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.

"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.

VIEWED ON REGION 1 DVD FROM WARNER BROTHERS

This big, bloated epic re-creation of the battle which turned the tide of World War II manages to be on the most historically inaccurate and over-blown adventure pieces ever produced. It's also one of the most entertaining war movies to grace the big screen. The combination of heroics and history shouldn't work as well as it does.

Writers John Melson, Philip Yordan and Milton Sperling remain faithful to the broad outlines of the real battle, and then fill their story with several important fictional characters, and director Ken Annakin uses a combination of Hollywood heroics and historical accuracy to deliver an entertaining tale. The film relies solely on the excellently-shot action sequences and superb acting by the leads to hold it together.

Veteran director Ken Annakin knows how to make this film work. In the lead, Henry Fonda ("Midway") seems to be having plenty of fun as Colonel Kiley. He gets to argue with people, shoot at Germans, fly in a plane, and even help fend off a Panzer attack – not bad for a civilian-turned-soldier, eh? On the flip-side, Robert Shaw ("Force 10 from Navarone") is fantastic as the fanatical Colonel Hessler, a devoted Panzer officer who will stop at nothing to accomplish his mission. Hessler brings new meaning the Hollywood-Nazi-type: he's brutal, nasty and dedicated despite the fact that he knows Germany cannot win the war.

The supporting cast is filled with the familiar faces of Charles Bronson, Ty Hardin, James MacArthur and Telly Savalas – but the real star is Hans Christian Blech ("The Longest Day"). As Conrad, the war-weary, aging German Corporal, it's his best work in a war film. Conrad wants to go home and is devoted to Hessler, until he realizes that his commander's dedication sits precariously on the edge of madness. His facial expressions – bug-eyed outbursts, sad frowns, frightened glances at strafing airplanes – have never been more convincing.

This epic was shot for the big screen using Cinerama, and the only way to appreciate the action sequences is to see this movie in widescreen. Pan-and-scan prints cut it down from a 2.7:1 ratio to 1.33:1 - that's losing more than half of the image! It was shot on the vast plains of Spain, and although it looks nothing like the brutal winter in the Ardennes forest, this scenery makes from some very impressive landscapes for which to shoot colossal battle scenes. Annakin shows tanks facing off with each other on the plains and in the snow-encrusted woods and shows hand-to-hand fighting in the streets of a French city. These scenes are set to an excellent, rousing Ben Frankel score, which only adds to the excitement. There are hundreds of extras running about, as well as several dozen loud, clanking tanks. Annakin often places his camera on the front end of a tank, train or moving car to give the viewer a "you-are-there" perspective, a technique which is ruined with the pan-and-scan process.

The dramatic effect of the serious scenes is severely hampered by preposterous Hollywood heroics and some incredibly poor special effects. Quite often, the combat and destruction look incredibly real, but there are some truly laughable shots of exploding model tanks and roaring model trains, too. The battle scenes, notably a huge tank vs. tank battle and a conclusion involving an attempted German capture of an Allied fuel dump are incredibly corny and false-looking - first for their false-looking special effects, which looked bad even in 1965, and secondly for their placement in a desert rather than a snowy forest - which really destroyed the credibility Annakin had been working up to. A strong subplot involving an American tanker, Guffy (Telly Savalas, "The Dirty Dozen") and another, centering on the Malmedy Massacre, help to offset this cheesiness.

"Battle of the Bulge" is a true Hollywood epic in every sense of the word. It may not be historically accurate, but it's probably the most entertaining and engaging war film I've had the pleasure to watch. The characters are main fleshed out enough to keep the viewers interested, the scope is amazing and the direction often borders on brilliance as often as it fails miserably.

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).

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.