At least there's snow!
At least there's snow!
-PJ
No excuse for the historical inaccuracies but I can understand the tone down of the fighting. 1965 “blood and gore” is not the same as today’s “realism”. We somehow believe that seeing sex and violence in it’s lust and brutal mutilation adds to the story. It doesn’t. But each year they add just a little bit more until TV today seems like a porn/brutality shop to those viewer of 1965 and we do this in the name of art or accuracy.
There is an interesting series on Netflix about famous movie producers that filmed in WWII. Called “Five Came Back”.
One of them went to Italy to film the attack and capture of the monestary up on the hill.
He was a week late.
So the Army recreated it for him. Men moving up the hill, artillery, the whole nine yards. I think it was Speilberg that said he didn’t realize it wasn’t real after watching it for years and then being told about it later.
Often times the soldiers in mid-fighting or going up the hill would stare at the camera. They had to be told to do that! That’s what normal soldiers would do!
Obviously a lot easier to get the right equipment for props when it is just a week after the battle!
Interesting.
It was a really terrible movie only slightly redeemed by Robert Shaw’s performance.
Hollywood doesn't make a realistic war movie, they make entertainment.
I always thought Robert Shaw and his supporting actors had the best lines and scenes.
Its always humorous to watch Telly Savalas riding around in a “Sherman” with the entire turret blown off like anybody in the tank could survive something like that. Or the Germans trying to get to the fuel dump to get gasoline when their tanks were typically diesels.
The “Panzerlied” scene at the beginning was good though as was Robert Shaw”s character and his interaction with his assistant about his philosophy of the war.
About the only good thing about the movie was introducing a wider audience to the “Panzer Lied”.
Incidentally....they only sang the first chorus which is all they sang in the Bundeswehr. They left out the “naughty” 2nd and 3rd verses which talk about how dying for Germany is their greatest honor, how a tank makes for an honorable grave etc.
Hollywood can’t even kill someone properly.
People aren’t launched through the air 6 feet when hit by a bullet. Sometime they don’t even know they’ve been hit and sometimes they just go limp. More than once I heard, “Where’s this blood coming from?”
Up until the 90s westerns were given the same treatment. From civil war, where colt single action army revolvers were strapped to soldiers who also carried trapdoor Springfield rifles…to the postwar cattle drives, where every rifle was a Winchester Model 1892, including ones carried by Duke Wayne.
Starting with mini series like lonesome dove and into such great western films as Tombstone and Unforgiven they started to get it right. Remember all those movie and TV western low slung holsters? Poppycock. Those are call buscadero holsters. Famed shootist Elmer Keith called them garter belts. They didn’t exist in the 19th century (with one lone exception around 1890). The 50s movie ‘Winchester ‘73’ did a better job partially, by at least highlighting the titular rifle. Though they still all wore their colts in Buscadero rigs and called another 73 Winchester a Henry.
Reminds of an old Star Trek where Kirk gets Scotty to make Flintlock rifles for the primitive people on a planet. The rifles were trapdoor springfields with hammer attachments to make them look like flintlock hammers.
I do miss the old days…but not in film accuracy.
I hadn't noticed it before, but in my last viewing of the film, I had heard about historical inaccuracies, but didn't really much pay attention. It struck me that the movie really goes off the rails when it focuses solely on the Germans capturing that fuel depot. It's no longer about the Battle of the Bulge, and more about a generic, mediocre war movie.
Although I have long been aware of the historical inaccuracies of the movie “Battle of the Bulge”, I still enjoyed it every time I watched it (maybe 3 times in my life). Robert Shaw was great, and the musical score was quite memorable, IMHO.
I did learn from movies - "Battle of the Bulge", "Tora, Tora, Tora", "The Longest Day", etc., and replays of the B&W patriotic movies made during the war.
In my opinion, real action, using real tanks, real airplanes, and real vehicles, simply painted with enemy insignia, are vastly superior to the fake "Star Wars" type animations of recent remakes. So what if tank suspensions aren't "historically accurate". The actors will never be either. The stories are about the people, the real heroes, not the tablecloths.
I suspect the movie wasn’t intended to be a documentary. Cinema in those days was much more stylized than today’s gritty “realism” school.
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When I saw it, I wondered why the Germans were riding around in American tanks made after the war.