Who directed the 1963 prisoner-of-war film The Great Escape?

John Sturges directed the 1963 prisoner-of-war film The Great Escape.

The film is based on Paul Brickhill’s 1950 nonfiction book about a mass escape from Stalag Luft III, a German camp for captured Allied airmen. The screenplay dramatizes the planning of three tunnels, code-named Tom, Dick and Harry, and the escape that followed.

Steve McQueen plays Captain Virgil Hilts, an American character created for the film rather than a direct portrait of a single historical escapee. James Garner, Richard Attenborough and Charles Bronson are among the other major performers.

The production used historical material but altered events and characters for dramatic effect. The famous motorcycle chase is fictional, and the real escape involved 76 prisoners rather than the film’s simplified presentation. Sturges’s direction helped make the film a landmark of escape cinema.