King Rat

Most Prisoner of War films pivot on some element of planned escape. The protagonists’ goal usually entails attempts to elude their captors through clandestine collaboration and elaborate preparation. British director Bryan Forbes’ 1965 picture King Rat deviates sharply from that plot pattern, presenting a population of prisoners who concern themselves with trying to simply stay alive and sane, and for whom the notion of escape never enters the mental equation. Emancipation eventually comes, but its arrival is anticlimactic and carries with it negative implications along with the obvious positive ones. The story’s de facto polestar is Corporal King, played with vernal brio by George Segal, still two years away from his Oscar nod for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? King takes his surname seriously and is respected (often grudgingly) as the go-to-man: the guy who can get anything for a price and pocket a profit in the bargain. Within the constricted and hierarchical economy of the camp, his gift for graft has blossomed. He’s charismatic, but not sympathetic, a self-serving chiseler who usually has a half dozen schemes operating at any one time.

The camp itself presents a fascinating social ecosystem. Situated in a rural region of occupied Singapore, the natural topography of jungle and ocean serves as an intangible set of stockade walls. British, American and Australian officers occupy shanty huts outside a walled compound where their Japanese jailers and enlisted internees reside. Free to wander about the rocky terrain, none of the officers sees the relatively lax security as a reason to flee. The system of segregation is almost a reverse of the usual penal configuration and the Japanese are barely visible at all through the first two thirds of the film, their presence mainly felt in the despairing countenances of the captives. A hill littered with corporal punishment devices termed “boar holes” hints at off-screen brutality, but is never elaborated. Forbes and his production team do an excellent job conveying the demoralizing nature of the surroundings from the oppressive sun and humidity to the filth and disease that invests the camp. The men are clad in a disheveled and sweat-stained mixture of uniform remnants, subsisting on shark meat soup and generally displaying a realistic degree of misery through a profusion of perspiration. Only King stands out with his pressed pants and starched shirt, implicit symbols of his disparate wealth. Still, a sense of military decorum endures, however pliable to the realities of the camp.

Co-star James Fox plays Marlowe, a British officer invited into King’s inner circle by virtue of his fluency in Malay. The two strike up a friendship that takes on vaguely homoerotic overtones in the film’s second act. Tom Courtney is Colonel Grey, King’s adversary, an officer who chafes repeatedly at his transgressions and cannot condone the corruptions and hypocrisies that are so ingrained in daily camp life. Despite a deft portrayal, his behavior veers very close to caricature in his blind obeisance of military code. When alerted by a superior to his own contradictions in comportment he very nearly short circuits from the moral strain. A series of vignettes illustrates King’s con skills, among them the titular swindle of raising and selling rodents disguised as Malay delicacy meat to unsuspecting officers in the camp. Another involves a boiled dog stew made from a fellow prisoner’s executed pet. It’s a wonderfully telling scene as the men are initially repulsed by the meal, but eventually acquiesce when exposed to the savory odors and set about devouring the food with Bacchanalian relish. The series of sharply edited close-ups reveals both the depths of their hunger and a renewed sense of camaraderie that results from the feast. As with the best prison films, Forbes excels at exposing how the men make do with so little and how each tiny luxury, from a fried egg to a cigarette can mean the difference between solace and despair.

Various other British and American character actors supplement the cast, among them Denholm Elliott as a good-natured member of King’s coterie and Patrick O’Neal as his hapless lackey. There’s even a cameo by a pre-Family Feud Richard Dawson as a paratrooper sent to “liberate” the camp. The film falls apart somewhat in its final segment, resorting to a sermonizing comeuppance for one of the characters, but it also has the courage to take the viewer through the consequences of the camp’s dissolution. Despite their newly gained freedom, the men of the Changi Jail exit the bamboo gates of the prison far from intact.