In the annals of movie coolness, few things beat Steve McQueen jumping a motorcycle over a barbed-wire fence to escape the Nazis. The facts that it never happened in real life and that it was a stuntman in the movie don't matter where coolness is concerned. The Great Escape is one of the classic Manly Guy Movies, and has been adored since it came out in 1963. Why do we love it so? Let's fill our pants with dirt and investigate.

The praise: The only recognition for The Great Escape at Oscar time was a nomination for editing. The Golden Globes, always a more populist affair, nominated it for best motion picture (drama). Released in the summer of 1963, it was one of the year's biggest box-office hits, and for a long time thereafter was a perennial favorite on British TV. As of this writing, it is the 109th highest-rated film of all time according to Internet Movie Database users.

The context: The Great Escape is a war movie, but it owes some of its success to another genre: the Western. The director, John Sturges, was best known for his work in that area (Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Magnificent Seven), and the film's top-billed actors, Steve McQueen and James Garner, had become stars by headlining popular Western TV series: Wanted: Dead or Alive and Maverick, respectively. And while Hollywood was producing far fewer World War II-based movies in the early 1960s than it had in the '40s and '50s -- and would make even fewer war films once Vietnam kicked in -- the Western still had some cultural cachet, especially on television.

There's something Western-like in the mood of The Great Escape, too -- something Magnificent Seven-like, to be more specific. Both films are about groups of rugged but otherwise very different men working together to accomplish a difficult task for the greater good. In addition to being directed by John Sturges, both movies also feature Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn, and an iconic musical score by Elmer Bernstein.

The historical event that inspired the film was immortalized in a 1950 book by Paul Brickhill, who had been one of the participants. Intrigued by the story, Sturges tried for several years to get a film adaptation off the ground, and was only able to do so after the success of Magnificent Seven. (The same production company, the Mirisch Corporation, was involved on both.) Several writers worked on the screenplay, even after shooting had begun on location in Germany. In real life, no American POWs were part of the escape; in the film, McQueen and Garner's characters are key. McQueen demanded that his role be beefed up, and left the set for several weeks while rewrites occurred. It was also at his insistence that his character became a skilled motorcyclist. As if to vindicate McQueen's behavior, the motorcycle jump near the end became one of the movie's most famous images, and his status as a bona fide Hollywood star was cemented by his cool on-screen behavior.

The reviews were largely positive, save for one pan in the New York Times: "It is callow and obvious play-acting, and the whole picture is that way, aimed to inveigle the viewer with blunt, chauvinistic showiness -- all 2 hours and 50 minutes of it." The reviewer, Bosley Crowther, mostly took issue with the movie's cavalier treatment of the facts. "Nobody is going to con me ... into believing that the spirit of defiance in any prisoner-of-war camp anywhere was as arrogant, romantic and Rover Boyish as it is made to appear in this film," he wrote. More typical was Variety's review, which acknowledged that certain parts of the film occurred "at the ... expense of reality" while calling it "a motion picture that entertains, captivates, thrills and stirs."

The movie: During World War II, dozens of airmen at a POW camp for officers scheme to perpetrate an escape that can only be called great: they will dig a tunnel under the camp and allow not one or two or a few but 250 men to flee the Germans.

What it influenced: Homages are numerous. In The Goonies (1985), the kids find a hidden tunnel by accidentally spilling water into it, just as the German guards do with coffee. The same musical cue plays, too. Tom Selleck jumps over a fence on a motorcycle in 3 Men and a Little Lady (1990). Tim Robbins gets rid of dirt by hiding it in his pants in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). (That trick was also used in The Grand Illusion [1937], and in the actual Great Escape incident. Maybe the real prisoners got the idea from Grand Illusion?) In Ocean's Eleven (2001), Carl Reiner uses the same Russian phrase as a password that Charles Bronson taught to James Coburn. Chicken Run (2000) is basically The Great Escape but with chickens, which I assume is how it was pitched to the studio.

And let us not forget the extended parody included in the 1992 Simpsons episode "A Streetcar Named Marge." The main story has Marge doing a musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire, of course, but the subplot has Maggie organizing an escape from her daycare center. The musical theme from The Great Escape is featured, as are several details like Maggie throwing a ball against the wall the way McQueen's character does when he's in The Cooler.

The long-running TV series Hogan's Heroes (1965-71) was alleged to have been ripped off from the 1953 film Stalag 17, but the prison camp and its relaxed atmosphere bore a closer resemblance to The Great Escape. Either way, it's doubtful that a sitcom set in a Nazi POW camp would have been given the green light if there hadn't recently been a very popular movie on more or less the same subject.

What to look for: 'Tis a jaunty film indeed, far jauntier than you might expect given that it's about prisoners of war being held by the Germans. We're 90 minutes into it before anyone dies, and things do start to get somewhat more serious once the escape takes place. But the first half of the movie is lighthearted, sometimes downright funny. Though it's dedicated to the memories of those who lost their lives in the escape, and though no one doubts Sturges' sincerity in admiring the people involved, it's clear that the movie's purpose is to serve as entertainment -- as escapism.

What's the big deal: Within a few years, America's involvement in the Vietnam War would sour audiences on war movies, especially ones that focused on adventure and excitement rather than the cruel, bloody realities. The Great Escape was one of the last big movies in that old style before this shift happened. It assured Steve McQueen's title as the King of Cool, a position he held for the rest of the decade in films like The Cincinnati Kid, The Sand Pebbles, The Thomas Crown Affair, and Bullitt. Within the subgenre of prison-break movies, The Great Escape remains a touchstone, the prototype by which all others are judged. It's also pretty instructive, should you ever find yourself in a POW camp and desirous of escape.

Further reading: If you're interested in the true facts behind the movie, this site has done a fairly elaborate job of pinning them down.