BATTLE OF THE BULGE Movie Review

1965 Ken Annakin

An archetypal studio war movie, this one is really quite faithful to the broad outlines and details of a real campaign, and then it fills out the running time with ridiculously unrealistic Hollywood heroics. The combination is somehow much more entertaining than it ought to be. Veteran director Ken Annakin knows how to keep this sort of sprawling material in line, and even if his two leads are doing a bit of slumming, they're as good as they need to be.

In December 1944, American troops and officers advancing toward Germany think that the war is over. They're on cruise control, waiting for their orders to return home. But Col. Kiley (Henry Fonda), who's a cop in civilian life, has a hunch that the enemy is up to something. On a reconnaissance flight, he spots Col. Hessler (Robert Shaw) in the back of a big black convertible with the top down, despite the freezing weather. (As we know from so many other war movies, Nazi officers always ride in the back of big black convertibles with the top down. See Visual Cliches sidebar.) Kiley also spots some Tiger tanks and thinks that he has discovered the first evidence of the counteroffensive. His superiors, Gen. Gray (Robert Ryan) and Col. Pritchard (Dana Andrews), are skeptical.

Meanwhile, right at the point of the German attack, Maj. Wolenski's (Charles Bronson) men are hunkered in a bunker and trying to stay warm. Sgt. 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 Philip Yor-dan 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. Annakin realizes how important those deep, rattling, clanking sound effects are to cinematic tanks, and he uses every note in the repertoire. He also understands the importance of setting, and gives the film an appropriately bleak, muddy, snow-covered feel. Since the film was originally made for the ultra-widescreen process Cinerama, much of the scope of the big scenes is lost in the conventional pan-and-scan transfer. The tank battles in particular have almost nothing to do with the realities 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 time 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 make use of all of those points. Their other exaggerations and distortions are certainly no more egregious than those made by other films which have claimed to be more truthful.

Cast: Henry Fonda (Lt. Col. Kiley), Robert Shaw (Col. Hessler), Robert Ryan (Gen. Gray), Dana Andrews (Col. Pritchard), Telly Savalas (Guffy), Ty Hardin (Schumacher), Pier Angeli (Louise), George Montgomery (Sgt. Duquesne), Charles Bronson (Maj. Wolenski), Barbara Werle (Elena), Hans-Christian Blech (Conrad), James MacArthur (Lt. Weaver), Karl Otto Alberty (Von Diepel); Written by: Philip Yordan, John Melson, Milton Sperling; Cinematography by: Jack Hildyard; Music by: Benjamin Frankel; Technical Advisor: Col. Sherman Joffe, Maj. Edward King, Gen. Meinrad von Lauchbert. Producer: Sidney Harmon, Warner Bros., Milton Sperling, Philip Yordan. Running Time: 141 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, Letterbox, Closed Caption.