Tuesday, July 8, 2008

The Greatest (Forgotten) Stunt

I've found what may be the coolest, most eye-popping stunt committed to film ... at least one that no one really talks about anymore. Halfway through that last sentence I suddenly recalled maybe the second greatest stunt no one talks about — it's Buster Keaton letting the front of a house fall around him (and nearly clipping his head off) in 1928's Steamboat Bill Jr. YouTube it. In the meantime, back to my first point: There is a scene in the 1969 war movie The Bridge at Remagen that is so impressive that it could have only been pulled off in a time when stunts and labor laws were barely enforced, or even non-existent.

The Remagen Bridge — it's real name is the Lundendorff Bridge — was a railway bridge that crossed the Rhine into Germany. As we kicked Nazi tail back into Germany, the retreating enemy tried to delay their inevitable defeat by systematically blowing up bridges they crossed as they headed back into their precious Deutschland. Eventually there was one bridge left — Remagen. They did try to blow it, but for whatever reason its demolition failed. The bridge was damaged, but crossable. So with a known working bridge into Germany the entire Allied ground force began making a mad dash to Remagen, which wasn't going to be captured without some serious shooting. After heavy fighting, American feet were on German soil, and ten days later the bridge finally fell. This is the story the film tells, give or take a hair or two. I found the film because my ex-girlfriend's grandfather was a World War II veteran who had crossed into Germany on the Lundendorff. And not those temporary bridges that were built after the battle either — he crossed the real thing. The bridge was taken March 7, 1945; he crossed it, still under heavy German fire mind you, the next day, March 8. It was his story that led me to the film.

The movie glorifies battle the way most movies did back then, and it showed soldiers doing the death rattle, where they curled and spasmed as bullets tore through their bodies. But for the most part, the film looks pretty authentic. It even has a scene that appears to be shot handheld and gritty-like, decades before Saving Private Ryan unanchored its cameras and turned them loose on battle. I've included a YouTube video of the stunt that impressed me so much. The clip is a trailer for the movie, so it appears at about 2:20. Here's what goes down: a group of soldiers are walking beside a tank as it chugs down a street. The camera is perpinducular to a large three-story building as the men walk beside it with the tank between them and the building. Suddenly the entire building blows up, almost implodes like a controlled demolition. The men and the tank keep their pace as the entire structure crumbles beside them, and as the men are encased in a thick, choking debris cloud that we never see them emerge from (not because they're dead, but because the clip cuts away to never show what happened). The clip I've provided is not a very good quality. And the men are hard to see, as is the bottom of the tank, but I promise the men are there and indeed that building is crashing down nearly on top of them. If the video doesn't impress you, then Netflix the DVD (that's the only way I could find it) and see it in its original form. Once it happened, I went back and watched it several time admiring it for its lunacy and questioning how it was made, and if it was made safely.



Now, maybe the building was all foam and balsa wood, but it's unlikely because it comes down fast, faster than foam and balsa wood should with a normally cranked camera. Of course, maybe the footage was sped up to show harmless peices of a building fall to the ground in a realistic manner, but that can produce bizarre gravitational effects that our eyes can pick up. Another explanation could be that the camera was using a very long telephoto lens, one that would give the impression of men standing dangerously close to a falling building when in reality they are a safe disance away. That would make sense, but the debris cloud swallows them up almost immediatley, which indicates they are quite close to danger. No, I think it was real. They really blew up a building, they really had it fall, and they really had men walking beside it as it did. The cojones of those stunt actors! Wow! I was impressed. In fact, I was impressed by the stunt work in the entire movie. There are several scenes, including a couple with imploding buildings, that made me wonder how they were done. And then I wondered why I had never heard about them before.

And in case you're curious, here's Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bil Jr.


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