Saving Private Ryan

''Saving Private Ryan'' is a 1998 American epic war film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Rodat. Set during the Battle of Normandy in World War II, the film is known for its graphic portrayal of war, especially its depiction of the Omaha Beach assault during the Normandy landings. The film follows United States Army Rangers Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks) and his squad ( Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, and Jeremy Davies) as they search for a paratrooper, Private first class James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon), the last surviving brother of four, the three other brothers having been killed in action. The film was a co-production between DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, and Mutual Film Company. DreamWorks distributed the film in North America while Paramount released the film internationally.

Rodat first wrote the script in 1994 after reading about the Niland brothers, and by 1996 producer Mark Gordon acquired the rights to Rodat's script. After eleven rewrites, Gordon began developing the project at Paramount. Spielberg, who at the time was forming DreamWorks, was eventually hired by Paramount to direct the film while DreamWorks would co-finance as part of a deal. After the cast went through training supervised by Marine veteran Dale Dye, the film's principal photography started in June 1997 and lasted two months. The film's D-Day scenes were shot in Ballinesker Beach, Curracloe Strand, Ballinesker, just east of Curracloe, County Wexford, Ireland, and used members of the Irish Army reserve as extras to portray infantry for the D-Day landing.

''Saving Private Ryan'' received publicity for its graphic depiction of violence and war, with Spielberg himself expecting the film to receive a NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. On its release, ''Saving Private Ryan'' became the second highest-grossing film of 1998 worldwide with $485 million worldwide, behind ''Armageddon''. The film received critical acclaim from critics and audiences, who praised the performances, realism, cinematography, score, screenplay, and Spielberg's direction. Topping many film critics' 1998 top ten lists and winning numerous awards, ''Saving Private Ryan'' won five Academy Awards, including Spielberg's second Academy Award for Best Director, though it lost the Academy Award for Best Picture to ''Shakespeare in Love'' in a controversial Oscars upset. The film solidified Damon's rising star power and would strengthen the collaborative relationship between Spielberg and Hanks, while the film also helped Diesel launch his career.

In the years since its release'', Saving Private Ryan'' has maintained its reputation as one of the greatest and most influential films of the 1990s, one of the greatest war and action films of all time, and one of the greatest films ever made, and some declaring it as Spielberg's best film. Hailed as an influential landmark in the war and action film genres, the film helped depict war and action scenes with a stronger emphasis on realism while helping influence cinematography due to its use of desaturated colors, hand-held cameras, and tight angles. It has also been credited for renewing interest in World War II media, particularly World War II-themed first-person shooter games that became popular in the 2000s. In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked ''Saving Private Ryan'' as the 71st-greatest American movie in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) and in 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot

An elderly veteran visits the Normandy Cemetery with his family. At a specific grave, he is overcome with emotion and begins to recall his time as a soldier.

On the morning of June 6, 1944, the U.S. Army lands at Omaha Beach as part of the Normandy invasion. Captain John H. Miller leads his command, Company C, 2nd Ranger Battalion in a breakout from the beach. The staff at the United States Department of War learns that James Francis Ryan of the 101st Airborne Division is missing and presumed to be the last survivor of four brothers who are all in the military. General George C. Marshall orders Ryan to be found and sent home so that his family will not lose all its sons.

Miller is ordered to lead a detachment in finding Ryan. As they arrive in the contested town of Neuville between German defenders and the 101st Airborne, Caparzo is killed by a German sniper. Miller and his men find a paratrooper named Ryan but he is not the one for whom they are searching, and they are directed to a rally point where James Francis Ryan's unit should be. Miller learns that Ryan is defending a key bridge in the town of Ramelle. ''En route'', Miller decides against the judgment of his soldiers to neutralize a German machine gun nest, which results in Wade's death. A surviving German soldier is spared by the intervention of Upham, the detachment's interpreter, who is unused to the horrors of combat. Miller blindfolds the soldier, who has been nicknamed "Steamboat Willie", and orders him to surrender to the next Allied patrol. When Reiben threatens to desert, Miller defuses the situation by calmly telling a story that reveals his civilian background as a teacher and baseball coach, of which he has not previously spoken, and which has been the subject of much speculation among his men.

Upon arriving in Ramelle, Miller's detachment makes contact with Ryan and informs him of his brothers' deaths. Though upset, Ryan refuses to abandon his post defending the town's bridge. The town soon comes under siege by attacking Germans, and Miller assumes command as the only officer present. He and his unit fight alongside the 101st, but the German armor advantage takes a toll on the Americans. Jackson, Mellish and Horvath are killed in the fighting, and Steamboat Willie shoots Miller as he attempts to blow up the bridge with pre-placed explosives. American P-51 Mustang fighter planes and Sherman tanks arrive and halt the German advance. Upham confronts Steamboat Willie, who attempts to talk Upham into letting him go again; now aware of the difficult choices soldiers make during war, Upham shoots and kills him. The mortally wounded Miller tells Ryan to "earn this" referring to the sacrifices others have made so that Ryan can have a postwar life.

