@@davec.3198 It was integral to British doctrine during WWII. Pretty much any attack using a Battalion or larger was preceded by a rolling barrage to suppress the enemy and hopefully kill a few. It didn't work well unless the attackers were right on the heels of the barrage and into the enemy positions before they recovered.
@@DaviesMartinezBeats I mean, putting body kits on small tanks to make them look like Tigers was the order of the day, FURY got the last remaining tiger physically driving in it's film. It is a balance between available resources and effect in each era.
@@DaviesMartinezBeats And o god, the PIAT scene has so much weirdness about it. Teleporting shells, load/unload between shots, etc. I'm just saying the people who are all nostalgic about old movies miss the garbage too.
Crazy how a film made 40 years has better, more realistic and more accurate battle scenes then anything made today. They don't make them like they used to.
@@stevekaczynski3793 It isn't just the equipment but the feel and realism. This is how an attack should be made! Compare this to the bullshit that Fury spews and you'll see the problem with modern movies.
Many of the advisors to this movie were in fact the actual participants in the battle. They advised the actors who played them. This lent to the authentic feel of this movie. IMHO, this is among the top 3 WW2 movies ever.
@@stevekaczynski3793 I would agree with you, however, even movies about Afganistan and Iraq portray war poorly if you have an eye for it or have seen combat.
Up to this day this is one of my favorite scenes in a war movie. Both sides show skills, both sides make mistakes, there is an accurate depiction of tactics and maneuvers, it's just an amazing scene (and movie in general) Movies nowadays sadly go towards this "one american vs. a thousand germans with the aiming and tactical skills of stormtroopers" - really refreshing to see the "old ones".
Correct. The Western Allies never really developed a technique in defeating heavily entrenched German positions they whould rather just call in air support and flaten the Germans. Simmilary the Germans whould lay in wait for the Western Allies to approach but then they whould become to entrenched and eventually get bombed or flushed out with flamethrowers or grenades.
@@sirxavior1583 the Germans recovering from that pounding is a testimony of how experienced and effective the German army still was even in late 1944.
This is what I love about these old movies. The production is crude compared to today's standard but its so much better than today. Seeing the aircraft dropping dummy bombs then seeing the special effects is awesome.
When I was young I was irked by faked war machines in movies. But as I grew up and learned how insanely hard anything and everything is, I came to appreciate what they did in the days of analogue movie making. To take an airframe and cosmetically modify it so it can actually still fly just for a movie is just awesome.
One of the beauties of "A Bridge to Far" is that it does something that no other war films did....Not only did it honor and show scenes with all branches....Airborne, Artillery, Armoured, Engineers....but it showed the German forces not as robots., but as soldiers....
I remember watching this movie when it was released in the late 70's. Since then and studying military history and equipment I am always impressed with the use of the 75mm PAK40 antitank guns, the MG34 and MG42 machine guns and even the homely 50mm signal mortar in this scene. To put that kind of authentic hardware (or at least to my feeble) eyes is damn impressive.
How how I wish they can release a proper restoration of this film. It's depressing this day and age that great films like A Bride Too Far, The Great Escape, Magnificent Seven (original), don't have great H.D transfers. Hopefully when this gets a 4k treatment one day it'll look stunning. This to me is the greatest war film of all time.
@@elfhighmage8240 a good HD transfer should just mean a better transfer of the original film print to a digital format. It would be closer to the original than currently available transfers, not a revision.
A creeping barrage by 25 pounders has to be one of the most terrifying things a soldier can ever experience in battle. It must be hell on earth to be watching the explosions come towards you. A Bridge Too Far has to be one of the best War Films ever made. We will never forget the Heroes of Arnhem and the sacrifice that the greatest generation made during World War 2.
An artillery barrage hitting a forest can cause the shell to detonate when they hit the upper part of the trees. If you are in a hole with no overhead cover airbursts can get you no matter what. The allies started using proximity fused 155mm shells during the Battle of the Bulge and Patton said it changed warfare as the shells were 5-10 times more effective against infantry.
Amazes me how good everything looks in this film sure if I nitpicked there are vehicles or guns used that are not accurate, but they made do and chose the vehicles to the point where they blended flawlessly still with everything else. This is an incredible scene for the amount of detail. The bulldozer sherman is a great addition.
My 10 year old cousin ava was watching this movie a few years back and when this part cane on she said "This is scary. But I like it." She is just the cutest thing ever.
Ah yes, the old war film cliche, “a small group of soldiers trapped behind enemy lines”. Because the film makers rarely have the vision or the budget to depict a decent sized military unit.
@@IbnShahid I think writers and producers find it hard to visualise a story where events take precedence but characterisation is still important, beyond having a single family unit as the protagonists. Hence platoon and squad based stories even in big battles for most war movies. It is a shame, but someone will do a big scale movie like this again - Nolan tried with Dunkirk and it wasn't entirely successful on any level apart from the cool story structure.
Mistermax30 yeah this is towards the end of the Second World War…Germans did not have a lot of airplanes left and the ones that were left were stretched out on four fronts.
I noticed the Achilles wreck a few times! nice to see they added that into the movie showing that the brits didn't just have shermans but M10's with 17pounders!. ashame that all the shermans have long barrels...still a brilliant movie!.
Think the tank destroyer was there just for numbers, not enough Shermans available for the movie, to someone who would not know better, it looked close enough. Plus not having a roof, they were able to make it look like it blew it's roof and was on fire from the inside.
I took my mother to see this film when it came out. Afterwards she told me, " We could hear the guns firing and see the Germans starting to leave but we had hidden all our bicycles a long time before and they didn't get them. " She lived in a small village near Eindhoven.
