Battle of the Bulge

This Blockbuster is one of the biggest war films ever made. It's a magnificent film, recreating the known offensive by Nazi Panzer tanks on the Belgian front during 1944-45 .What happened during those desperate days that could have changed the course of war is now history . It's well recreated by Ken Annakin for Warner Bros, in Cinerama production with Technicolor cinematography by Jack Hildyard. The producer, Milton Sperling was well-qualified for his job but he was a marine officer and he had 10 combat cameramen, covering three battles during the war and made three documentaries out of those events. Sperling tells that making this film recalled his owns experiences in the war and made it quite possible for the sound effects you heard today to be as realistic as those he heard when was listening to them whining overhead.The making was a logistical problem as almost that of setting up a campaign and putting a film together under any circumstances was very difficult because working under very bad weather conditions. So this whole film was put together, photographed and edited, scored and prepared for release in a matter of about eight months. We scoured Europe,there are places where such tanks do exist,sometimes in junkyards, sometimes in existing armies and just by chance, one finds a cache of tanks, guns,old planes and various other relics .The equipment managed to assemble these great numbers of tanks after looking about for months and months. So what we see on the screen are truly the Tiger tanks that were fought in the battle and the Western Front, no wonder the battle scenes looked so authentic .Robert Shaw ,with his blue eyes blazing, is the fanatical tank commander, he was chosen because he can play virtually anything that's given to him.It was rather an obvious choice , there are so few good actors and he's capable of doing anything. Henry Fonda is terrific, as obstinate officer who finds vital German attacking position. In the remaining supporting cast appear Telly Savallas as a roguish sergeant, James McArthur as an unexperienced young lieutenant, George Montgomery as a valiant veteran sergeant, among others.

The Battle of Bulge film is based on true events about the Ardennes offensive, the real deeds are the following : It was a Hitler's plan code-named ¨Watch on the Rhine¨for a breakthrough by Field Marshal Von Rundstedt aimed at the US line in the Ardennes 16 Dec 1944 . Hitler aimed to isolate the Allied forces north of the corridor which would be created by a drive through the Ardennes, creating a German salient or bulge. There were 77.000 Allied casualties and 130.000 German, including Hitler's last powerful reserve of elite Panzer units. Although US troops were encircled for some weeks at Bastogne, the German counteroffensive failed. Three armies were deployed in the operation- Dietrich's 6th Panzer,the 5th Panzer, and the 7th Panzer-together with a 'Trojan Horse' force of English-speaking in US uniforms under Otto Skorzeny. The offensive opened 16 Dec along 113 Km of the front , aiming at the US 1st Army and General Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group. Initial progress was good as the Allies were unprepared for action along a section of the front hitherto so quiet it had been nicknamed ¨the Ghost Front¨and bad weather grounded Allied air support. However, the Germans failed to capture vital fuel dumps and the dogged Allied defense of St Vith and Bastogne seriously set the operation back. Bastogne was an important road junction, lay in the path of the German advance and was held by the US 101 Airbone Division. It was besieged by German forces 18 Dec and strongly attacked , the defenses were breached in two places . However the attacks were repulsed and was relieved by the US 4th Armored Division, though fierce fighting continued in the area for some days. The Allies quickly recovered from the initial shock and, while north of the Bulge General Bernard Montgomery blocked the German advance at the Meuse, to the south Bradley's forces also struck back, with General Patton breaking through to relieve Bastogne 26 Dec. By the end of Dec the weather improved, allowing the Allied air forces to play a part in the battle and by 3 Jan 1945 the Allies took the offensive , by 16 Jan the Bulge has been eliminated.

I love this movie. Great actors, great scenes. The song the panzer commanders sing is a great moment in movie history.

I read other reviews and many of them I don't understand. Some of them give one star because they say the movie is so historically inaccurate. Was the TV show Combat accurate? Was the popular movie Dirty Dozen accurate? If you want accuracy, stick to the History channel, and even then there will be debates. If you want an entertaining war flick, watch this one! There are none much better.

Another gripe I have with reviews on this movie is with those that question its title. There actually was a Battle of the Bulge in military history. But there never was a "Longest Day" battle. Titles of movies are meant to bring people to the theater, not teach history.

Lest you think I am not an educated reviewer, you should know I was an enlisted Marine, then an Officer of Marines 30 years ago. My family goes back to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WW1, WW2, the Korean War, Vietnam, and afterwards.

