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DVD Battle of the Bulge
The German offensive in December 1944 became the basis for this all-star Hollywood take on the Battle of the Bulge. Henry Fonda is an officer who predicts the assault, Robert Ryan and Dana Andrews are Army brass skeptical of his intuitions, and Robert Shaw (his hair dyed yellow and his eyes glinting with malice) is a German officer leading the tank attack. Shaw is certainly the most compelling thing about the film, especially in his philosophical debates with ambivalent underling Hans Christian Blech. Elsewhere, the movie jumps around to sidebar stories (cowardly James MacArthur becomes a leader, wheeler-dealer Telly Savalas falls in love) while messing around with the historical facts of the battle. There are interesting episodes, such as the Malmedy massacre of American POWs and the Germans' use of English-speaking spies, but overall Battle of the Bulge has the feeling of having been patched together from different scripts. On the physical level the movie comes up short, with the Spanish locations rarely suggesting the wintry misery of the battle, and the use of models and studio sets highly inadequate. A number of war films from this era are compelling on their own terms, but in the wake of Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, this one looks antique. --Robert Horton
THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE is one of those big budget war films that clearly try to portray a critical time during the Second World War when Hitler tried a last gasp hope of creating a stalemate. Director Ken Annakin unwisely tries to balance a script that has too many subplots. The most glaring misuse of a major actor is Telly Savalas, who is shown to be a money grubbing Sgt Ernie Bilko, who later morphs into a dazed Rambo, who wants only to shoot Germans. Then there is the conflict between Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews, both of whom argue incessantly over if and when the Germans will attack.
For a film which is supposed to be a slam bang actioner, THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE is as unbalanced with the massed tank battles as with the distracting subplots. Many reviewers have commented on the historical inaccuracies, yet these departures need not have diluted the impact of on screen tank warfare. There are several minor scenes of lasting emotional power, some of which were cut from the VHS version. These oft deleted scenes include the introduction of the Panzer commander Colonel Hessler (Robert Shaw) to his individual tank leaders. Hessler walks into a large underground bunker where each tank leader snaps to attention as he walks by. Then, incredibly, one of them bursts out with a rousing, foot stomping rendition of DER PANZERLIED in which all the other commanders quickly join in. Their communal singing creates a subtext that suggests the enemy is not quite the inhuman faceless stormtroopers usually portrayed on the big screen. In fact, when the film was shot, Germany was a good friend of the United States and the producers tried mightily to smooth over the troublesome spots. Hessler himself was in reality SS Standartenfuehrer Joachim Pieper, a man of brutish behavior who was later declared a war criminal. Shaw's version of him was more clearly in the righteous but noble Aryan hero that was often sung in Wagnerian opera. Further, the film glosses over the Malmedy Massacre, where hundreds of GIs were machine gunned by Peiper's SS. Hessler, by contrast, is shown as objecting to the shooting which was carried out without his knowledge or participation. The other small scenes that linger in the mind are the delicate ones between Hessler and his driver, a war weary aged veteran (Hans Christian Blech). Much of their interplay is conversational, with Hessler insisting that a stalemate between his Panzers and the Allies would be victory enough. Blech counters with the understandably more human concern for the future of a post war Germany. Still, BATTLE OF THE BULGE is a worthwhile war film. I recommend that you see the uncut version where a critical 23 minute series of scenes is uncut. This movie is one of the few of its genre where the supposed bad guy (Hessler) is not the bad guy at all. There is really very little difference between Shaw and a later George C. Scott, who immortalized a similarly fanatical tank commander.
Expected More-Disappointed
While I thought the DVD was enjoyable, I was very disappointed with it because I was told by what I thought was a very good source, that there was only one version of the DVD for Battle of the Bulge and that it would have an "extra" where James MacArthur and director Ken Annakin are featured in a recent interview, discussing the making of the film. I did not find that anywhere on the DVD and was very disappointed. Can anyone tell me whether there is another version in DVD form that does have the interview of Jim and Ken? If so, please let me know.
Thanks!
[...]
I'm sorry but its just a junk movie
I remember enjoying this as a kid, but then as soon as I developed any critical faculties, this movie failed the grade. Regardless of the obvious abilities of many of the actors in the film, nothing can redeem it from the complete and utter fabrication of actual events, something quite unforgivable in this genre, at least when it purports to represent historical fact.
Firstly, the real BotB was essentially not a tank battle fought over open countryside over fuel. Neither was it fought in anything resembling the vehicles portrayed, or the soldiers for that matter. It was a grizzly, cold and deadly last throw of the dice on Germany's Western front fought out in the claustrophobic villages and woods of the Ardenne. It brought the Western Allies a small taste of the horrors being played out in the East, though generally not through some kind of systematic cruelty as the film suggests, but through the extreme and desperate situations many of the combatants on both sides found themselves in. The actual battle represented many things, including the biggest surrender of US troops in history, and the complete incompetence of Hitler as a tactitian. These make no showing in the film. And of course it involved one of the greatest moments of pure pig-headed heroism in WWII (I refer here to the 101 airbourne's stand at Bastoyne), which at least does get a look in.
The actual battle, while costing many lives, never had the tactical implications Hitler expected, or the film suggests. It delayed the western onslaught, but after initial successes, the German offensive was soon bogged down and awaiting its inevitable destruction by US and UK airpower and armour. If anything, it drained Germany of the resources it needed in the East, and therefore shortened the war.
This film is a mockery of reality and the lives that were lost or ruined during this battle. Its just junk.
To get a taste of how this film could have been (from the US perspective at least) see Band of Brothers.
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Six months after the Japanese destroyed the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, the Americans discovered the Japanese were planning to seize the Naval base at Midway Island--a perfect staging point for invading Hawaii or the mainland. Outnumbered four to one, the Americans won a surprise victory and shattered the backbone of the Japanese Imperial Navy. This 1976 film feels more like a history lesson than a drama, but World War II buffs will appreciate the attention to historical fact (especially the way in which fate and a few bad decisions turned the tide), as well as the generous use of actual battle footage. The all-star cast includes Robert Mitchum, James Coburn, and Cliff Robertson in cameos and a whole slew of familiar TV faces in supporting roles. Hal Holbrook is fun as an... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Jack Smight DVD Release Date: Released the 30 October 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Nineteen thirty-nine is often proposed as the movies' halcyon year, and three reasons why were directed by John Ford: Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, and Drums Along the Mohawk. In that exalted company Drums... would have to be accounted "merely superb"--even if it's the best film ever made about the American Revolution and, oh, only about eighth-best picture of its year.
Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert play newlyweds in New York's Mohawk Valley at the time of the Revolutionary War. That war is more a distant rumor than a direct concern of people with cabins to raise, crops to harvest, and firstborn on the way. When it comes to their valley, in the form of hitherto-peaceable Indians whipped up by a gaunt Tory with an eyepatch (John Carradine), life changes... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claudette Colbert - Henry Fonda - Edna May Oliver Director(s): John Ford DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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