BY DOUG OSWALD
In
the days before cable, video and on-line streaming, classic movie fans had to
work for their movie watching pleasure by hunting through local weekly
schedules based on what local broadcasters chose to schedule. Adventure movies,
comedies, war movies and westerns have always been at the top of my classic
movie viewing list. “The Password is Courage†is one of those movies discovered
years ago that remains a favorite of mine. Maybe because its a sort of big brother
to the Grand Poobah of all prisoner of war movies, “The Great Escape,†which
was released a year later in 1963.
The
movie, based on the true story of Sergeant Major Charlie Coward, is a
remarkable yet easy-going tale. One almost feels as though life was not all
that bad in a German POW camp during WWII. If the movie has a fault, it’s that
it treats the subject a little too cavalier at times. It’s a very minor
objection because the humor is always at the expense of the German captors and everything
else about this movie is pure movie watching joy.
Dirk
Bogarde is perfectly cast as Charlie Coward, a man with an ironic name which
must have played a part in making him anything but a coward. The German
Luftwaffe ran POW camps through most of the war because most allied military
prisoners were aviators and air crew until the Normandy invasion in 1944. The
Germans also commonly segregated their camps by nationality and separated
officers and enlisted men into separate camps. Sergeant Major Charlie Coward
was among the senior enlisted members of one such camp, Stalag VIII-B Lamsdorf,
in what is now part of Poland.
The
movie is based on the popular book of the same name by Ronald Charles Payne and
John William Garrote writing as John Castle. Coward was transferred to
Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp which was near the infamous Auschwitz II-Birkenau
extermination camp which Coward allegedly infiltrated in a failed attempt to
liberate a Jewish doctor. According to the book, he also aided in the
liberation of hundreds of Jews, but Coward’s involvement in these activities is
debated.