Even if I was a fly on the wall watching one of my ancestors participate in the Battle of the Bulge, that would not qualify me to comment on the entire battle. Watch the movie, you will like it for entertainment. Then read a book afterwards if you worry you have not been sufficiently educated.

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.

Let's pretend this movie has nothing to do with the battle in Belgium, winter 1944. The movie is only bad if you associate it too much with the real life events, but if you focus on the amazing line-up of actors, special effects, soundtrack, and battle sequences, it becomes a very interesting and entertaining World War II movie. Although compared to more realistic war movies like Patton, this film serves no real educational value. To me it seems like a WWII fan-fiction of some sort, like a "what-if" scenario. The movie would have probably been ridiculed a lot less if it was titled something different (anything but The Battle of the Bulge), therefore people would just assume it's some sort of war sci-fi movie.

Don't let the title fool you; There's only a few things in the whole movie which actually relate to the Ardennes 1944 (i.e., the snow battles, unexpected German spearheads, General McAuliffe & the "nuts" letter, locations in Malmedy, etc.), meanwhile there's no mention of Patton's relief of Bastogne, which was the the event most people associate with the real battle of the bulge in the first place.

Check this movie out if you'd like to see something different from factual movies. It's a small break from reality, and portrayed in a seemingly fictional (but real, technically) campaign in WWII. It's also a great movie if you like all-star casts and A list actors.

"THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE"-was without a doubt an archetypal studio war movie,since this one is really quite faithful to the broad outlines and details of a real campaign,and then fills out the running time with ridiciously unrealistic Hollywood heroics. The combination is somehow much more entertaining that it ought to be. Veteran director Ken Annakin knows how to keep this sort of sprawling material in line,and even if the two leads are doing a bit of slumming,they're as good as they used to be.

As the synopsis of the story goes it is December,1944 and American troops and officers advancing toward Germany think that the war is over. They're on cruise control waiting for orders to return home. But Colonel Kiley(Henry Fonda)who's a cop in civilian life,has a hunch that the enemy is up to something. On a reconaissance flight,he spots Colonel Hessler(Robert Shaw)in the back of a big black convertible. Kiley also spots some Tiger tanks and thinks that he has discovered the first evidence of the counteroffensive. His superiors,General Gray (Robert Ryan),and Colonel Pritchard(Dana Andrews) are skeptical. Meanwhile,right at the point of the German attack,Major Wolenski's(Charles Bronson)men are hunkered in a bunker and trying to stay warm. Sargent Duquesne(George Montgomery)keeps wet-behind-the-ears Lt. Weaver (James MacArthur)from getting himself killed,and Guffy(Telly Savalas)uses his Sherman tank to distribute black market wine,eggs,and nylons. The script by John Melson and producers Phillip Yordan and Milton Sperling neatly juggles those plot elements,bringing them all together only at a wonderfully preposterous conclusion.

The various battle scenes vary widely in quality. Some of the destruction seems shockingly real while the occasional shots of model tanks and trains are so jarring that they're unintentionally funny. Director Kenneth Annakin realizes how those deep,ratting,clanking sound effects are to cinematic tanks,and he uses every note in his repertoire. He understands the importance of setting,and gives the film an appropriately bleak,muddy,snow-covered feel. Since the film was released in Christmas of 1965,and was originally made for the ultra-widescreen process Cinerama(the first film presented in this format for Warner Bors. Pictures and was filmed in Ultra Panavision), much of the scope of the big scenes is lost in the conventional pan-and-scan transfer(it has been restored for its release on DVD). The best way to see this is in theatres that had the Cinerama process. The tank battles in particular have almost nothing to do with the realiities of war,but the filmmakers don't take as many liberties as they might have.

The Germans did time the attack to take advantage of poor weather-"night,fog and snow,"as Hitler put it-to keep Allied airplanes on the ground. They hoped that stopping the Allies would give them take to take more advantage of their secret-weapons programs and V-2 attacks. The attack was led by a young tank general,and his supplies of fuel were so critically low that his forces were expected to forage for it. The filmmakers made use of all these points,especially with the battle sequences and stunning photography throughout. When it was released in 1965,the film's original running time of 167 minutes long. The most widely available tape version of the film is at 141 minutes and was re-released back in theatres with given running times of 156,and 163 minutes long. When it was restored,the producers resurrected the original negatives to its standard running time of 167 minutes,which is now out on DVD.