Battle of the Bulge

Battle of the Bulge (1965) is a massive joke of a film. Everything about this movie is wrong. The movie plays out as a comedy instead of a serious action/war film. When I did a paper on this historic battle in high school, I remembered the battle occurred in a forest, not a dry and arid even battle field. Whilst spending a lot of shekels on this production, they did a bad job of recreating tanks for the battle. They all looked the same (except with different insignias) and plastic toys were used for the most part. One of my biggest pet peeves in war movies is the use of bad accents. Why do the "enemy" soldiers have to speak to each other in broken English? Do they have a problem communicating to one another in their own language? This movie is wrong on so many levels. I have seen smaller budget movies and made-for-television productions to a better job of recreating this historic battle. If you want to see a serious adaptation of the Battle of the Bulge, look elsewhere. But if you want to see a bad movie filled with over the top acting, stereotypical Germans and high octane diesel fuel and easily exploding oil drums then you'll want to watch this laughable excuse for a movie. Keep in mind that a big studio bankrolled this one. Not recommended.

I understand that sometimes you just don't have the budget to make a big war movie. If that's the case, you better a) reduce your ambitions (and your spectator's expectations) or b) forget the project altogether. Don't hire Fonda, Savallas, Bronson and other big names, let them work in something more useful. If you're going to make a movie on the Battle of the Ardennes (the Bulge for the Americans), at least make sure that you will be filming in wintry and snowy conditions. Not saying that you should film here in Canada, but if you go to central Spain in autumn, it's pretty sure you will not have a lot of snow. If I do a film on a major battle of WW2 in my backyard, with some friends and a hand-held camera, it's OK to use any kind of tank (I got a real tank for my movie, wow !), or maybe a badly disguised Chevy 1962 with a rusty pipe as a cannon. But if I had such a cast and a studio behind me, I can not get by using some '50s tanks from the Spanish Army. And if you want to make a movie on a battle that important, which veterans of both sides will certainly watch, at least show some respect and hire a historian, consultant or whatever, and get a script that includes some realities and not only outright fantasies. The last scene, with a whole German Panzer division charging at high speed (Tigers moving at some 40mph!! Without infantry !) against a fuel dump is just ridiculous. Fonda saving the Allies single-handedly? I guess the guys who stood up against the Germans in Bastogne or the German Panzer crews would have something to say. That's not just an "historical inaccuracy", it's like making the Martians appear in the middle of the battle in a flying saucer and blow up the whole German Army. Beyond ludicrous. Bottom line is, if you don't have the money, the locations, the resources, the information to make a historical war movie, just don't bother. If you go forward anyway, well, the result is this cheap, nationalist (in a bad sense), flat, boring and ridiculous mess.

What can I say? Anyone who has seen this movie and knows anything about WWII and the (real) Battle of the Bulge has two choices -- to laugh or to cry. Laugh because this movie has nothing to do with what went on in Belgium in December, 1944. Cry, because it did a tremendous disservice to those on all sides who participated in that battle and to other, infinitely better, depictions of that campaign and period of the war (e.g., "Battleground", "Band of Brothers"). From the "Tigers" (US M-48 tanks painted gray with German crosses) to the lack of anything resembling actual military deportment or tactics, to the filming locations (Fort Hood, Texas just doesn't look like Bastogne -- Pennsylvania would have been a better choice), this movie is every bit as much a stinker as "Battle of the Last Panzer". "Battle of the Bulge" is typical of other "big concept" novel-based movies like "The Longest Day" (another travesty especially when compared to the likes of "Saving Private Ryan"). I vote this as a contender for one of the worst movies ever made.

After 20th Century Fox had put out The Longest Day to such critical and popular success, you might have thought that Warner Brothers would have learned and copied that formula. They even hired Ken Annakin who was one of the directors for The Longest Day. But if you are looking for the names of Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, Hodges, and Montgomery on the Allied side and Von Rundstedt and Model among the Germans you will be disappointed. All the names of the principals are changed. Folks like Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, and Dana Andrews are playing fictionalized characters. A couple of things are brought in mainly because they are part of the legend of the Bulge, the Malmedy Massacre and the famous reply of General McAuliffe to the German inquiry about surrendering the besieged town of Bastogne. In fact the latter is just dropped into the story without any of the principal players involved. I guess the producers had a thought that no film about the Bulge would be accepted without it, no matter how forced. It would have been nice if a straight dramatic narrative approach had been used like The Longest Day. With of course the names of the real people. Part of the Bulge story was told in MGM's Battleground and in Patton. In this film the best performances are that of Robert Shaw as the fanatical Nazi Panzer commander and his war weary aide Hans Christian Blech. Honorable mention should also go to George Montgomery as a tough American sergeant and his lieutenant James MacArthur who grows in stature thanks to Montgomery's example. For a film that is more than two and a half hours in length, I'd have liked to have seen the real deal though.