The British lost 9 tanks, and crews, and other troops, during this initial assault. ( About 6 destroyed tanks can be seen at 5:09 ). But, Horrocks had 50,000 men, and 15,000 other vehicles, including many hundreds of tanks and other armored vehicles, behind them, stretching back over 20 miles on various roads. This was about the only direct paved main road available which could support the weight of the heavy vehicles. Thus, the Germans were guarding it heavily. Many other lighter vehicles took other lightly defended surrounding roads alongside. Assuming XXX Corps advanced alongside even FIVE roads at once, including this one, that works out to a mere 35 feet of road space per vehicle, stretching back 20 miles ! Little wonder that progress was, understandably, very slow. ( Many vehicles could have possibly traveled across country, off road, but gas consumption would have doubled. And it couldn't be spared ). While on the move, Army Groups like this ( and Patton's, etc. ) used many hundreds of thousands of gallons of gas *PER DAY.* )
I was initially impressed by this scene as a kid, watching it with my dad, who served in the Canadian Army (PPCLI). Having served myself in the Canadian Armoured Corps (LdSH) I feel the scene does not ring true. I’ve witnessed artillery bombardments, they’re not as impressive as this and in a wooded area they would have had literally less impact. Also, keep in mind, these are supposed to be German veterans who previously fought in Normandy and spent a couple of years in Russia. They’d been on the receiving end of heavy artillery bombardments (and air bombardments) before and would know the importance of entrenchment. The quick surrender does not seem realistic, as the Panzerjaegers would almost certainly have a plan to withdraw if overwhelmed ...as they no doubt previously did following the Normandy campaign. These soldiers managed to slip out of the Falaise Gap, it’s doubtful they suddenly saw the light to surrender here. Calling in air support would probably take about half an hour, if all goes well, and it would be called in by a FAC, not the leading tank battalion (regiment) commander. Kudos for immediately laying smoke. The tanks would unlikely be able to spot the individual anti-tank firing positions and return accurate fire. One would have to see the flash and then remember where it came from in the heat of battle. One could fire in the general direction to throw off the anti-tank gun, but the beast way to deal with them is infantry, artillery and, after a lengthy delay, air power, if available. still, it does look very impressive.
@@jeambeam3173 not near as fucked as you are bat boy to think it's right for these hoodlum ands thugs to burn rape pillage and plunder. No different than the terrorist groups in the middle east. Only thing missing is them sticking dynamite up there asses and yelling aloha snack bar. ...
At 0:54, if you look closely at the fifth tank in the column entering the screen from the right side just beyond the tree, you can briefly tell that it's just a mock-up and not a real tank. Its treads are not turning and they don't touch the ground indicating that it is a wheeled vehicle with fixed treads, surrounded by sheet metal designed to resemble a real tank.
At the time I was a conscript soldier with the medicine company 12th army brigade in Nunspeet, the Netherlands. Our company made up actors who were supposedly 'wounded' in the movie A bridge too far. They really did a great job! Great movie! 👍
The rolling barrage scene was shown during an AAR when my unit was training at NTC. As a mortarman, it emphasized how what we do could devastate the enemy both physically and psychologically.
the Germans said the only things that scared then on the western front were the British (creeping barrage) and American (time on Target barrage) artillery, and the "Jabos" (close air support)....
The Germans were terrified of American artillery because there was so much of it, and because of "time on target". tot was a system of fire direction where a foward observer call call down fire missions that involved multiple batteries or even multiple artillery BATTALIONS firing at the same target. What was REALLY terrifying was that the artillery didn't fire at the same time, but at different times so all rounds arrived at the same time. The British used a different system which I'm not familiar with but it was extremely fast in response to fire mission requests. As for CAS (close air support ); the allies pioneered using air force officers as foward air controllers to call in the Jabos (German nickname for the fighter bombers). Using experienced pilots on the ground as observers instead of infantry officers was more efficient. Lastly the allies had TOTAL air supremacy so the fighter bombers didn't have to worry about harassment from the Luftwaffe so they could concentrate on their groind aupport mission.
From what I've read the Germans feared the British artillery the most, with the American artillery hot on its heels. The reason they feared them both was because the British and American artillery were both fast and accurate. The Russian artillery they apparently rated less highly; the Russians fired a lot of shells but their artillery according to the Germans was far less accurate- it looked very impressive but it was far less likely to do as much damage.
A lot has been said about historical accuracy and the impressive amount of hardware involved in the scene, but another neat trick that is used here are those fast edits of firing, explosions, deaths and soldier reactions. One of the biggest problems when depicting large-scale battles like this one is that it is next to impossible to convey the scale or the real time of battles. Film-makers usually (unless you get really ambitious and creative with CGI) focus on one or a small number of representative scenes and hope that it stimulates the imagination enough to give the impression of the larger picture. With CGI, aerial shots of the battlefield can help. But here, everything is eye-level, from the perspective of the soldiers, and that's where those fast edits are brilliant - they give the impression of "too many and fast to count", so the viewer really gets an understanding and feel of the real scale and timing One of the best war movies ever made, hands down.
Don't watch any John Wayne war movies brother. He made some real bs stinkers. only way to get a good performance out of that man was without him realizing you were criticizing him like in The Searchers.
They couldnt really have plot armor here as historically they lost. Although you're right there is do much bias when it comes to combat in so many modern movies
As an old Retired Infantry Senior NCO and a Veteran of two wars, there’s a DAMN good reason why the Artillery Corps is called “the King of Battle” and the Infantry is the queen of battle. Artillery obliterates targets period. Just the shock wave from their rounds can turn your internal organs to pudding let alone the frag and heat! You have to walk through an area after an artillery strike to comprehend their power. They are very professional in their duties and they do NOT screw around, they’ve covered my ass a couple times.
I always liked this scene... I'm a true-blue American but the Brits could lay the smackdown on some people during WW2. It's hard to imagine massed artillery like everybody did in The Great War (WW1) and firing 250,000-1,000,000 shells in a day. It was pretty much commonplace to do that... don't have to worry about taking any ExLax, all the concussions probably turned everybody's innards to mush. Just an observation... I know it's Hollywood, but my ass would make like a barnacle and be stuck to the floor of one of those trucks... shrapnel would be zingin everywhere.
What makes this movie so efficient is that you are actually horrified by the sight of the german soliders getting killed even if you don't like them. I consider A bridge too far an anti-war film.
At 2:56, you can see an AMX 13 Automoteur de 105 mm, which is a French self-propelled gun that would not enter service until 1955, more than a decade after the debacle at Arnhem.
