Reeling Backward: "Battle of the Bulge" (1965)

All movies are on some level flimflam, even the ones that purport to be based on "true events." This is doubly so for war pictures, which must take the chaotic and bloody gruel of combat and some turn it into a digestible cinematic meal. If an obvious narrative doesn't present itself in the historical record, Hollywood will bend over backward to impose one -- never mind how much the made-up characters and plot diverge from reality.

You know you've got a problem with historical accuracy, though, when Dwight D. Eisenhower emerges from his post-presidency blanket of privacy to hold a press conference denouncing your movie. Such was the fate of 1965's "Battle of the Bulge."

This borderline awful war drama is like a Tinseltown Cliff's Notes version of one of World War II's most decisive battles. The real Battle of the Bulge lasted nearly a month, stretched over a huge chunk of Western Europe and involved hundreds of thousands of soldiers and pieces of equipment. The movie version, however, focuses on the plight of a handful of American soldiers at various levels of command, ranging from sergeant up to general.

Not only is the role of the British downplayed in the Hollywood version, I'm not sure if an English soldier even shows up once during the movie's 170 minutes. That's ironic, considering director Ken Annakin is an Englander who directed the British scenes in the far superior "The Longest Day."

Astonishingly, despite being one of the most famous winter military deployments since Valley Forge, there's barely a hint of snow in the film, which looks like it was shot during the full bloom of summer.

My biggest complaint is that all the American soldiers are not individuals but character "types" -- usually ones that synch up nicely with the star persona of the actor playing him. So Henry Fonda is Kiley, a careful and reasonable man whose warnings about a German offensive go unheeded. And Charles Bronson is Wolenski, a tough no-nonsense major who leads a group of hardcase dogfaces.

James MacArthur plays Weaver, an untested young lieutenant who quickly gets wised up by the German Panzer incursion and the tutelage of his wiser sergeant. Robert Ryan is the determined, methodical good general and Telly Savalas is Guffy, a tank sergeant who runs a black market racket on the side and operates as the movie's Bronx-accented comic relief.

None of these actors makes much of an impression, with the exception of Fonda, who could play a telephone switch operator and make it snap.

The real star of the show is Robert Shaw as Hessler, the ambitious, take-no-prisoners German tank commander given a prime spot in the counteroffensive of the Third Reich. Hessler is loosely based on the real-life Panzer commander known for his aggressive tactics that resulted in high casualties among his own forces, while also crushing the enemy.

Outfitted with the platinum blond hairdo he wore in "From Russia with Love" and a few other films, Shaw is the model of the icy Aryan Nazi, who would rather the war go in forever in stalemate than lose his status as a military hero. Hans Christian Blech plays Conrad, his right-hand man and conscious, who whispers in his ear not to be so cruel. In the end, they break ways and Conrad is assigned to tote fuel drums. The final shot of the film is Conrad tossing away his rifle and ammunition belt as the defeated Germans march away home.

Hessler is also implied to order the execution of captured American POWs at Malmedy, an actual war crime that is depicted briefly in the film without a lot of emotional power. Mostly it's used as the turning point of the Weaver character when he stops being callow and learns to accept the consequences of command decisions.

Weaver survives the massacre to, in the movie's depiction, nearly single-handedly stop the German tank advance by rolling some cans of fuel at Hessler's column, blowing them up. Neat trick, that.

Shaw is a real treat as a hiss-able screen villain, but in terms of nuance "Battle of the Bulge" is severely lacking. It's a dumbed-down cut-up of a movie about a great, tragic event. I don't think Ike was the only one who thought it was a serious disservice to the men who fought and died.

Reeling Backward: "The Scalphunters" (1968)

One of the pleasures of doing the Reeling Backward column is discovering new talents I hadn't heard about before, or rediscovering new aspects of actors and filmmakers with whom I had some familiarity.

I've enjoyed finding more films from Ossie Davis' long movie career, and I encountered another delightful performance in 1968's "The Scalphunters." It was Sydney Pollack's third feature film credit after his TV apprenticeship, an enjoyable Western comedy about a grizzled fur trader (Burt Lancaster,) an educated slave out of his element (Davis), some enterprising American Indians with their own peculiar take on capitalism, and the aforementioned scalphunters.

In a previous column, I marveled at Davis' ability to play a young soldier in "The Hill," despite being nearly age 50 at the time. The year "The Scalphunters" came out, Davis turned 51, yet convincingly portrayed a character much younger.

I think I figured out Davis' trick: He simply declined to age, until he reached the point in his career that he felt ready to tackle older-man roles. Talk about Method.

Lancaster is ostensibly the lead, Joe Bass, but it's worth nothing that he largely disappears from the center of the movie, residing both literally figuratively on the periphery of the story. During this time Joseph Lee, a cagey slave who plays the underhanded motives of the white people against each other, takes the limelight.

In terms of narrative, there isn't much of one. A trapper, Bass has his winter's worth of fur pelts stolen from him by a Kiowa chief named Two Crows (Armando Silvestre, a Mexican actor who makes for a charismatic but unconvincing Indian). As payment, they give him Joseph Lee, whom they had captured from the Comanches.

Bass, with Lee in tow, follows the Kiowa with the intention of stealing back his furs, when the Indians are attacked by a large group of marauders led by Jim Howie (Telly Savalas). Indian scalps are worth $25 apiece, and Howie and his gang are the sort to acquire money in whatever way they can get it. Bass' mule laden with furs is merely a bonus.

