It’s a measure of how well Holden utilizes his leading-man status that audiences sympathize with him...even though his character is basically an amoral, selfish jerk.
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As handsome, as talented, and as popular as he was, William Holden isn´t usually mentioned in the same breath as leading men like Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, or even Humphrey Bogart (who looks a bit odd even though he´s one of the coolest actors ever). This is in part because Holden often appeared in movies that were dominated by performers playing larger-than-life parts. In "Network", he wasn´t as over-the-top or crazy as Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway. In "The Bridge on the River Kwai", he was the earnest American who wasn´t as obsessed as Alec Guinness and Sessue Hayakawa. In "Sunset Boulevard", Gloria Swanson so completely dominated the proceedings that it´s easy to forget that many other Hollywood legends appeared in that movie. "Sabrina" and "The Country Girl" are remembered mainly as vehicles for Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.
Yet, when you watch the aforementioned movies and pay attention to Holden, you realize that he´s as good as, if not better than, his co-stars. He sells his parts without disappearing into the background. In this regard, he actually anchors his movies with his aura of conviction and realism.
This isn´t to say that his characters were all models of conviction and realism. Indeed, he was a playboy who was clearly wrong for Audrey Hepburn in "Sabrina", and he was a kept man who had little strength of will in "Sunset Boulevard". He won the Best Actor Oscar for playing an insolent wheelin´-and-dealin´ prisoner of war in "Stalag 17", which re-united Holden and producer-writer-director Billy Wilder three years after they worked on "Sunset Boulevard".
In "Stalag 17", Holden´s character, named Sefton, operates a distillery, stages mice races, fashions a telescope to spy on women prisoners, and conducts other operations designed to win cigarettes and other items from his fellow prisoners. This allows him to barter for food, wine, and cigars with his German captors. This also makes him look like an inside man when two Americans are killed while trying to escape from the prison.
It´s a measure of how well Holden utilizes his leading-man status that audiences sympathize with him right away as he finds himself ostracized and beaten up by his compatriots even though his character is basically an amoral, selfish jerk. Most prisoners worked together in order to procure material comforts. Sefton uses captivity as a way to profit off of less-clever inmates. Yet, he´s not really harming anyone, and whose fault is it when people give Sefton two cigarettes for a shot of schnapps and one cigarette for a twenty-second peek at Russian women undergoing delousing?
The movie as a whole doesn´t fare as well as Holden does. It´s based on a stage play co-written by someone who was a prisoner at Stalag 17, but despite its source in real life, the story begins as a wildly uneven comedy. The Americans talk back to the Germans, and the Germans crack jokes with the Americans. In one scene, the Americans persuade an on-duty German guard to play volleyball with them. The German guard gets so caught up in the game that he hands a rifle to one of the Americans. This absurdity would be amusing if "Stalag 17" were an outright farce, but a certain grimness hangs over the story since it begins with the sudden killings of two escapees.
The second half of the movie is much better than the first half as the comedic elements are sidelined in favor of Sefton quietly observing the others in his quarters to discover the identity of the real inside man. The way that the movie reveals the traitor is expertly handled, and there is a great deal of tension as the story juggles three simultaneous conflicts--whether or not Sefton will get hurt again for the wrong reason, whether or not the traitor will sabotage the Americans´ plan to help an important man escape from Stalag 17, and whether or not the traitor will realize that Sefton is on to him. What´s refreshing about the ending is that Sefton remains a jerk until the end. The other Americans feel badly about mis-treating him, so they can´t reproach Sefton for his lousy attitude.
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