An American POW leads a group of mainly British prisoners to escape from the Germans in WWII.An American POW leads a group of mainly British prisoners to escape from the Germans in WWII.An American POW leads a group of mainly British prisoners to escape from the Germans in WWII.
- Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 1 win & 3 nominations total
Raffaella Carrà
- Gabriella
- (as Raffaella Carra)
John Van Dreelen
- Col. Gortz
- (as John van Dreelen)
Ian Abercrombie
- English POW
- (uncredited)
Don Ames
- Prisoner of War
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaMichael Goodliffe, who plays Capt. Stein, was an actual Prisoner of War during WWII. He was captured at Dunkirk and spent the next five years in a German POW camp.
- GoofsAfter Italy's surrender is announced, Ryan claims that Battaglia is now a civilian, not an army officer. This is incorrect, and the characters would have known his proper (and unchanged) status. Although it surrendered, Italy continued to be a country with a proper government and military forces. Battaglia would have been an officer in a non-belligerent (but untrusted) military.
- Quotes
Maj. Eric Fincham: It would take you too long to strangle a man, Colonel. The average Nazi would get impatient while you were doing it.
- Crazy creditsThe film credits and all promotion publicity still say "A Cinemascope Picture", and Alfred Newman's "extended" 20th Century-Fox fanfare is still heard on the soundtrack as the picture begins, but most of the film was actually shot in Panavision, at Frank Sinatra's insistence.
- Alternate versionsWhen originally released theatrically in the UK, the BBFC made cuts to secure a 'U' rating. All cuts were waived in 1988 when the film was granted a 'PG' certificate for home video.
- ConnectionsEdited into Galactica 1980: Galactica Discovers Earth: Part 2 (1980)
Featured review
It begins slow and gets faster and faster until the end. The color is wonderful and the music from Jerry Goldsmith well tuned to each scene. The screenplay is well adapted and the special effects good executed. The train scenes are very interesting to see and for all old locomotive lovers a must see. I liked the escape by train from south of Italy to the mountains of Switzerland.
I share the opinions on IMDb that Frank Sinatra delivered one of his best performance of his career. Interesting seeing also Wolfgang Preiss that has for me the right profile for a SS. He characterizes in several war movies always a high SS and this in a very believable way. The end therefore was very poor and it seemed to me that they wanted just to stop somewhere the story.
After THE TRAIN with Burt Lancaster and THE GREAT ESCAPE with Steve Mc Queen this is another good adventure war movie to add to my best of DVD collection. If you ask me which one of these three I like the most I would classify it as follows: 1) THE GREAT ESCAPE (read my critic) 2) VON RYAN'S EXPRESS 3) THE TRAIN (black and white, read my critic)
My vote: 7/10 that matches exactly the rating on IMDb.
I share the opinions on IMDb that Frank Sinatra delivered one of his best performance of his career. Interesting seeing also Wolfgang Preiss that has for me the right profile for a SS. He characterizes in several war movies always a high SS and this in a very believable way. The end therefore was very poor and it seemed to me that they wanted just to stop somewhere the story.
After THE TRAIN with Burt Lancaster and THE GREAT ESCAPE with Steve Mc Queen this is another good adventure war movie to add to my best of DVD collection. If you ask me which one of these three I like the most I would classify it as follows: 1) THE GREAT ESCAPE (read my critic) 2) VON RYAN'S EXPRESS 3) THE TRAIN (black and white, read my critic)
My vote: 7/10 that matches exactly the rating on IMDb.
- Luigi Di Pilla
- Jun 19, 2005
- Permalink
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- Colonel von Ryans Expreß
- Filming locations
- Málaga, Andalucía, Spain(final shootout on rail track on mountain)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $5,760,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 57 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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