Backward Front

Battle of the Bulge harks back to that bitter morn in mid-December 1944 when Hitler's Panzer divisions mounted the last great German offensive of World War II. Tiger tanks and infantry spat destruction against the Allied invaders, thrusting them back through the Ardennes forest along a lightly guarded 85-mile front to gouge out a bleeding chunk of Luxembourg, France and eastern Belgium. What happened at the Bulge? According to a trio of Hollywood script writers, the Allies were caught flat-footed because nobody would listen to Henry Fonda.

Fonda plays a folksy intelligence officer whose outlook remains sensible and somehow civilian. This, the film implies, puts him one up on the hardheaded military professionals (Dana Andrews, Robert Ryan) who refuse to believe, until too late, that the Germans are planning a massive attack. A Nazi tank commander (Robert Shaw) has driven a spearhead deep into U.S. positions before Fonda, eyes twinkling, brightly deduces that the enemy is short of fuel.

Thus, gas propels Bulge toward the grandiose tank battle that eventually spells German defeat, but all the rest of the picture seems to run on sheer gall. On the questionable assumption that ferocious truth must be offset by comedy relief, there is a black-marketeering U.S. sergeant (Telly Savalas) who blunders into heroic deeds. Even the massacre of 125 G.I. prisoners at Malmedy has a silver lining, since it turns simpering Lieut. James MacArthur into a fit soldier.

Director Ken Annakin (Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines) skillfully deploys the tanks across the Cinerama playing fields, but the end result is just another run on the bloodbank of the war. Bulge's sole achievement is that veterans may emerge from it feeling at least as affronted as Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, defender of Bastogne, whose imperishable reply to German surrender demands was simply, "Nuts!"

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