I always feel bad watching the scene where they get machine gunned while parachuting down. It feels like murder when you are shooting people who are incapable of shooting back and are absolutely helpless.
Because lot of Polish people where fighting and do deserve to be mentioned and this movie is one of the best . And thank you Polish, British, American for stopping Hitler.
It's less of a "back when", more like "that sweet, brief moment in cinema history", between the Golden Age of Hollywood and the advent of Saving Private Ryan. Cross of Iron was another good one that came out at this time.
I wouldn't say Patton glorified the yanks so much as it showed what Patton himself cared about. To claim he never cared for his men is wrong, but at the same time HE was the ego in the Army. That's why he go the nickname "Old blood and guts". His blood, our guts. He demanded respect, and was interested in winning, even if it meant sacrifice to be first over everyone, especially Monty. Again, HE was all the ego the allies could take and it actually got him fired a few times, just once permanently.
LOL what a dumbass you are! Tell me, the films made in the UK in this era...they don't highlight the British do they? Lol what an idiot. THEY ARE AMERICAN FILMS IDIOT, NO KIDDING THEY SHOW THE BEST OF AMERICANS! lol! If you don't like them, don't watch them dumb ass (I have not seen Fury yet and prob. never will and the Uboat movie from a few years back was even worse from what I heard)
This scene has always made me wonder if the artillery was on a range thus firing real shells, then edited into the movie to look like a creeping barrage. Those guns are recoiling like they are firing real shells. A few years ago, the Navy SEAL's were asked to help make and participate in a movie about them. They agreed but only if they could use real ammunition. They did.....
Yes, the guns were firing on a range used by the British Army of the Rhine. The shells were I believe live and yes there was editing as it wouldn't do well if a shell falling short hurt any of the actors or film crew.
You can hardly do better; real British artillery firing LIVE AMMO on an artillery range by Dutch gunners, supporting a bunch of WW2 armor on the Dutch Army tank training ground at Amersfoort. And Michael Caine riding up front! I especially love the T6s representing Typhoon fighter/bombers actually dropping fake bombs, made from fire extinguishers and perfectly synced with ground charges
This is a really well executed scene, but did anyone notice that, as the tanks are beginning to roll forward the last tank before they cut to another angle, it's tracks aren't touching the ground, looks like wheels beneath but the cut is too fast
They've used actual Shermans in a lot of WW2 films, though I understand that some films use Chaffees, Walker Bulldogs, and sometimes Pattons. and there were some mockup Shermans that were shown for a second or two, but these looked exactly like the actual tank.
A classic of a battle sequence. I never knew what the artillery barrage was known as when I first watched it but and I know it sounds crazy, thanks to Company Of Heroes Opposing Fronts and learning to use Creeping Barrage, now I know what the artillery tactic was! what a really impressive piece of cinema!
@@Bilbirk62 Honestly, no need to get so verbal. By the way I rather not see a real artillery barrage, it is not something I am keen or anyone should witness. War is terrible, it isn't something to applaud at!
Well, back then they actually used high explosives. It was a simpler time and Hollywood had a lot more leeway when studios owned thousands of acres of land to do with as they pleased.
There is more more realistic, or stunning artillery barrage in the history of film......I recall seeing this for the first time in a theatre, and my arseholes tightening up the same way the Germans must have waiting for the barrage to contact.......☺
If I was one of those few fortunate Germans to have been able to survive and surrender to the British at 5:38, I would be So Grateful that I survived, and that the War (that I was obviously on the losing side of) would be over for me! Of course being on the Eastern Front (on the other hand) and having to surrender to Stalin and the Russians would probably be worse than death!
You should read the book "The Forgotten Soldier" that was written by this soldier who served in the German Army in late 1942. He was assigned to serve in the Eastern Front from late 1942 to the end of the war! He and a few of his close friends survived only by managing to escape to the West, and surrendering to the British, French and Americans!
Nicholas Ramsey - True enough. Towards the end of the war, German soldiers sought out and surrendered in droves to any Allied soldiers, except Russians. The Russians treated captured Germans very harshly, often marching them to Siberia. Only a fraction survived and went back to Germany years after the war.
I had a relative that served in Barbarossa, then volunteered for Rommel's Afrika Korps. He was captured in Tunisia and spent nearly 5 years in Huntsville, Texas. He became so close to the ranch family that he worked with, that they asked him to come back after the war and work for them. He said his time in US POW camps was good, but when he was transferred to England after the war, he spent nearly a year in some desolate, damp and cold hellhole near Scotland before finally getting back home in 1947.
It's not an excuse for them-but what exactly could the Germans have done with the hundreds of thousands of Red Army troops initially captured, (they didn't expect the huge numbers) when they couldn't hardly supply their own troops? If I remember correctly of the 190,000 German troops that surrendered at Stalingrad, about 8,000 ever made it home. My mom remembers one of those who did make it back and said every time it turned cold he would catch pneumonia because he was a wreck physically. (And probably mentally.)
In September of '41 Stalin thought he was nearly finished. (He had a train on stand by to flee east if necessary.) He'd retreated to his dacha thinking all was lost and his closest cronies showed up. Stalin thought they'd come to 'depose' (dispose, same meaning in Soviet Russia) him but they simply asked him what should be done militarily. It gave him enough confidence to carry on and these cronies thought they would be forever safe by showing their loyalty. Little did they know the paranoia of Stalin.
A great Hollywood movie that has many inaccuracies. The most egregious is the glossing over of the role the 82nd Airborne under Gavin played in the failure of XXX Corp to get to Arnhem on time. When XXX Corp got to Nijmegen they found that 82nd had still failed to take the Bridge and allowed the German to reinforce there force on the Bridge. The day the 82nd landed there were only a handful of Germans the bridges. Gavin took 8 hour to send a force to the Bridge when he initially landed. Then he withdrew them and decided to reinforce the Grooesbeek. This failure of the 82nd meant XXX Corp had a protracted battle to capture the Bridges (there were actually two).
Usually all people inside those lightly armored allied tanks were killed immediately by the hollow charge. Surviving a critical hit somehow was scarce.
