Uma Batalha no Inferno

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.

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 few years before this was released, there was "The Longest Day" - a movie version of the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. That was a very good movie with a star-studded cast. I'm guessing that "Battle of the Bulge" was an attempt to unofficially follow up on that movie. It's not as star-studded (although there's a bit of cross over in the cast, most notably Henry Fonda.) Truthfully, though, this movie is nowhere near as good as "The Longest Day."

It's supposed to be an account of The Battle of The Bulge, which took place in December of 1944. It was the last significant German offensive of the war, intended to break through the Allied lines and re- capture the port city of Antwerp, Belgium - thus throwing Allied supply lines into chaos. The movie gets some things right. The Germans did, indeed, get troops disguised as American MPs behind the American lines, and they were able to cause confusion and chaos. The Germans were also woefully short of fuel, and had targeted an American supply depot which would have given them access to a huge amount of gasoline for their tanks. The famous demand for the surrender of Bastogne, and the reply of the commanding American general to that demand - "NUTS!" - is accurate. But there are also a lot of problems with the historical accuracy of the film. First is that all of the characters are just that - characters. Composites, perhaps, but there's no portrayal of anyone who actually fought in the battle. There's also no mention at all of General George Patton's 3rd Army dramatically saving the besieged Americans at Bastogne. That's one of the better known incidents of the Battle of the Bulge, and why you wouldn't even mention it is beyond me. Many, of course, note the problem that the tanks used in the movie were of a much later vintage, and were't an accurate representation of the tanks that would have been used.

At best, I'd say that this movie was OK. Terrible if you're thinking that you're learning much history from it, but OK as a movie that's somewhat dramatic, and I thought it was a reasonable portrayal of the ugliness of war - the Malmedy massacre (the cold blooded murders of Americans who had been taken prisoner by German SS troops) was portrayed, for example.

I'd definitely say that if I were going to watch either again, I'd take in "The Longest Day." It's the better movie. This one gets a 5/10 from me.