Saving Private Ryan: The Real History Hidden Behind the Screen

I've been feeling nostalgic lately, and I've been revisiting a lot of classic war movies. Saving Private Ryan is certainly one of the best of the lot. It's hard to imagine that this masterpiece directed by Spielberg was released 24 years ago.

Today, I want to share some real history behind what happened on screen. It's not easy to sort them out. Please like and follow, then continue to read!

Omaha Beach

The opening scene of the film shows a part of the Normandy landing, which is the most tragic Omaha Beach landing. The main attack force of Allies is composed of two infantry divisions and some Rangers (Captain Miller's unit in the movie). The German garrison in Omaha is originally expected to be just a regiment, but in fact there is a whole infantry division and some armored units. In addition, the rugged terrain and the deviation of the landing place caused by weather and sea conditions made Omaha Beach the bloodiest and cruelest place in the whole "Operation Overlord".

However, the Omaha Beach landing was not filmed in France, where it actually took place. At that time, the French government did not approve the shooting plan in Normandy for some political reasons, so the crew had to change locations to a beach in Ireland. It took an extra two months to prune the vegetation to make it look more like Normandy beach. About 1,000 people played the American soldiers who landed on Omaha Beach, almost all of them were reservists from Ireland.

Here's a fun fact for you: more than 20 people with physical disabilities were included, so that they could be fitted with prosthetic limbs to star in the shots of soldiers with missing body parts.

What's more crazy was that these extras were "sent to the battlefield" without being told any route or story template in advance, Spielberg hoped to show the chaos and disorder on the battlefield with this approach.

The only scene that may be criticized is that of a soldier being short almost 3 meters underwater, which is actually impossible. The bullet loses its kinetic energy, and it is impossible for it to reach its goal and be lethal.

During the editing, Spielberg lowered the color saturation of the film by 60% to make it look more historical, but later DVD and TV versions ajusted the color saturation back, so the version we see now is quite different from the darker cinema version.

The Czech hedgehog

The LCA landing crafts in the film were almost all antiques that served in World War II, but they were still well preserved when they filmed the movie. If you look carefully, you will find that the "Czech hedgehogs" deployed by the German army on the beach during the landing battle did not play an important role, however, they later became shelters for American soldiers. These fixed anti-tank obstacles can also be used in anti-landing batlles when they are placed on the beach.

In fact, the German General Staff misjudged the landing plan of the Allies, believing that they would choose the high tide time to land, so that the landing crafts could take soldiers to deeper attack positions. However, in the early morning of June 6, when the tide was low, most of the landing crafts began to unload soldiers far away from the anti-tank obstacles. So this detail in the film just reflects the historical truth at that time.

Soldiers of O.S.T

After Omaha was breached, two German soldiers were shot and killed by the US army even though they raised their hands to surrender. It was quite shocking, but it shows how, in the extremely fierce battlefield, the two warring sides might easily lose their minds, which was indeed the real situation at that time. More importantly, the two German soldiers were actually speaking Czech, what they said could be translated to: "Please don't shoot, I'm not German, I'm Czech, and I haven't killed anyone.". And judging from their costumes, they probably came from the German O.S.T battalion, which belonged to the second-line troops pieced together by the Nazi-occupied Central and Eastern European countries.

Team Miller

Tom Hanks' excellent portrayal of Captain Miller is apparent to all. Although he did not win his third Oscar for Best Actor with this role, he was awarded the Honorary Member Medal by the U.S. Army Rangers.

Look at Captain Miller's M1 helmet. The bar square on the front is the lieutenant's logo. The diamond and number on the back represent that they are from the Second Ranger Battalion.

Some people think that the scene of Miller's team throwing mortar shells at the end of the film to resist the German attack is not very realistic. In fact, most mortar shells in World War II could be detonated by throwing them by hand, although it is dangerous to do so. In order to allow the shells to explode on the ground after launching, these mortar shells are equipped with very sensitive impact fuses. However, in order to avoid being triggered in advance by collision during transportation, a safety bolt is specially designed to be removed before launching, and then the tail of the mortar shell is used to hit the solid body to simulate the state of launching. After that, the mortar shell will explode like a grenade, but much more powerful, so the enemy has little time to avoid it.

In history, there were some people who did use mortar shells to repel German attack this way, and won the Medal of Honor for it.

Private Ryan

There were initially several candidates for the actor who played Private Ryan , and Spielberg wanted to find a newcomer "the audiences had never seen before", so he chose Matt Damon, who was unknown at that time. Unexpectedly, Matt's other small-budget film, Good Will Hunting, was released in 1997 and won the Oscar for Best Screenplay with Ben Affleck, which made him famous overnight.

In the film, James Ryan is based on Fritz Niland of the 501st Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. Nine days after the Normandy landing, he got the bad news that his three elder brothers had died. That was to say, his mother would receive three telegrams of her sons' deaths at the same time. As the only son left in the family, Fritz was given special permission to return home to accompany his mother.

However, Fritz's eldest brother was not actually killed, instead, he was captured by the Japanese army in a prison camp in Burma, and was rescued by the British army after the war.

The story of the Fritz brothers, and the earlier story of the deaths of all five Sullivan brothers in the Navy, prompted the United States to enact Sole Survivor Policy to prevent members of the same family from serving in a front-line force at the same time. And if one of them died in the line of duty,his family members can be free from calling up or be exempt from

front-line combat missions.The main story structure of the film is based on this policy.

Vin Diesel

In addition to his old partner Tom Hanks, Spielberg's favorite actor in the crew is actually Vin Diesel, whose role as Private Caparzo has been added to a lot of scenes, including eating an apple from the ground when they attacked the town and being killed when he tried to rescue a French child despite the captain's opposition.

German snipers

The duel between the two snipers in the small town is probably the most unrealistic scene in the film. In fact, from Caparzo being shot to the members of the team taking cover, and then their own snipers looking for and annihilating the enemy. This process, in itself, is feasible and the shooting is quite professional. However, the problem lies in the last shot, which hits the enemy sniper's eye through the scope. That's a bit too much for me.

At that time, German snipers were in a commanding position, while Ranger snipers need to consider gravity factor to hit a target 450 yards away, which means that the sniper would need to aim above the target to compensate for trajectory, and the trajectory of the bullet would be a parabola, so it would be impossible to hit each other cleanly through the scope.

The town of Ramelle

The town in which stopped the German army at the end of the film was called Ramelle, in order to perfectly restore it, the props team spent four months rebuilding a replica of the war-torn French town based on local buildings. However, after the film was finished, the town was not demolished, and in 2001 it was used by Spielberg and Tom Hanks to make Band of Brothers. Later, they felt that they were not satisfied and took the same production team to make a shooting game called Medal of Honor.

P.S.:

To be honest, for me, the reason Captain Miller's team in the film can find Ryan is just luck. After all, the film is still a film. No matter how noble the humanistic spirit embodied, in reality, this is an impossible task, the mission plan can not even be presented in front of the Army Chief of Staff.

Indeed, Private Ryan is the son of a heroic mother, but the other soldiers are also sons, husbands and fathers. The director also uses the lines of one of the soldiers to ask the audiences the most important question, "Is it worth risking so many lives to save one person?"

If you had to answer this question, what would your say? Leave you answer in the comments!

All right, that's all folks! That's everything I know about Saving Private Ryan. Hope you enjoyed it!!!