@@knutritter461 The Sherman had a very high survival record for the crews. Overall, for each Sherman destroyed by enemy action, either by direct fire or mines, only 0.98 crew members were killed. Only the heaviest German tanks would even come close to that level of survivability and only then because the majority were not defeated by enemy action, but broke down or ran out of fuel and were abandoned and listed as lost in combat.
![We Were Soldiers |2002| All Battle Scenes [Edited] (November 14, 1965)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kCYdtzMqLVU/mqdefault.jpg)
I especially appreciated the creditable portrayal of a rolling artillery barrage in support of an advancing column.
Very good yes!
Robert Roth Creeping barrage
Very cool. Never seen that before. Didn't know it was done.
@@davec.3198 It was integral to British doctrine during WWII. Pretty much any attack using a Battalion or larger was preceded by a rolling barrage to suppress the enemy and hopefully kill a few. It didn't work well unless the attackers were right on the heels of the barrage and into the enemy positions before they recovered.
Can't imagine how terrifying it must be to watch those shells get closer and closer to you.
This has to be one of the best battle scenes in cinema history.
YEs! i found you!
Love the sound of those 25-pounders and the rattle of the cases being ejected
For me, it's the ejection of a M1 Garand cartridge when it makes that PING sound
Love seeing those guns in action
The sounds of some firearms in this movie are the same of the back then 007 movies.
Well, you wouldn't if you were on the receiving end.
They recorded the sounds at a shooting range of real 25 pounders, so the sound is very much accurate
Production manager to special effects supervisor: "You're going to use HOW MUCH EXPLOSIVES for these scenes again???"
"Yes, sir just for the ocassion."
-Michael Bay the Intern Supervisor for Special Effects.
The poor people living around thinking an actuall war is going on.
Yes..
They obviously needed a lot since there's a creeping barrage involved in this scene. 😂😂😂
world war 3’s on, the soviets are here
The amount of physical hardware in this scene is insane.
1960's CGI I'm guessing LOL...
@@DaviesMartinezBeats I mean, putting body kits on small tanks to make them look like Tigers was the order of the day, FURY got the last remaining tiger physically driving in it's film. It is a balance between available resources and effect in each era.
@@keithsimpson2685 - TRUE. I was 'joking' about the 1960's CGI component to the film (CGI Not Invented back when the film was made)...
@@DaviesMartinezBeats And o god, the PIAT scene has so much weirdness about it. Teleporting shells, load/unload between shots, etc. I'm just saying the people who are all nostalgic about old movies miss the garbage too.
I saw the making of the film, and the tanks where... VW beettles dressed up like tanks!! Hahaha, and still looks realistic.
Crazy how a film made 40 years has better, more realistic and more accurate battle scenes then anything made today. They don't make them like they used to.
Literally came to post the exact same comment.
@@stevekaczynski3793
It isn't just the equipment but the feel and realism. This is how an attack should be made! Compare this to the bullshit that Fury spews and you'll see the problem with modern movies.
Many of the advisors to this movie were in fact the actual participants in the battle. They advised the actors who played them. This lent to the authentic feel of this movie. IMHO, this is among the top 3 WW2 movies ever.
@John6yt Meanwhile, I can show you movies and you would not know they used CGI there you moron. But keep raving against technology.
@@stevekaczynski3793 I would agree with you, however, even movies about Afganistan and Iraq portray war poorly if you have an eye for it or have seen combat.
This is one of few films, where you can see proper artillery fire.
"If they are grey, they are USAAF. If they are green, they are RAF. If they are invisible, it's the Luftwaffe" (German black humor of WW2)
Berlin is full of ware houses.
Here were houses there where houses
I know it that Way: If they come at Day: Americans. If they come at Night: Brits. If they don´t come at all: Germans.
How many gears does a french tank have? 6. 4 reverse gears + 2 forward gears for the case the Germans are approaching from behind.
P
The stupid commentary fucks dont understand black humor
*Never* be the first tank.
Thats why the first tank is the bravest.
should've brought up a jumbo.
QuickLoad they got shot though the sided, so a jumbo or not, the first tank still dies.
QuickLoad the British didn't use the Sherman jumbo
Jack H
I find it strange that there are no other thanks but shitty shermans.
The amount of physical hardware in this scene is insane.. Very realistic scene. One of the best in war movies..
Up to this day this is one of my favorite scenes in a war movie. Both sides show skills, both sides make mistakes, there is an accurate depiction of tactics and maneuvers, it's just an amazing scene (and movie in general)
Movies nowadays sadly go towards this "one american vs. a thousand germans with the aiming and tactical skills of stormtroopers" - really refreshing to see the "old ones".
I agree, American and Russian movies are full of propaganda. Movies like this and Stalingrad (1993) are perfect depictions of a great ww2 film
Correct. The Western Allies never really developed a technique in defeating heavily entrenched German positions they whould rather just call in air support and flaten the Germans. Simmilary the Germans whould lay in wait for the Western Allies to approach but then they whould become to entrenched and eventually get bombed or flushed out with flamethrowers or grenades.
For me it's Grabners attack across the bridge in Arnhem.
Richard Attenborough was a great film maker!
@@sirxavior1583 the Germans recovering from that pounding is a testimony of how experienced and effective the German army still was even in late 1944.
This is what I love about these old movies. The production is crude compared to today's standard but its so much better than today. Seeing the aircraft dropping dummy bombs then seeing the special effects is awesome.
Keep in mind that this was the most expensive film ever made (up to that point.)
When I was young I was irked by faked war machines in movies. But as I grew up and learned how insanely hard anything and everything is, I came to appreciate what they did in the days of analogue movie making. To take an airframe and cosmetically modify it so it can actually still fly just for a movie is just awesome.
1:40 Got to love the look on that one German's face as if saying "Uh boss, those explosions are getting closer. Shouldn't we get in our fox holes?"
Realism. They hv fear but the fear of letting your mates down were stronger. Brave men. And show human side of german troops
Watch it for the first time in 1984, and am still watching it in 2019
How long does it usual take to watch a 90 minutes movie??
