question about film saving private ryan

What they used to do is teach left-handed shooters to shoot right handed. The reason they'd never let a left-handed sniper shoot as Pepper did in SPR, is that he has to break his sight picture for each shot then re-acquire his cheek weld and sight picture before he can shoot again - a clumsy, slow and stupid way to shoot a rifle. Back when rifles were bolt action - say, through 1941 or 42 - your drill instructor would have his entire boot up your ass if you dropped the rifle from your cheek or shoulder to work the bolt. That's not how it was done. You drew the bolt right back to your eye and slammed it forward again. The reason for that is that when that bolt locked, your eye was still looking down the sights and beyond at the target. If shooting Pepper's way wasn't good enough for the average rifleman, it sure wouldn't be good enough for a sniper.

Almost nobody today knows how to shoot a bolt action rifle properly because the military stopped training on them 75 years ago. That lack is very apparent in films. Guys like Dale Dye who do a lot of the technical advising on the better films have never grasped this. They get most of the equipment right, but the actors and extras don't know how to shoot the rifles correctly.

 

I agree with that interesting last point...it reminds me of about 25 years ago, an actor who was to be in a Australian WW1 movie had to practice over and over to get that fluid reload immediately after the rifle fires...his head barely moves...

 

Really guy's?

If Hollywood, or any other producer of feature films, shot and presented a completely accurate film on the second world war about two dozen people would go to see it (ok, maybe a few thousand) and it would be yanked before the end of the week. Failing so epically that no one would make another for years.

If you look at the top grossing films over the last two decades they are all, or nearly all, pure fantasy on the realism scale. A film is meant to entertain, possibly inspire and definitely make a profit, not to cater to the so narrow a market as those who get turned off because they used the wrong mark of tank or camo scheme.

Ryan, whatever its flaws or faults, gave a wide audience one of the best pictures of what it was like to be part of the generation that did the hard things that made a difference for their future. A window into a world where waiting 20 minutes to get their favorite mocha chino latte is hardly the great drama they make it out to be.

It would be impossible to give that generation its proper due, but unlike most of what shows up at the cineplex, it did a pretty decent job.

 

I enjoyed the film, I liked the film, but it doesn't cost any extra to get it right. It's not like the mass audience would turn away if Barry Pepper knew how to shoot a rifle or if he shot the sniper at 200 yards or just used one scope in the film.

 

As a lefty who was taught at a very young age on a bolt action rifle, I have to wholeheartedly agree. My grandpa owned a gun shop and built me a .22 bolt which was right handed. I just got used to it and was fairly successful at it target and hunting wise. I found out that my rate of fire and dispensing of the shell while keeping my cheek on the stock almost impossible. Very cumbersome.

 

Remember that 1,016 Americans died on Omaha Beach that day and having been there, I've seen a few remaining bunkers and can see why so many died. The planners hated landing there, but they had no choice. It was the only beach between the British sector and Utah.

 

I know that Speilberg took great pride in trying to make SPR as 'realistic' as possible. He even had the actors go through 7-8 days (with Capt Dale Dye I think) of 'training' to tech them how to use their weapons, etc, etc, etc. I enjoyed the movie and even own a copy of it. I can't help but get tears in my eyes at the first and last scenes. It was because of that, that when doing our own three day invasaion of Normandy last month that I told my wife, "No cemetaries, I won't be able to handle it".

I plan to do a full report on my Normandy trip with lots of photos..... The view looking down on Omaha from inside a pillbox on the bluffs above was pretty shocking..........

The most Cartoonish war movie ever made was Pearl Harbor. Just a total joke and an insult to all who were there that day.

 

I nominate Inglorious basterds. .

 

Not a good comparison. Basterds was intentionally cartoonish and silly, after the Dirty Dozen and such films.

 

Only sometimes. I have read dozens of veterans accounts, both Army and Marine, where they state, that for multiple reasons they were allowed to qualify left handed. We were just coming out of the great depression and many rural boys were sustenance hunters, if they didn't kill something they didn't eat. They didn't have a lot of money for ammo so every shot had to count. Lefty's/Righty's same same. I have also read a similar number of accounts, mainly by right handers, that state that everyone was taught and forced to qualify right handed. Soldiers and Marines were often allowed to qualify lefty, if they demonstrated a high skill level with the rifle.

Stupid in your opinion. If it were actually stupid, there would not be left handed snipers. There are. Left handed snipers today are allowed to shoot lefty, if they have a high enough marksmanship skill level when applying to the various sniper courses. There are at least two techniques I know of (probably more) that accomodate a left handed shooter firing a right handed bolt gun. One method, the more common, does require the breaking of the stock weld, but they claim it equals out because they don't have to release their grip on the small of the stock or move their trigger finger. With practice they become quick and smooth in their cycling of the bolt, not slow and clumsy.

Not true in all cases. As stated above there are plenty of accounts by veterans that shot lefty and were allowed to. If said, left hand shooting, recruit goes to the range and shoots like Alvin York, because he's been shooting rabbits and squirrels for dinner since he was 5, chances are they wouldn't want to screw him up. I have even read two accounts that claim they were right handed, but due to chilhood illnesses were left eye dominant. During Army Basic or Marine Boot Camp, they were actually taught to shoot left handed, because it's easier to teach someone that is left eye dominant to shoot lefty, than to shoot proficiently right handed using their left eye.

All snipers are trained on bolt guns and I assure you they have to do so as proficiently, if not more so than someone that qualified on a bolt gun when it was the standard service rifle.That lack is very apparent in films.

