vierny filmed at Nymphenburg for only a few days in November 1960, taking advantage of late-autumn light and the absence of visitors.
It's often in these spaces that the most intense and claustrophobic encounters between the characters ‘X’ and ‘A’ occur. The ornate, almost suffocating detail of the Amalienburg’s interiors mirrors the psychological pressure ‘X’ exerts on ‘A’ as he tries to force her to remember their supposed past affair. The characters seem to merge with the décor; the woman, ‘A’, often stands motionless, her patterned dress seeming to blend into the complex designs on the walls behind her, as if she is becoming part of the architecture of the memory being imposed upon her. The park of Nymphenburg also appears in a single exterior shot: the grand canal viewed from the palace steps at dusk, with the symmetrical wings of the palace reflected in the water. This image is used as a brief transitional moment between Schleissheim garden scenes, further blurring the distinction between the various palaces and reinforcing the idea that the “hotel” is an impossible composite of multiple baroque sites.
Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 The Passenger stars Jack Nicholson as a disillusioned Anglo-American journalist, David Locke, who assumes the identity of a dead businessman whilst working on a documentary in Chad, unaware that he is impersonating an arms dealer with connections to the rebels in the current civil war. A number of scenes were filmed in Munich, including the following all filmed in Bogenhausen.
.gif)
The film has as its main character David Locke, a disaffected television journalist in northern Chad, looking to interview rebel fighters who are involved in the ongoing civil war. Struggling to find interviewees, he is further frustrated when his Land Rover gets stuck in a sand dune after being abandoned by guides. After a long walk through the Sahara back to his hotel, an exhausted Locke discovers that a fellow guest, an Englishman with whom he had struck up a casual friendship, died in his room overnight. Locke decides to switch identities with Robertson and reports his own death at the front desk, the plan going off without a hitch. Locke collects Robertson's belongings, which include a pistol, an appointment book and passport. He alters the passport to carry his own photo and with it, flies into Munich where he finds an airport locker which contains a folder with a price-list and several photocopied pages illustrating armaments. Acting on a whim, he drives down Hompeschstraße to the intersection with Möhlstraße, following this white horse and carriage. .gif)
A couple of shots superimposed over the house as it appears today.
.gif)
He turns left onto Neuberghauser Straße towards the church of Bogenhausen.
.gif)
Locke arriving at the entrance to St.
George's Church at Bogenhauser Kirchplatz 1, which was the mother
church of the east of Munich. The transformation of the former village
church into a “rococo jewel” took place between 1766 and 1771 according
to plans by Johann Michael Fischer. Among other things, the pointed roof
of the tower was replaced by the characteristic double-laced onion
dome. Johann Philipp Helterhof designed the interior. The four-column
high altar with the sculptures of St. George, St. Donat and St. Irene
comes from Johann Baptist Straub; the side altars and the pulpit were
created by his famous student Ignaz Günther. Because of the large influx
to Bogenhausen, the little church was threatened by demolition plans in
1933. This allowed the new Nazi leadership to portray itself as a saviour: Gauleiter Adolf
Wagner donated money for a new building and Mayor Karl Fiehler gave the
church the building site at Scheinerstrasse 12, where the new parish
church of St. Blood was built in 1934. The cemetery surrounding St.
George's Church is famous. On the right one can see the grave Locke is looking at having additional names added to the headstone. According to the cemetery statutes, one must have been a “particularly well-known
personality” in order to have a grave here today. In addition to
long-established Bogenhausen families, including the large farmers and
brickworks owners Selmayr and Kaffl (tombs on the south wall of the
church), celebrities rest here: for example, the writers Erich Kästner,
Annette Kolb and Oskar Maria Graf, the conductor Hans Knappertsbusch,
the film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the film producer Bernd
Eichinger, the music manager Monti Lüftner and the actors Liesl
Karlstadt, Walter Sedlmayer, Helmut Fischer
(“Monaco Franze”), Siegfried Lowitz and Margot Hielscher. Scientists
such as the directors of the Bogenhausen Observatory Johann Georg von
Soldner, Johann von Lamont and Hugo von Seeliger as well as the
physicist, nuclear weapons opponent, pacifist and women's rights
activist Freda Wuesthoff were also buried here. On July 31, 2020, due
to the Covid-19 pandemic madness, the funeral of the former mayor of Munich
and honorary citizen Hans-Jochen Vogel took place in a
small circle in the family grave. A memorial stone at the church commemorates the former church rector Alfred
Delp. As a member of the Kreisau Circle, the Jesuit priest resisted the
National Socialists. He was arrested after the service in St. George's
Church on July 28, 1944 and murdered in Berlin-Plötzensee on February 2,
1945. Also remembered are chaplain Hermann Joseph Wehrle and the career
officers Ludwig Freiherr von Leonrod and Franz Sperr, who were also
arrested and executed following the failed assassination attempt on July
20, 1944. .gif)
.gif)
The rebel leader, played by French actor Ambroise Mbia, is shown sitting inside Café Arzmiller, which at that time occupied premises inside the Theatinerhof passage. The henchmen enter Theatinerstraße from the Odeonsplatz end, walk north along the east pavement, then turn into the covered arcade entrance of the Theatinerhof which is the glass-roofed passage that connects Theatinerstraße with Perusastraße. The camera follows them through the arcade as they locate the rebel leader at an outdoor table of Café Arzmiller at Theatinerstraße 20–22, although the café no longer exists but its premises are now occupied by a different business. When they reach the café tables, one agent casually places a hand on the rebel’s shoulder whilst the other produces a pistol fitted with a silencer. The rebel is forced to stand as his newspaper falls to the ground. They march him quickly back through the arcade toward a waiting Mercedes in Perusastraße at the rear exit of the passage.
The entire kidnapping
lasts less than ninety seconds on screen and is referenced later when Locke, watching a news report of the rebel leader’s death, hears the announcer state "a German television news report (in German with subtitles) states: “In Munich wurde gestern die Leiche eines Mannes gefunden, der vermutlich ein Führer der Untergrundbewegung war.” (The body of a man believed to be a leader of the underground resistance movement was found yesterday in a Munich street.) The report is delivered in German with English subtitles in the international print. The sequence’s purpose is to show that the political violence Locke has been documenting and later profiting from is real and has followed him to the heart of bourgeois Europe. By staging the murder in an elegant Munich shopping arcade rather than in Africa, Antonioni collapses the supposed distance between “civilised” Europe and the brutal postcolonial conflicts it helped create.
Das Boot
