Battle Of The (Not Much) Bulge.

I love the epic war films of the Sixties. The Longest Day. The Dirty Dozen. Battle Of Britain. Where Eagles Dare (my all-time favorite movie). The big budgets, wide screen, monster casts and roadshow lengths really seem to work in this genre — while they’ll sink films in others (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang comes to mind).

The other day, I happened upon The Battle Of The Bulge on DVD. Three bucks. I’m in.

Growing up with a film-collector Dad, I was lucky to see many of these films on film, actually projected on a screen. But Bulge I only knew from Sunday afternoons on local TV, where it was always a terrible mess. Pacing destroyed by commercials. Camerawork, blocking and composition completely wasted by panning and scanning Cinerama down to 1.33:1 (which is a crime against nature). Sound piped through a speaker the size of a silver dollar. Basically, all its epic-ness totally stripped away.

It’s a lot more impressive now, with an actual attempt to preserve what the filmmakers where aiming for 40 years ago. Color, framing, sound — they’re all near perfect. We get the entrance, intermission and exit music. Actually, it’s beautiful. A first-class presentation of a Sixties roadshow film.

However, the film itself is where the trouble starts.

First, for an epic, it’s not all that epic, taking a massive military milestone that lasted a month or more, and making it feel like a couple dozen guys and an afternoon. Then there are a number of inaccuracies, beginning with American post-war Patton tanks pretending to be King Tigers and the sunny plains of Spain filling in for the snowy forests of the Western Front. Not to mention some of the lousiest process photography I can remember — just look at Robert Shaw sitting in front of his tank column. Shameful.

Guess they can’t all be The Longest Day can they? And since that film’s director, Ken Annakin, gave us this one, it’s doubly disappointing.

All that said, however, I loved it. Tanks. Cinerama. Robert Ryan. Charles Bronson. Telly Savales. Can you think of a better way to spend an afternoon? I sure can't.