The climatic tank battle appears to have been filmed in a semi-arid locale, say like southern Spain or northern Africa. Definitely not the wintry, snow-covered terrain I've always been led to believe was the Belgium/Ardennes locale of this epic battle. What gives?
shareAs I said in my User Comment for this movie:
Much has been said about the desert-like setting of Battle of the Bulge which bears no resemblance to the Ardennes forest of Belgium. I've often wondered about that and the fact that so many of the cast and crew of Battle of the Bulge were also involved in Custer of the West (actors Robert Shaw, Ty Hardin and Robert Ryan; writers Bernard Gordon and Philip Yordan to name a few). Custer of the West has the 7th Cavalry getting slaughtered in a football field-sized meadow enclosed by trees, while the sprawling barren plains of the final tank battle in Battle of the Bulge bear an awfully strange resemblance to the Little Bighorn battlefield. Is it possible that the location managers and the rest of the production crew got the last few pages of the two screenplays mixed up? ;-)
The film was shot in the Guadarrama mountains in Spain. It appears that they started shooting in winter, as the first half of the film looks reasonably accurate in terms of weather, but then apparently ran out of bad weather as the spring arrived!
It is very jarring and provides critics with another stick to beat the film with, which is a shame as it's one of my guilty pleasures, for all its inaccuracies.
I too, for many years, thought the terrain was oddly barren and false. However, I have visited the region on several occasions by car, and was quite surprized to find the northwest shoulder of the Bulge somewhat resembling the film's final battle. This area as I recall was used as a tank training ground after the war, lots of tracks and shell holes. Certainly not desert (no desert like bushes) but it was a lot more barren than I thought.
shareThe climactic tank battle resembles Kursk if anything.
shareI agree. I have not been anywhere near the Ardennes. Based on the comments of people in these message boards making fun of the terrain shown in the film, I had come to think that the battle always took place in hilly terrain with dense forests, etc. But recently I looked at several books that contained many pictures relating to the battle, and in some photos you can actually see very few trees but a lot of open ground. Well, the land was not really as flat and open as the scene of the final battle in the movie, but what you see in the film is far less inaccurate or unrealistic than many IMDB posters here seemed to think.
shareI think the filmmakers were hoping that the "desert terrain" would somehow simulate the browns and greys of the wintertime open farmland in Belgium. Ahhh, but no. They never counted on audiences being so sophisticated, certainly not 40+ years later. :)
shareApprently none of posters bothered to read the "goofs" section about this movie. It says that the final combat scenes were filmed at the US Army Yakima firing range which is in the eastern foothills of the Cascade Mpuntains at about 2200 feet.
HAND,
Steve