10 Great World War II Movies You've Probably Never Seen

The Great Escape is one of the quintessential World War II films, boasting an all-star ensemble cast as they seek to engineer their freedom from imprisonment at the hands of the Germans. It is an excellent film on all fronts, successful at keeping the audience on edge throughout its three-hour runtime.

Aside from The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Great Escape, there aren’t many other high profile ‘Prisoner of War’ films, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of allied men were imprisoned and spent their lives attempting to engineer escape from infamous locations like Colditz.

Stalag 17, directed by the legendary Billy Wilder, is a fictional but fascinating exploration of POW life. Lead character Sefton (played by William Holden) is ostracised by his fellow prisoners for his close fraternisation with their captors and believed to be a spy.

His redemptive journey is heavily comedic in places, as should be expected from the man who created works like The Apartment and Some Like It Hot, but is a tense and enjoyable affair that culminates in a massively fulfilling finale as Sefton attempts to determine who the real culprit is.

Though Holden won an Oscar for the film, it has been somewhat forgotten over time when compared to its aforementioned counterparts, which are frequently shown on television (particularly at Christmas).