I also agree with the Honorable Prime Minister, (Belasar) :eyebrows: that movies have to be entertaining and make money. Many movie makers consider their product an artform. I read an interesting take on the Barry Pepper/sniper issue that attributes the way his character was portrayed as a literary device. He's shooting left handed, because historically left handedness was considered evil or wicked. In english (from the latin root words sinister/sinistra/sinistrum) sinister means left but also connotes evil or wickedness. So we have the sniper shooting left-handed (evil) while quoting Bible verses (good), so it is a allegorical representation within the one character of the struggle between good and evil. Intreresting.

 

Perhaps, but I would argue that the Pepper character is both slow and clumsy. It would have made more sense if the character had a scoped Garand, which was common enough. The other component of that is Pepper switching between scopes in different scenes. Note that in the "450 yard" scene he's using the 2.5X Weaver, but in the tower with short range he's switched to the 8X Unertl, yet the camera view shows a very wide field of view which you wouldn't have in an 8X scope. And of course, he hasn't re-zeroed in either case.

In any case, this little by-play adds nothing to the film. Obviously, they wanted this actor for this role, which is fine by me. He's a good actor. If he had just an 8X Unertl, one might suppose he had somehow managed to scrounge up this USMC scope without the silliness of swapping scopes in different scenes. Mount it on a Garand and you have no clumsiness with the shooting.

 

A question I've always wanted to ask since first seeing SPR concerns the hand signals used when the US troops await the German attack in the film's final battle sequence: this is the scene where Pepper I think is making the signals to highlight (I assume) location, number, etc of Germans. It seems a bit too slick to be accurate, particularly given the variety of signs used. Were such signals used at US platoon or section level?

 

That's a good question. These are Rangers who received a lot more training than ordinary infantrymen, so I wouldn't question that kind of skill set. Rangers were supposed to penetrate behind enemy lines and strike in rear areas. They even had to qualify on various enemy small arms, mortars, etc, so they could re-supply themselves with captured arms.

 

Well a alternate explanation might be that the character was taught right handed, but was a natural lefty who after basic decided to ignore his training after becoming a combat vet figuring what are they gonna do....send him to the front?

Just sayin'

 

I think the Barry Pepper/left handed thing as a representation of good and evil is a little overdoing it.

If representing anything at all, it may well be that Barry Pepper, for all his left handed awkwardness, just happened to be the best shot available to the unit, left handed or not. You worked with what the powers that be gave you to work with in those days. There were no OH&S malingerers skulking round, claiming Pepper would be "compromising safety procedures" or other such justificatory nonsense that administrators everywhere seem to be able to bamboozle the military with, (and eveyone else for that matter).

I considered it quite entertaining to have a left hander, and a Southerner, (traditionally the pick of the bunch anyway in the US Army since the Civil War), as the best performing soldier in the unit. It just seemed to be "right". (excuse the pun)

 

When the decision was made, in January 1944, to expand the scale of the landings from three to five assault divisions, there was a flurry of ship building and lots of sailors needed to be trained to crew the hundreds of extra landing craft. Much of this was undertaken by the British and the crews were from the RN and RM. . One big ommision from Saving Private Ryan is the appearance of any British at all - apart from a rude remark about making tea in front of Caen, by characters who could not have known what was happening anywhere.. Spielberg went out of his way to show D Day as an American Battle, by copntract with The Longest Day.. This really annoyed the British Normandy Veterans , in particular those Naval and marine veterans who creed landing craft on Omaha Beach that day.

In the 1970s and 80s, when the British Army used the 7.,62mm SLR, the teaching was that soldiers should be proficient from either shoulder. Good fire positions can occur on either side of cover. E.g. When advancing down the right hand side of a street, there are a lot more fire positions from the left shoulder than the right. A point reinforced by two decades in Northern Ireland.

At the end of the 1980s the British adopted the bullpup .SA80 and can only be fired from one shoulder. So they don't teach that any more...

WW2 era US Army hind signs are here http://www.historynet.com/hand-signals-the-vocabulary-of-battlefield-stealth.htm

 

Not disagreeing with the overall point, but comparing SPR with TLD is not a fair comparison. The scope of TLD was to tell the broad story of D-Day. It would have been an outrage if it did not feature the British. SPR, on the other hand, was a much narrower story of one platoon of the 101st Airborne Division. I agree that it would have been relatively easy for Spielberg to have the landing craft crews portrayed as British and he should have done so. As for the rest of the movie, I'm inclined to give him a pass. Film makers have about 2 hours (give or take) to tell the story they want to tell. If they aren't trying for a remake of TLD, I don't expect them to include things that don't advance the story they are trying to tell. However, as I said, I agree that it was a slight to the British Naval and marine veterans, and they are justified in being annoyed.

 

Well if you notice, all the landing boats are marked as belonging to the APA-30 Thomas Jefferson. Unless the Thomas Jefferson had British boat crews, (unlikely) then for the film maker to have included them would have had had him pilloried by "stitch counters" for that inaccuracy. BTW, APA-30 was at Normandy, but I do not know for sure she carried elements of 2d Ranger Battalion as depicted. In the run into the beach scene, up until they unassed the boat, you can clearly see the numbers on at least three of the boats PA 30-11, PA 30-5 and PA 30-6. I'm sure if you look closely you can actually identify more.

 

The markings are "fictitious."

C Company was aboard HMS Prince Charles, and boarded two British LCAs(LCMs were used in the movie, because that is what was available) for their assault.

Still, it is a movie, and although "based on fact", it is still fictitious - it is not "Saving Private Niland"

 

Like I said,

but, the movie boats were marked as being from APA 30. I'm not real familiar with British landing craft, is the LCA the one that looks similar to the LCPR ?