One of the beauties of "A Bridge to Far" is that it does something that no other war films did....Not only did it honor and show scenes with all branches....Airborne, Artillery, Armoured, Engineers....but it showed the German forces not as robots., but as soldiers....
I remember watching this movie when it was released in the late 70's. Since then and studying military history and equipment I am always impressed with the use of the 75mm PAK40 antitank guns, the MG34 and MG42 machine guns and even the homely 50mm signal mortar in this scene. To put that kind of authentic hardware (or at least to my feeble) eyes is damn impressive.
How how I wish they can release a proper restoration of this film. It's depressing this day and age that great films like A Bride Too Far, The Great Escape, Magnificent Seven (original), don't have great H.D transfers. Hopefully when this gets a 4k treatment one day it'll look stunning. This to me is the greatest war film of all time.
Nope. I say leave the classics alone, and enjoy!
@@elfhighmage8240 a good HD transfer should just mean a better transfer of the original film print to a digital format. It would be closer to the original than currently available transfers, not a revision.
A restoration yes, a remake hell naw!
so amazing. zero CGI and that makes this battle so great.
A creeping barrage by 25 pounders has to be one of the most terrifying things a soldier can ever experience in battle. It must be hell on earth to be watching the explosions come towards you. A Bridge Too Far has to be one of the best War Films ever made.
We will never forget the Heroes of Arnhem and the sacrifice that the greatest generation made during World War 2.
An artillery barrage hitting a forest can cause the shell to detonate when they hit the upper part of the trees. If you are in a hole with no overhead cover airbursts can get you no matter what. The allies started using proximity fused 155mm shells during the Battle of the Bulge and Patton said it changed warfare as the shells were 5-10 times more effective against infantry.
All guns, commence firing!
Best line EVER!
@@lemmdus2119 2nd best is Get that wreck off the Road
Thanks, just gave me the confirmation of the words after 40 years
Amazes me how good everything looks in this film sure if I nitpicked there are vehicles or guns used that are not accurate, but they made do and chose the vehicles to the point where they blended flawlessly still with everything else. This is an incredible scene for the amount of detail. The bulldozer sherman is a great addition.
My 10 year old cousin ava was watching this movie a few years back and when this part cane on she said "This is scary. But I like it." She is just the cutest thing ever.
That shot of the treads of different tanks starting to move is amazing
ABTF avoids the platoon syndrome of a lot of WW2 , and actually depicts a total battle . An impressive sequence.
Ah yes, the old war film cliche, “a small group of soldiers trapped behind enemy lines”. Because the film makers rarely have the vision or the budget to depict a decent sized military unit.
@@IbnShahid I think writers and producers find it hard to visualise a story where events take precedence but characterisation is still important, beyond having a single family unit as the protagonists. Hence platoon and squad based stories even in big battles for most war movies. It is a shame, but someone will do a big scale movie like this again - Nolan tried with Dunkirk and it wasn't entirely successful on any level apart from the cool story structure.
The fact in matter is when guiding Artie fire at tank columns is aim just ahead of the dust cloud
Gotta love that uncontested air power.
Mistermax30 yeah this is towards the end of the Second World War…Germans did not have a lot of airplanes left and the ones that were left were stretched out on four fronts.
Actually, 1944 was their top year for aircraft production. They simply ran out of experienced pilots.
The fighter sweep tactic absolutely wrecked the luftwaffe
tpsu129 They ran out of fuel and, besides, the german factories were heavily bombed.
Industrial production increased dramatically even with the bombing campaign
"It's the wide part". One of my favourite movie lines ever.
Best scene of the whole movie!!
I noticed the Achilles wreck a few times! nice to see they added that into the movie showing that the brits didn't just have shermans but M10's with 17pounders!. ashame that all the shermans have long barrels...still a brilliant movie!.
well most of the Shermans are plastic mockups placed on land rovers.
Or American Easy Eights.
I think in one scene there is even a knocked out M47 Patton tank, which is definitely out of place for the era this movie is depicting.
Think the tank destroyer was there just for numbers, not enough Shermans available for the movie, to someone who would not know better, it looked close enough. Plus not having a roof, they were able to make it look like it blew it's roof and was on fire from the inside.
KingSNAFU its at 5:09 in this video.
I took my mother to see this film when it came out. Afterwards she told me, " We could hear the guns firing and see the Germans starting to leave but we had hidden all our bicycles a long time before and they didn't get them. " She lived in a small village near Eindhoven.
I would be shitting myself if i was in that German line watching that creeping barrage slowly creep its way towards me.
Snake same here, I would not survive
Too right.
Snake - Darned right ! It scares me enough just watching it coming in the movie. Being right there in front of it would have been terrifying.
Back then you dug deep holes because you wanted to make sure that outside of the round landing right in your hole, you'd be able to survive the blast.
You should have watched it in theaters during first release, mentally completely unprepared for what was coming.(Which was what I did.)
The British lost 9 tanks, and crews, and other troops, during this initial assault. ( About 6 destroyed tanks can be seen at 5:09 ).
But, Horrocks had 50,000 men, and 15,000 other vehicles, including many hundreds of tanks and other armored vehicles, behind them, stretching back over 20 miles on various roads.
This was about the only direct paved main road available which could support the weight of the heavy vehicles. Thus, the Germans were guarding it heavily.
Many other lighter vehicles took other lightly defended surrounding roads alongside.
Assuming XXX Corps advanced alongside even FIVE roads at once, including this one, that works out to a mere 35 feet of road space per vehicle, stretching back 20 miles !
Little wonder that progress was, understandably, very slow.
( Many vehicles could have possibly traveled across country, off road, but gas consumption would have doubled. And it couldn't be spared ).
While on the move, Army Groups like this ( and Patton's, etc. ) used many hundreds of thousands of gallons of gas *PER DAY.* )
Carlie Mckenna My grand uncle was with the Irish guards during the war.
Not too many---Horrocks did a pretty good job keeping his casualties down & still moving as fast was practical.
do you know the best part? It is that that was the wides path they will take to mission objective
Thus the reason for Market Garden's failure....tanks confined to narrow roads in a line.