Battle Of The Bulge is a fictionalised account of the battle of the Ardennes in December 1944. Directed by Ken Annakin, it's an ensemble piece that stars notably Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, Robert Shaw, Charles Bronson, George Montgomery, Telly Savalas and Dana Andrews. Rightly criticised for its approach to the actual event, one could forgive this failing if the film wasn't so immeasurably dull. I came across a quote for the film that said it was 101 war film making for children. Never has a used quote been so apt as that one for a war film. The actors either look bored or turn in wooden performances, the latter probably prompted by the insipid script from Philip Yordan & Milton Sperling. While the action scenes are constructed like some cardboard cut-out game taking place on the dining room table. It also unsuccessfully tries to blend humour with its serious intents, a blend that just comes off as confusion. There's some worth in this being a film about tank battle {a mighty piece of weaponry indeed}, but no this really is a poor genre offering that can't even be saved by the star wattage meant to propel it forward. 3/10

December 1944. The Germans launch their last major offensive in the west. The plan is to break through the Allied lines at several points in the hilly, densely wooded Ardennes region of Belgium and make an all out drive to recapture the port of Antwerp, thereby cutting the Allied forces in two. The Allies cannot use their air superiority due to dense fog covering the region. The task of stopping the vast armoured advance falls to small groups of US soldiers making a stand wherever possible. I really have mixed feelings towards this film. In terms of historical, geographical and meteorological accuracy, it's an utter shambles from start to finish. All the characters are ficticious (some are obviously composites of real participants in the battle). A fact already well documented is the use of '50s/'60s US tanks to represent the German Tigers and US Shermans. There is no mention whatsoever of the fact that General Patton managed to basically turn the advance of his 3rd Army through 90 degrees, then head north to break through to the 101st Airborne at Bastogne. Finally, to suggest that the Germans ran out of fuel and simply 'walked back to Germany' is plain insulting. The geographical errors are also quite glaring. During the first half of the film these errors can be largely overlooked. However, from the artillery train sequence onwards to the climactic tank battle, the terrain looks more like Arizona than the Ardennes! (vast desert like plains). Then, as if all that isn't bad enough, there's the weather. The winter of '44/'45 was one of the worst in recent history. In the Ardennes that meant deep snow, freezing temperatures and thick fog. Apart from some snowy scenes early on, there isn't much evidence of any of this! Considering all the inaccuracies catalogued above, I should despise this film, but I don't. Taken on its' level, it's quite enjoyable. It has a strong cast; Robert Shaw and Hans Christian Blech are both very good, Charles Bronson was an old hand at these all star extravaganzas, and Henry Fonda exudes his usual quiet dignity. The script, if a bit hokey, is no worse than others from the period and the cinematography and score are fine. The battle scenes are professionally staged and comparison with modern war films would be unfair. A point worth noting is the fact that this film has been cut in recent years. The missing scenes are briefly:- 1. The introduction of the Germans dressed as US MPs. 2. Shaw inspecting his tanks. 3. A conversation between Fonda and Bronson. 4. A lengthy sequence in Ambleve with a conversation between Shaw and Bronson, followed by an attempt on Shaw's life by a young boy. The boy's life is spared but his father is executed. The missing footage accounts for roughly 10 minutes of running time. The quoted running time on most reference works is 167 mins., which I assume includes the overture, intermission music and exit music. This would seem to be correct, for if my old widescreen VHS copy contained the missing scenes (the music is all present) it would run approx. 160 mins.(running time is speeded up on PAL). But I digress. Overall then, a film with some very major flaws. If you're expecting a film in the same vein as 'The Longest Day' or 'A Bridge Too Far' you'll be terribly disappointed. If you can accept it as a fictional account of the battle however, and can view the complete version, then it's well worth a look.

A disclaimer on the end credits states, in effect, that the events and people in this picture bear no relationship to a battle by the same name that took place in WW II. Filmmakers have dealt with the problem of filming the big event in various ways; some show many fragments, following individuals here and there; some concentrate on the view of the generals, with long-shots of big battles; some opt for telling just a little part of the big picture, a microcosm. The solution here is to pretend that only a few dozen people were actually involved in the whole campaign. One has to assume that someone had a cavalry western script but realized westerns weren't selling any more, so they sold it by doing a quick rewrite to make it a war movie. Henry Fonda is the grizzled scout who insists the Indians are about to attack, based on his reading of the signs in the dirt, and who pulls his boss, the general, out of the fire time and again. Yes, it's Hank who, in the first skirmish, moves up to see if the Indians have a cache of rifles, who recognizes their leader as an escaped renegade fighter-Indian, who discovers that the friendly Crows at the pass are actually deadly Apaches in disguise, who, at a number of critical points, goes out with his young partner to scout around and comes back to the campfire with vital information, who realizes that the big battle is actually a ruse for the Indians to send a party to the water hole to fill their canteens with badly needed water, and who, with an arrow sticking through his shoulder, singlehandedly leads a few raw recruits in a clever maneuver to keep the Indians from the water hole and saves the day. In the last shot, the Indians march back to the reservation across the desert. The Fonda character, in particular, seems to still be in that western. He isn't just A scout, he's THE scout, the only scout, and all intelligence info that's important to the battle is his. The other characters fit the western mold pretty well also, including Shaw's Nazi. Only the Savalas character is indelibly out of WW II (or, more accurately, out of the Bilko show).

source: Battle of the Bulge

Trailer—Battle of the Bulge

Battle of the Bulge