Ryan is revealed to be the elderly veteran and the grave to be Miller's. Ryan expresses gratitude for the sacrifices made by Miller and his men, says he hopes he "earned it", and salutes the grave.

Cast

Production

Development

In 1994, Robert Rodat's wife gave him the bestseller ''D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II'' by historian Stephen Ambrose. While reading the book during an early morning walk in a small New Hampshire village, Rodat was "struck by a monument dedicated to those who had died in various wars, particularly because of the repeated last names of brothers who were killed in action". He was inspired by an actual family in Ambrose's book named the Nilands, which had lost two sons in the war and was thought to have lost a third, whose fourth son was "snatched" out of Normandy by the War Department.

Rodat proposed the pitch to producer Mark Gordon. Gordon then pitched Rodat's idea to Paramount Pictures, whose executives liked the idea and commissioned Rodat to write the script. While Rodat began rewriting the script, Paramount and Gordon sought to find a director for the film. Michael Bay was approached by Paramount to direct the film, but he declined the offer as he felt that he did not know how to approach the material. Carin Sage at Creative Artists Agency read Rodat's script and made Steven Spielberg, who was one of the agency's clients, aware of it. At the same time, Spielberg, already preparing to direct '' The Lost World: Jurassic Park'' (1997) for Universal Pictures, was finishing establishing the independent studio DreamWorks Pictures with music executive David Geffen and former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg. Spielberg learned of the script from Carin and immediately picked up the script and became interested in the film.

Spielberg had already demonstrated his interest in World War II themes with the films '' 1941'', ''Empire of the Sun'', ''Schindler's List'', and the ''Indiana Jones'' series. When asked about this by ''American Cinematographer'', Spielberg said, "I think that World War II is the most significant event of the last 100 years; the fate of the Baby Boomers and even Generation X was linked to the outcome. Beyond that, I've just always been interested in World War II. My earliest films, which I made when I was about 14 years old, were combat pictures that were set both on the ground and in the air. For years now, I've been looking for the right World War II story to shoot, and when Robert Rodat wrote ''Saving Private Ryan'', I found it."

When Spielberg met with Paramount, he told the studio he would sign on to direct the film for them. However, he conditioned that DreamWorks be involved in the financing and distribution of the film, along with his company Amblin Entertainment and Gordon's Mutual Film Company. Because Paramount owned the rights to Rodat's script, the two studios struggled to determine who would handle domestic distribution for ''Saving Private Ryan'', as DreamWorks wanted to distribute future films directed by Spielberg. Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom (Paramount's parent owner at the time), met with Paramount and DreamWorks executives at a Beverly Hills hotel in April 1997 to determine distribution rights. Through a coin toss organized by Redstone, DreamWorks won domestic distribution (the United States and Canada), while Paramount retained international rights. In exchange for distribution rights for ''Saving Private Ryan'', Paramount would retain domestic distribution rights to ''Deep Impact'', while DreamWorks would acquire international distribution.

Writing

Rodat's earlier drafts were in the spirit of a standard action film, something Spielberg intended on making. After Spileberg met with several World War II veterans prior to pre-production, he realized the film had to be closer to reality. He commissioned Rodat to do extensive rewrites of the script, rearranging the fates of several characters in order to make the tone more realistic. Scott Frank and Frank Darabont were hired by Spielberg to do additional rewrites for the script, though they were uncredited as Rodat was credited for the final draft of the script.

Casting

In casting the film Spielberg sought to create a cast that "looked" the part, stating in an interview, "You know, the people in World War II actually looked different than people look today," adding to this end that he cast partly based on wanting the cast "to match the faces I saw on the newsreels."

Gordon and co-producer Gary Levinsohn were interested in having Tom Hanks appear in the film as Captain Miller. Gordon recounted, "Tom was enormously excited about it and said, 'Steven and I have always wanted to work together." but Hanks also reluctant to do the film as he seen friendship ruined by bad film making. Pete Postlethwaite, Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson were initially considered for the role of Miller.

Edward Norton turned down the role of Private Ryan to do the film ''American History X''. Noah Wyle also passed on the role of Private Ryan, due to not being able to get out of his contract for '' ER''.

Lisa Sanderson alleged in a 2013 lawsuit that Garth Brooks was offered a role in the movie but turned it down as he did not want to be outshone by superstars like Tom Hanks and Matt Damon.