I was initially impressed by this scene as a kid, watching it with my dad, who served in the Canadian Army (PPCLI). Having served myself in the Canadian Armoured Corps (LdSH) I feel the scene does not ring true. I’ve witnessed artillery bombardments, they’re not as impressive as this and in a wooded area they would have had literally less impact. Also, keep in mind, these are supposed to be German veterans who previously fought in Normandy and spent a couple of years in Russia. They’d been on the receiving end of heavy artillery bombardments (and air bombardments) before and would know the importance of entrenchment. The quick surrender does not seem realistic, as the Panzerjaegers would almost certainly have a plan to withdraw if overwhelmed ...as they no doubt previously did following the Normandy campaign. These soldiers managed to slip out of the Falaise Gap, it’s doubtful they suddenly saw the light to surrender here. Calling in air support would probably take about half an hour, if all goes well, and it would be called in by a FAC, not the leading tank battalion (regiment) commander. Kudos for immediately laying smoke. The tanks would unlikely be able to spot the individual anti-tank firing positions and return accurate fire. One would have to see the flash and then remember where it came from in the heat of battle. One could fire in the general direction to throw off the anti-tank gun, but the beast way to deal with them is infantry, artillery and, after a lengthy delay, air power, if available. still, it does look very impressive.
Artillery. Useful for when something is really offending you with its presence and you want it quickly eradicated.
Used to be different.
Napoleon is the one who made artillery from a supporting role to a dominating factor
Hmmm good point. Be awesome to use against today's social justice warriors and their cancel culture.
@@deweysturgill6220 so people who think terrible people deserve to have consequences deserve to be blown apart? How fucked in the head are you
@@jeambeam3173 not near as fucked as you are bat boy to think it's right for these hoodlum ands thugs to burn rape pillage and plunder.
No different than the terrorist groups in the middle east.
Only thing missing is them sticking dynamite up there asses and yelling aloha snack bar. ...
At 0:54, if you look closely at the fifth tank in the column entering the screen from the right side just beyond the tree, you can briefly tell that it's just a mock-up and not a real tank. Its treads are not turning and they don't touch the ground indicating that it is a wheeled vehicle with fixed treads, surrounded by sheet metal designed to resemble a real tank.
well noticed - I'm impressed!
My god.
good spotting - at first I was suprised how many Fireflys / reals Shermans mocked up as Fireflys were used
Well spotted. Still about a million times more realistic than CGI.
Tim Richardson you look closely one the destroyedtanks is an M'26 Chafee!
Gotta love when back in the day it was REAL effects :D
All time cinema effects,no CGI,a masterpiece
Back when they made good movies
Back in the days when war movies looked almost real, while today war movies look like video games.
Lol, midway just proves this comment right here
At the time I was a conscript soldier with the medicine company 12th army brigade in Nunspeet, the Netherlands. Our company made up actors who were supposedly 'wounded' in the movie A bridge too far. They really did a great job! Great movie! 👍
The rolling barrage scene was shown during an AAR when my unit was training at NTC. As a mortarman, it emphasized how what we do could devastate the enemy both physically and psychologically.
the Germans said the only things that scared then on the western front were the British (creeping barrage) and American (time on Target barrage) artillery, and the "Jabos" (close air support)....
Seth Kimmel Interesting! Could you please elaborate?
The Germans were terrified of
American artillery because there was so much of it, and because of "time on target". tot was a system of fire direction where a foward observer call call down fire missions that involved multiple batteries or even multiple artillery BATTALIONS firing at the same target. What was REALLY terrifying was that the artillery didn't fire at the same time, but at different times so all rounds arrived at the same time. The British used a different system which I'm not familiar with but it was extremely fast in response to fire mission requests. As for CAS (close air support ); the allies pioneered using air force officers as foward air controllers to call in the Jabos (German nickname for the fighter bombers). Using experienced pilots on the ground as observers instead of infantry officers was more efficient. Lastly the allies had TOTAL air supremacy so the fighter bombers didn't have to worry about harassment from the Luftwaffe so they could concentrate on their groind aupport mission.
Seth Kimmel Thank you so much Seth!
From what I've read the Germans feared the British artillery the most, with the American artillery hot on its heels. The reason they feared them both was because the British and American artillery were both fast and accurate. The Russian artillery they apparently rated less highly; the Russians fired a lot of shells but their artillery according to the Germans was far less accurate- it looked very impressive but it was far less likely to do as much damage.
hmmmm not so sure when it came to the katyushas, either way the german infantryman after 1943 had it really rough..
Very realistic scene. One of the best in war movies.
best part about an old war movie. NO CGI!!! all real tanks and aircraft.
A lot has been said about historical accuracy and the impressive amount of hardware involved in the scene, but another neat trick that is used here are those fast edits of firing, explosions, deaths and soldier reactions. One of the biggest problems when depicting large-scale battles like this one is that it is next to impossible to convey the scale or the real time of battles. Film-makers usually (unless you get really ambitious and creative with CGI) focus on one or a small number of representative scenes and hope that it stimulates the imagination enough to give the impression of the larger picture. With CGI, aerial shots of the battlefield can help. But here, everything is eye-level, from the perspective of the soldiers, and that's where those fast edits are brilliant - they give the impression of "too many and fast to count", so the viewer really gets an understanding and feel of the real scale and timing One of the best war movies ever made, hands down.
Back in the days where war films where much more realistic and never had plot armour but equal opportunity.
and no romantic story to mess it up I am looking at you Pearl Harbor
Don't watch any John Wayne war movies brother. He made some real bs stinkers. only way to get a good performance out of that man was without him realizing you were criticizing him like in The Searchers.
They couldnt really have plot armor here as historically they lost. Although you're right there is do much bias when it comes to combat in so many modern movies
As an old Retired Infantry Senior NCO and a Veteran of two wars, there’s a DAMN good reason why the Artillery Corps is called “the King of Battle” and the Infantry is the queen of battle. Artillery obliterates targets period. Just the shock wave from their rounds can turn your internal organs to pudding let alone the frag and heat! You have to walk through an area after an artillery strike to comprehend their power. They are very professional in their duties and they do NOT screw around, they’ve covered my ass a couple times.
