MovieChat Forums > Battle of the Bulge (1966) Discussion > A Very Disappointing Film

A Very Disappointing Film

posted 15 years ago by donofthedial
1 reply | jump to latest

I bought this on DVD recently on the strength of the cast and that I wanted an epic war film.

I had problems with it from the beginning when those horrible process shots of Fonda in his plane and Shaw in his limo (that was really bad) came on the screen.

The film looks like it was made directly from the story boards. And it it seemed to be were a series of vignettes. I never got the feeling that I was watching a presentation of the true story. In fact, only a few minutes into the film I wondered just how accurate this picture was. After reading the many comments on the board here I realize that it is far from accurate.

Robert Ryan didn't have enough to do. Fonda seemed bored. Shaw as good, but he had some silly stuff.

The bunker scenes were dull. The two female parts are pointless. Telly Savalas was a jester, but not really funny.

With WW2 only having ended just 20 years prior to this film, why would they churn out such a hodgepodge of inaccuracies?

[–] spookyrat1 10 years ago

I agree with some of your comments.

The film is nowhere near flawless, but I thought it generally gave you a reasonably accurate idea of a battle which would be really quite difficult to convey with complete accuracy without turning it into a documentary. It's honest in that it admits at the end that in the interest of producing a dramatic story, it didn't try to be totally factual. I have no problem with that.

I think the film looks good (even 50 years later). It highlights things such as the size of the US vs Germans battle, the suspicions US intelligence had, the winter weather and the severely depleted nature of the German fuel supplies. I also think the film tried to take a reasonably even-handed attitude towards the Germans showing they weren't all nazi devils trying to rule the world.🐭