This Great Escape

The Case of Michael Paryla

Nonfiction, Entertainment, Film, History & Criticism, Performing Arts, Biography & Memoir, Entertainment & Performing Arts
Cover of the book This Great Escape by Andrew Steinmetz, Biblioasis
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Andrew Steinmetz ISBN: 9781927428344
Publisher: Biblioasis Publication: September 18, 2013
Imprint: Biblioasis Language: English
Author: Andrew Steinmetz
ISBN: 9781927428344
Publisher: Biblioasis
Publication: September 18, 2013
Imprint: Biblioasis
Language: English

SHORTLISTED FOR THE $60,000 HILARY WESTON WRITERS TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION

“What the hell kind of great escape is this? No one escapes!”
-L.B. Mayer, on the 1963 film

He had fifty-seven seconds of screen time in the most lavish POW film Hollywood ever produced. He was blond. A Gestapo agent. Sauntering down the aisles of a speeding train, he speaks in terse German to Richard Attenborough, Gordon Jackson, David McCallum. The film is The Great Escape (by John Sturges, starring Steve McQueen); the actor, though uncredited, is Michael Paryla. He was part Jewish. Shortly after filming he died.

In This Great Escape, Andrew Steinmetz tenderly reconstructs the life of a man seen by millions yet recognized by no one, whose history-from childhood flight from Nazism to suspicious death twenty years later-intersects bitterly, ironically, and often movingly with the plot of Sturges’s great war film. Splicing together documentary materials with correspondence, diary entries, and Steinmetz’s own travel journal, This Great Escape does more than reconstruct the making of a cinema classic: it is a poignant and moving testament to the complexity of human experience, a portrait of a family for whom acting was a matter of survival, and proof that our most anonymous, uncredited, and undocumented moments can brush against the zeitgeist of world history.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

SHORTLISTED FOR THE $60,000 HILARY WESTON WRITERS TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION

“What the hell kind of great escape is this? No one escapes!”
-L.B. Mayer, on the 1963 film

He had fifty-seven seconds of screen time in the most lavish POW film Hollywood ever produced. He was blond. A Gestapo agent. Sauntering down the aisles of a speeding train, he speaks in terse German to Richard Attenborough, Gordon Jackson, David McCallum. The film is The Great Escape (by John Sturges, starring Steve McQueen); the actor, though uncredited, is Michael Paryla. He was part Jewish. Shortly after filming he died.

In This Great Escape, Andrew Steinmetz tenderly reconstructs the life of a man seen by millions yet recognized by no one, whose history-from childhood flight from Nazism to suspicious death twenty years later-intersects bitterly, ironically, and often movingly with the plot of Sturges’s great war film. Splicing together documentary materials with correspondence, diary entries, and Steinmetz’s own travel journal, This Great Escape does more than reconstruct the making of a cinema classic: it is a poignant and moving testament to the complexity of human experience, a portrait of a family for whom acting was a matter of survival, and proof that our most anonymous, uncredited, and undocumented moments can brush against the zeitgeist of world history.

More books from Biblioasis

Cover of the book An Aesthetic Underground by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book Border Cities Powerhouse: 1901-1945 by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book The Rumrunners by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book The Redemption of Galen Pike by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book Bush Runner by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book The Meagre Tarmac by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book Lives of the Poets (with Guitars) by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book God's Plenty by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book The Empty House by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book I Was There the Night He Died by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book The Iconoclast's Journal by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book Transparent City by Andrew Steinmetz
Cover of the book Let the Empire Down by Andrew Steinmetz
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy