The Wooden Horse

In a German prison camp during the Second World War, three British officers work out an escape. A tunnel has to be dug as far as the wire, but nobody can dig in the open without being seen. They find their solution in exercise: every day they set a wooden vaulting horse down in the middle of the yard and do gymnastics over it. Underneath the horse, somebody is digging. Jack Lee's film is based on real events; Eric Williams, one of the men who got out, wrote the book about it and the screenplay as well. The telling manufactures no heroics: the work is slow, repetitive and mostly dull. The tension comes not from the tunnel but from having to keep the same act going day after day. The film drew a large audience in postwar British cinema.