After slipping down a cliff wall, Lee is captured by Howie, who figures he'll fetch $1,500 at the slave auction before they move on to Mexico and out of the reach of the long arm of the law. Lee, who realizes slavery is abolished south of the border, begins ingratiating himself with Howie and his mistress, Kate (Shelley Winters), in hopes of accompanying them entire way to freedom.

Meanwhile, Bass shadows the wagon train, attempting through various means to get back his furs. The most clever of these is poisoning the next water hole with locoweed, so the group's horses bolt and go crazy, killing several men.

Even though story-wise there really isn't much going on, I so enjoyed the four main actors in their roles. Lancaster does his wonderful high-low thing, playing a man of dubious cultural refinement who somehow seems to retain his sense of human grace. He's an illiterate liar who isn't above stealing and fighting dirty, but by gods, he reasons, at least he doesn't trade scalps for a living. The man's stubbornness is his calling card, and his curse.

Telly Savalas had one of those careers where he could play lecherous villains and noble heroes, and yet the characters had a similar through-line. His Jim Howie is not a truly dastardly man -- he does evil things not because he enjoys them, but because they profit him. And profit is all that Howie truly cherishes. Even his relationship to Kate is largely transactional: She figures he's the best chance she's got at a lifetime of comfort, and he gets regular sex and companionship.

It is a marvel to me that anyone, anywhere, at any time ever considered Shelley Winters an attractive woman. With a brassy attitude, screechy voice, three chins and a girdle that groans mightily at its task, Kate is a walking study in repulsion. She at least treats Joseph Lee with something like compassion, seeing him as a more refined companion than Jim Howie -- especially since he's servile and doesn't hit her.

But Ossie Davis' Joseph Lee is the star that makes "The Scalphunters" shine brightly. I loved the way Davis delivers his dialogue, in bright, clipped readings of perfect enunciation and diction. His voice carries almost like he's on a stage and trying to reach the back row.

I shivered with delight whenever he addressed Joe Bass, calling "Mr. Baaasss!!" with a rising crescendo. That over-the-top enthusiasm hides a mountain of obsequiousness, of course, but that is the plight when you are a slave at the mercy of people far less intelligent than yourself.

It could have been just a minor piffle, but Ossie Davis and the rest of the cast transform "The Scalphunters" into a joyous comedic reverie on the dusty plains of the West.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962)

Good movie, but they got the title wrong: Robert Stroud kept and studied birds for decades while imprisoned in Leavenworth. When he got transferred to Alcatraz, he was not allowed to have pets or scientific equipment. The "Birdman" spent 17 years at Alcatraz, with nary a bird to call his own.

But I guess the title "Birdman of Leavenworth" doesn't sing as sweetly.

This 1962 drama about a two-time killer who was saved from the hangman's noose to serve a life term studying birds is fairly typical of its era. The truth -- that Robert Stroud was a pretty hateful and despicable guy who also happened to be brilliant -- is rewritten and glammed up by Hollywood.

Played by Burt Lancaster, one of the most handsome men to ever grace a screen, Stroud is turned into a symbol of the nobility of man, and the wrongness of locking that away in a dank corner when he could be contributing to society.

Although, given the real-life narrative of Stroud's incarceration -- which the film follows fairly accurately -- it's pretty hypocritical to spend the first third or so of the movie in which Stroud and his mother fight to prevent him from getting the death penalty, and then spending the last two-thirds sermonizing about awful it is to deny him parole.

When Stroud stabs a prison guard to death in the cafeteria because he insists on reporting Stroud for a minor infraction, thus preventing him from seeing his mother, it's presented as a moment of supreme oppression -- against Stroud. That guard -- nay, the very penal system -- is just a big ol' meanie, so as the music soars and director John Frankenheimer sends his camera into opera-esque swoops and swoons, we're meant to see him as the hero striking back against a corrupt system.

Stroud goes on to mellow out quite a bit, becomes a leading authority on the anatomy of birds, and even ends the movie by heroically ending a prison riot, sagely advising the hot young guns that all life is precious. But never once does he express any remorse for his crimes.

Although I don't agree with the socio-political conclusions "Birdman of Alcatraz" steers its audience toward, I still enjoyed it. It's a skillfully-made film by a top-notch filmmaker who could still crank out a lean, mean thriller like "Ronin" at age 68.

There's a really nice crop of supporting performances. Karl Malden plays Harvey Shoemaker, Stroud's first and last warden, who vows to keep him locked in solitary until the end of his days. Their relationship starts out adversarial, morphs into something more or less civil, but retains a steel edge of enmity even into their old age.

A young Telly Savalas, who started and ended on television, plays Gomez, a dim-witted but amiable fellow prisoner who gets caught up in Stroud's affection for birds, and starts keeping some of his own.

Thelma Ritter plays Stroud's mother, who stood by him, even petitioning President Woodrow Wilson to commute his death sentence, but cut ties when he marries his business partner (Betty Field) to generate publicity. (Stroud sold birds and medicine that he made right in his cell.)

Neville Brand gives a really touching performance as Bull, a crotchety guard who forms a grudging respect for Stroud. On the day they come to pluck Stroud out of Leavenworth to transfer him to Alcatraz and back under Shoemaker's control, Bull shakes his hand and calls Stroud a friend. Because the film has patiently taken its time to sketch their relationship over the years, the moment feels true and right. It's the sort of thing a lot of modern filmmakers skimp on now.

Narrative film lends itself better to fiction, because facts almost never have a satisfying story arc. Real life is inconvenient. The real Robert Stroud was diagnosed as psychotic and possibly was a pedophile, and his bird-filled cell was a hygiene nightmare. But good stories need inspiration, and the life of Stroud certainly provided that.

3 stars