Escape to Victory

Escape to Victory (1981)

Timing: 1:56 (116 min)

6.9/10
871

6.559/10
2393

6.7/10
36000

All about film

Video 1

Photo 35

Actors and characters

Release date

1981-06-17

Country

Italy, United Kingdom, United States

Production

Paramount, Lorimar Productions

Genre

Drama, War

Budget

$10 000 000

Revenue

$10 853 418

Website

Director

John Huston

Actors

Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, Max von Sydow, Pelé, Carole Laure, Bobby Moore, Osvaldo Ardiles, Paul Van Himst, Kazimierz Deyna, Mike Summerbee
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Freddie Fields, Gordon McLendon

Operator

Gerry Fisher

Composer

Bill Conti

Artist

Audition

Rose Tobias Shaw

Editing

Roberto Silvi
All team (27)

• The English football club Ipswich Town participated in the filming of the movie.
• Clint Eastwood, Lloyd Bridges, and Alain Delon were originally intended to star in the film.
• Filming took place from August to November 1980 in Budapest and Paris.
• In the suburbs of Budapest, on the grounds of the former Allag stables, a prison set was built on an area of 1.2 hectares. Construction took three months.
• The MTK stadium in Budapest was used to depict the Parisian Colombes stadium where the match takes place. The producers chose MTK because it closely resembled Colombes, specifically because it lacked artificial lighting (artificial lighting on stadiums didn't appear until after World War II). Today, this stadium belongs to the Hungarian football club MTK.
• All the extras in the film were local residents. Some speaking roles were also played by Hungarian actors. For example, in the scene where the guards discover the escape, one of them speaks not German, but Hungarian. One of the Resistance members speaks English with a strong Hungarian accent.
• Sylvester Stallone wanted to appear in all the match scenes without a stunt double. He had begun training on a football field even during the filming of his previous movie, 'Nighthawks' (1981). His coach was British goalkeeper Gordon Banks, who played on a World Cup-winning team.
• Before filming, Sylvester Stallone lost 40 pounds because he believed a prisoner of war shouldn't look “like an Olympic weightlifter.”
• On the first day of filming, Stallone acted recklessly and threw himself into the thick of the fight for the ball. As a result, he fell, dislocated his shoulder, broke a rib, and was forced to leave the set for several days. After that, a stunt double was assigned to him to replace him in the most dangerous moments. Despite the double's help, Stallone sustained several more injuries. While attempting to take the ball from Pelé, he broke another rib and a finger. After filming, he said that playing football was harder than boxing in 'Rocky'.
• Of all those who played members of the Allied team, only Stallone and Michael Caine are professional actors. The rest are professional footballers.
• Eighteen international football stars appeared in the film.
• Kevin O'Callaghan, who played the goalkeeper with a broken arm, had never actually stood in goal. He was a midfielder, playing for Ipswich, Portsmouth, and the Irish national team.
• Footballer Mike Summerbee became friends with Michael Caine during filming. After retiring from sports, Summerbee started producing t-shirts, and Caine became his favorite customer.
• In 2011, Vinnie Jones announced that he was planning a remake of the film starring himself and David Beckham. But the project remains just an idea for now.
• Pelé was not only an actor, but also a stunt choreographer on the football field. He notably demonstrated his signature move – a bicycle kick while falling.
• The film is based on real events related to the famous “Match of Death” which took place in Kyiv in 1942. At that time, the Ukrainian team “Start” won a football match against a team from the German Luftwaffe. Subsequently, all the players of “Start” were arrested, and many of them died in a concentration camp.
• It is said that Sylvester Stallone wanted his character to score the winning goal, as he is the main star of the film. The screenwriters barely managed to convince him that the goalkeeper was unlikely to score a goal against the opposing team. Eventually, Stallone agreed to a version where his character takes a very difficult shot during a penalty kick.