This movie have all the super star actors in it.
One of my favorite scenes in this movie.
More realistic enemy soldiers surrender than todays war film.
Watch this in 1977, never gets old.
I always liked this scene... I'm a true-blue American but the Brits could lay the smackdown on some people during WW2. It's hard to imagine massed artillery like everybody did in The Great War (WW1) and firing 250,000-1,000,000 shells in a day. It was pretty much commonplace to do that... don't have to worry about taking any ExLax, all the concussions probably turned everybody's innards to mush. Just an observation... I know it's Hollywood, but my ass would make like a barnacle and be stuck to the floor of one of those trucks... shrapnel would be zingin everywhere.
Battle scene was very well done. And they were on the 'wide part' of the road!
What makes this movie so efficient is that you are actually horrified by the sight of the german soliders getting killed even if you don't like them. I consider A bridge too far an anti-war film.
At 2:56, you can see an AMX 13 Automoteur de 105 mm, which is a French self-propelled gun that would not enter service until 1955, more than a decade after the debacle at Arnhem.
They used whatever was available including some artistic licence.
Really like the movie. And as a Pole im glad they shown Polish paratroopers, even if Gene Hackman polish is rather funny ;)
I always feel bad watching the scene where they get machine gunned while parachuting down. It feels like murder when you are shooting people who are incapable of shooting back and are absolutely helpless.
@@Tommykey07 thats war
F poland
@@paulizzs4720 LOL
Because lot of Polish people where fighting and do deserve to be mentioned and this movie is one of the best .
And thank you Polish, British, American for stopping Hitler.
To this day one of the greatest War films EVER made ... this used to be Sunday afternoon viewing in the 70's after the roast!
back when WW2 films werenot always about the egocentric yanks and actually showed shit relatively true to how they happened
It's less of a "back when", more like "that sweet, brief moment in cinema history", between the Golden Age of Hollywood and the advent of Saving Private Ryan. Cross of Iron was another good one that came out at this time.
I wouldn't say Patton glorified the yanks so much as it showed what Patton himself cared about. To claim he never cared for his men is wrong, but at the same time HE was the ego in the Army. That's why he go the nickname "Old blood and guts". His blood, our guts. He demanded respect, and was interested in winning, even if it meant sacrifice to be first over everyone, especially Monty. Again, HE was all the ego the allies could take and it actually got him fired a few times, just once permanently.
LOL what a dumbass you are! Tell me, the films made in the UK in this era...they don't highlight the British do they? Lol what an idiot. THEY ARE AMERICAN FILMS IDIOT, NO KIDDING THEY SHOW THE BEST OF AMERICANS! lol! If you don't like them, don't watch them dumb ass (I have not seen Fury yet and prob. never will and the Uboat movie from a few years back was even worse from what I heard)
this is a film about joint US-UK effort not a dick swinging contest
J3XOR
Fun fact those are our Tanks...
This scene has always made me wonder if the artillery was on a range thus firing real shells, then edited into the movie to look like a creeping barrage. Those guns are recoiling like they are firing real shells. A few years ago, the Navy SEAL's were asked to help make and participate in a movie about them. They agreed but only if they could use real ammunition. They did.....
Yes, the guns were firing on a range used by the British Army of the Rhine. The shells were I believe live and yes there was editing as it wouldn't do well if a shell falling short hurt any of the actors or film crew.
How anyone survived that war is beyond me.
Thank you for posting this.
The creeping artillery barrage they call it.. Old WW1 tactic..epic scene
I wouldve loved to see this movie in the theatre back in the day.
'You don't know the worst...
This bit...
is the wide part'....
Love war films made like this, no CGI bullshit, just a lot of real explosives and good camera.work
Hey you look familiar
You can hardly do better; real British artillery firing LIVE AMMO on an artillery range by Dutch gunners, supporting a bunch of WW2 armor on the Dutch Army tank training ground at Amersfoort. And Michael Caine riding up front! I especially love the T6s representing Typhoon fighter/bombers actually dropping fake bombs, made from fire extinguishers and perfectly synced with ground charges
Brilliant film with a cast of big names!
This is an excellent movie. One of the better WWII movies.
Man that tree line that squirted with everything Goddam. Still one of the best World War II movies back in the day.
This is more realistic than the war movies made today with much better practical effects. Sad how much we've regressed.
i think they had ww2 vets show them how it looked and the budget they had, but I might be wrong
Dunkirk was the last good War Movie I have seen tbh and that was directed by Christopher Nolan. The remake of 1976 Midway however was dreadful.
@@ojsilva1975 1917 was not all that bad (not as large in scale though as Dunkirk).
@@accountreality1988 I totally forgot to mention that tbh, thanks for adding that in there!
Well you still have very accurate ww2 films made today and there were inaccurate ones back then.
So realistic explosion looks nuts!
Meanwhile in Company of Heroes , infantry general fires artillery , then tank general launches 12 m4 Sherman then destroyed
This is what you call creeping artillery barrage with a full frontal assault. Brilliant!
This is a really well executed scene, but did anyone notice that, as the tanks are beginning to roll forward the last tank before they cut to another angle, it's tracks aren't touching the ground, looks like wheels beneath but the cut is too fast
Have seen it so many times such detail used and so realistic awesome film
I think its the first movie that they actually uses real Sherman tanks and not some mock up tank
They've used actual Shermans in a lot of WW2 films, though I understand that some films use Chaffees, Walker Bulldogs, and sometimes Pattons. and there were some mockup Shermans that were shown for a second or two, but these looked exactly like the actual tank.
thi tran They only used like 3 real shermans in this movie, the resr are mockup frames set on cars
but still there are 3 actual shermans.
You forgot kelly's heroes 1970 real shermans
I think the longest day had a couple of Sherman’s.
A classic of a battle sequence. I never knew what the artillery barrage was known as when I first watched it but and I know it sounds crazy, thanks to Company Of Heroes Opposing Fronts and learning to use Creeping Barrage, now I know what the artillery tactic was! what a really impressive piece of cinema!
you know NOTHING because it was a game. Experience a real artillery barrage
@@Bilbirk62 Honestly, no need to get so verbal. By the way I rather not see a real artillery barrage, it is not something I am keen or anyone should witness. War is terrible, it isn't something to applaud at!
