Battle of the Bulge (1965)

Director:

Ken Annakin

Writers:

Philip Yordan (written by) &
Milton Sperling (written by) ...

Release Date:

16 December 1965 (USA)

Genre:

War | Action | Drama

Tagline:

Unlike anything you've ever seen before

Plot:

In the winter of 1944, the Allied Armies stand ready to invade Germany at the coming of a New Year. To prevent this occurrence...

Plot Keywords:

Tank | Fuel Depot | Battle Of The Bulge | Time Table | Mother Superior

Awards:

Nominated for 2 Golden Globes.

Cast

Henry Fonda	...	Lt. Col. Kiley
Robert Shaw	...	Col. Hessler
Robert Ryan	...	Gen. Grey
Dana Andrews	...	Col. Pritchard
George Montgomery	...	Sgt. Duquesne
Ty Hardin	...	Schumacher
Pier Angeli	...	Louise
Barbara Werle	...	Elena
Charles Bronson	...	Wolenski
Hans Christian Blech	...	Conrad
Werner Peters	...	Gen. Kohler
James MacArthur	...	Lt. Weaver
Karl-Otto Alberty	...	Von Diepel (as Karl Otto Alberty)
Telly Savalas	...	Sgt. Guffy
Steve Rowland	...	Eddy

Runtime:

167 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | German

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

West Germany:16 (f) | USA:Approved (Certificate #20947) | USA:Not Rated (DVD) | New Zealand:PG | Canada:PG (video rating) | Finland:K-16 | Norway:15 | Sweden:15 | UK:A (original rating) | UK:PG (video rating) (1986) | Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range, Madrid, Spain

Company:

Cinerama Productions Corp.

Trivia:

The sequence of the train transporting the big guns was expanded with additional footage shot after principal photography. The extra footage consisted of POV shots from the front of the train and shot at a lower frame rate to make the train appear to be traveling very fast around the curves in the track. This was done to show off the Cinerama process in much the same way as the famous rollercoaster sequence in This Is Cinerama (1952). Much of this footage was removed from the general release version.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Kiley is at the Our River bridge and sees Hessler, he asks the sergeant for his rifle to shoot Hessler. The rifle does not have the rear sight assembly installed. Only the sight ears of the receiver are visible.

Quotes:

Col. Martin Hessler: They have the fuel and planes to fly Cake over the Atlantic Ocean.
Col. Martin Hessler: Do you know what this means?

Movie Connections:

Edited into Wizards (1977)

Soundtrack:

Panzerlied

Sloppy Production

You know you`re in for a bad film when the first ten minutes are composed entirely of actors sitting in front of back projection trying to convince you they`re in a plane or a car. BATTLE OF THE BULGE does this , but it doesn`t warn you how bad it all becomes later on. I`ll warn you, this is one bad war film.

The worst thing about BATTLE OF THE BULGE is that it`s based on the real life Ardennes campaign of December 1944 when the Nazis threw the last of their reserves into trying to beat the allies in Western Europe , and this film is a lost opportunity to show the facts. " I need to look inside one of those tiger tanks " says Henry Fonda . But they`re not Tigers , as everyone else has noticed they`re American tanks from another generation. A German tiger tank has a very distinctive square shape . Couldn`t the script have been changed so that they could have been Panther tanks ? At least Panther tanks had roundish angles like the ones used in this film.

And the editing is extremely suspect. One scene features a wooded forest covered in snow then the next scene features a landscape devoid of trees and without a flake of snow ! Worst of all in the final scenes when characters walk on the ground dust can clearly be seen following their footsteps, the terrain they are walking hasn`t seen snow or rain for weeks ! It`s like the director and editor have been splicing scenes from another film . This is bad enough but what makes it so bad is a line spoken by a German General at the start of the film when he mentions fog hiding the German advance so that the allies can`t use their massive air support to slow down the advance , but up untill the last half hour there`s been nothing but bright blue skies to be seen !

If you enjoyed this film may I also recommend THE PRODUCERS which features SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER , the true story of Adolph Hitler`s all singing all dancing stormtroopers