Wow explosions that actually look like high explosives and not just a tank of gasoline.
Well, back then they actually used high explosives. It was a simpler time and Hollywood had a lot more leeway when studios owned thousands of acres of land to do with as they pleased.
Awesome creeping barrage scene ! 👍
There is more more realistic, or stunning artillery barrage in the history of film......I recall seeing this for the first time in a theatre, and my arseholes tightening up the same way the Germans must have waiting for the barrage to contact.......☺
I agree with the sentiment, but how many arseholes do you have!?
Tim Richardson lol
Tim Richardson wtf LMAO
@@paladin56 ahahaha 😃
Fred B. - In my case, Fred, my dicks tightened up ! lol
This bit we're on now; it's the wide part. WOW gotta love those Jabo's
Is this the only representation of a creeping barrage in all of cinema?
Rolling barrage.
You just know it's going to be a good trip when the lead of your column gets shredded in the first ten minutes
there is nothing fair in a fight
"Staaht the purple!!"
this was my old man's action, did the battle field your before he died
If I was one of those few fortunate Germans to have been able to survive and surrender to the British at 5:38, I would be So Grateful that I survived, and that the War (that I was obviously on the losing side of) would be over for me!
Of course being on the Eastern Front (on the other hand) and having to surrender to Stalin and the Russians would probably be worse than death!
You should read the book "The Forgotten Soldier" that was written by this soldier who served in the German Army in late 1942. He was assigned to serve in the Eastern Front from late 1942 to the end of the war! He and a few of his close friends survived only by managing to escape to the West, and surrendering to the British, French and Americans!
Nicholas Ramsey - True enough. Towards the end of the war, German soldiers sought out and surrendered in droves to any Allied soldiers, except Russians. The Russians treated captured Germans very harshly, often marching them to Siberia. Only a fraction survived and went back to Germany years after the war.
I had a relative that served in Barbarossa, then volunteered for Rommel's Afrika Korps. He was captured in Tunisia and spent nearly 5 years in Huntsville, Texas. He became so close to the ranch family that he worked with, that they asked him to come back after the war and work for them. He said his time in US POW camps was good, but when he was transferred to England after the war, he spent nearly a year in some desolate, damp and cold hellhole near Scotland before finally getting back home in 1947.
It's not an excuse for them-but what exactly could the Germans have done with the hundreds of thousands of Red Army troops initially captured, (they didn't expect the huge numbers) when they couldn't hardly supply their own troops? If I remember correctly of the 190,000 German troops that surrendered at Stalingrad, about 8,000 ever made it home. My mom remembers one of those who did make it back and said every time it turned cold he would catch pneumonia because he was a wreck physically. (And probably mentally.)
In September of '41 Stalin thought he was nearly finished. (He had a train on stand by to flee east if necessary.) He'd retreated to his dacha thinking all was lost and his closest cronies showed up. Stalin thought they'd come to 'depose' (dispose, same meaning in Soviet Russia) him but they simply asked him what should be done militarily. It gave him enough confidence to carry on and these cronies thought they would be forever safe by showing their loyalty. Little did they know the paranoia of Stalin.
Lots of stars in this movie.
🌟
A great Hollywood movie that has many inaccuracies. The most egregious is the glossing over of the role the 82nd Airborne under Gavin played in the failure of XXX Corp to get to Arnhem on time. When XXX Corp got to Nijmegen they found that 82nd had still failed to take the Bridge and allowed the German to reinforce there force on the Bridge. The day the 82nd landed there were only a handful of Germans the bridges. Gavin took 8 hour to send a force to the Bridge when he initially landed. Then he withdrew them and decided to reinforce the Grooesbeek. This failure of the 82nd meant XXX Corp had a protracted battle to capture the Bridges (there were actually two).
Surprised how many people still don't know about this op. And the fallout after.
4:53. Best part
💥
Production Manager to Special Effect Supervisor: "How many pounds of explosives do we need for this scene?"
SES: "Yes."
as a stationary anti tank unit, the Germans knew they had to take the shelling until they had targets.
The best scène of artillerie in the movie
Looks like Sherman Fireflys.
wcatholic1 I think most of them were m4a3e8s with firefly turrets and some were just m4a3e8s
Most were fireflies. Though there were a few M4A1(76)W's, M4A1(76)W HVSS's, M4(105)'s, and M4(105) HVSS's.
Some tanks were, most were regular Shermans made to look like Fireflys, and the rest were fake Shermans built on Land Rovers.
there were also a m47 Patton and a m24 Chaffee in the mix (as wrecks)
Vinyl Stash and the British version of the M10 Wolverine known as "Achilles."
Love and respect to you long range snipers
✊️
I jst love artillary batteries.😍😘😘😘❤👌🏻
Sound of that artillery is terrifying.
😨
Makes you wonder how scary WWI must have been, where artillery barrages often went on for *days* before an assault.
Thy killed more trees than nazis
SweBass they grew back
Pretty sure a fair few died at 4:14 and 2:04
@James Cook they got what they deserve!
The trees did nazis it coming...
Einer der besten Kriegsfilme überhaupt!!!👍👏😉Genial
Hmmmm.....
Realistic creeping barrage......
That tank commander at 0:24 looks about 12 years old and obviously putting on his brave face. Great acting even from a bit-part.
I feel sorry for anyone inside a tank that gets hit by a German Panzer.
Usually all people inside those lightly armored allied tanks were killed immediately by the hollow charge. Surviving a critical hit somehow was scarce.
@@knutritter461 The Sherman had a very high survival record for the crews. Overall, for each Sherman destroyed by enemy action, either by direct fire or mines, only 0.98 crew members were killed. Only the heaviest German tanks would even come close to that level of survivability and only then because the majority were not defeated by enemy action, but broke down or ran out of fuel and were abandoned and listed as lost in combat.
This look like a documentary than a movie for me.