Before filming began, several of the film's stars, including Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Barry Pepper, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, Giovanni Ribisi, and Tom Hanks, endured ten days of " boot camp" training led by Marine veteran Dale Dye and Warriors, Inc., a California company that specializes in training actors for realistic military portrayals. Matt Damon was trained separately, so the rest of the group, whose characters are supposed to feel resentment towards Damon's character, would not bond with him. Spielberg had stated that his main intention in forcing the actors to go through the boot camp was not to learn the proper techniques but rather "because I wanted them to respect what it was like to be a soldier." During filming, Sizemore was battling drug addiction and Spielberg required him to be drug tested every day. If he failed a test, he would be dismissed and all of his scenes would be reshot with a different actor.

Filming

Filming began June 27, 1997, and lasted for two months. Spielberg wanted an almost exact replica of the Omaha Beach landscape for the movie, including sand and a bluff similar to the one where German forces were stationed and a near match was found in Ballinesker Beach, Curracloe Strand, Ballinesker, just east of Curracloe, County Wexford, Ireland. Production of the sequence depicting the Omaha Beach landings cost US$12 million and involved up to 1,500 extras, some of whom were members of the Irish Reserve Defence Forces. Members of local reenactment groups such as the Second Battle Group were cast as extras to play German soldiers. In addition, twenty to thirty actual amputees were used to portray American soldiers maimed during the landing. The film's second scene is a sequence over 20 minutes long recounting the landing on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Spielberg chose to include this particularly violent sequence in order "to bring the audience onto the stage with me," specifically noting that he did not want the "audience to be spectators," but rather he wanted to "demand them to be participants with those kids who had never seen combat before in real life, and get to the top of Omaha Beach together." Spielberg did not storyboard the sequence, as he wanted spontaneous reactions and for "the action to inspire me as to where to put the camera." Hanks recalled to Roger Ebert that although he realized it was a movie, the experience still hit him hard, stating, "The first day of shooting the D-Day sequences, I was in the back of the landing craft, and that ramp went down and I saw the first 1-2-3-4 rows of guys just getting blown to bits. In my head, of course, I knew it was special effects, but I still wasn't prepared for how tactile it was."

Some shooting was done in Normandy, for the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer and Calvados. Other scenes were filmed in England, such as a former British Aerospace factory in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Thame Park, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. Production was due to also take place in Seaham, County Durham, but government restrictions disallowed this. According to both Gordon and Levinsohn, the producers were hardly involved in the production as Spielberg was entrusted with full creative control of the film. Both producers were only involved in raising foreign financing and handling international distribution. Gordon, however, said that Spielberg was "inclusive and gracious and enormously solicitous in terms of the development of the screenplay".

Portrayal of history

The historical representation of Charlie Company's actions, led by its commander, Captain Ralph E. Goranson, is considered to be well-maintained in the opening sequence. The sequence and details of the events are very close to the historical record, including the sea sickness experienced by many of the soldiers as the landing craft moved toward the shoreline, the significant casualties among the men as they disembarked from the boats, and their difficulty linking up with adjacent units on the shore.

The distinctive "ping" of the US soldiers' M1 Garand rifles ejecting their ammunition clips is heard throughout the battle sequence. Many details of the company's actions were depicted accurately; for instance, the correct code names for the sector Charlie Company assaulted, and adjacent sectors, were used. Included in the cinematic depiction of the landing was a follow-on mission of clearing a bunker and trench system at the top of the cliffs which was not part of the original mission objectives for Charlie Company, but which was undertaken after the assault on the beach.Saving Private Ryan: Company C, 2nd Ranger Battalion
. Sproe.com. Retrieved September 8, 2011.

The landing craft used included twelve actual World War II examples, 10 LCVPs and 2 LCMs, standing in for the British LCAs that the Ranger Companies rode in to the beach during Operation Overlord. The filmmakers used underwater cameras to better depict soldiers being hit by bullets in the water. Forty barrels of fake blood were used to simulate the effect of blood in the seawater. This degree of realism was more difficult to achieve when depicting World War II German armored vehicles, as few examples survive in operating condition. The Tiger I tanks in the film were copies built on the chassis of old, but functional, Soviet T-34 tanks. The two vehicles described in the film as Panzers were meant to portray Marder III tank destroyers. One was created for the film using the chassis of a Czech-built Panzer 38(t) tank similar to the construction of the original Marder III; the other was a cosmetically modified Swedish SAV m/43 assault gun, which also used the 38(t) chassis.

There are some historical inaccuracies in the film's depiction of the Normandy campaign. At the time of the mission, US forces from the two American beach areas, Utah and Omaha, had not yet linked up. In reality, a Ranger team operating out of the Omaha Beach area would have had to move through the German-occupied city of Carentan, or swim or boat across the estuary linking Carentan to the English Channel, or transfer by boat to the Utah landing area. On the other hand, US forces moving out of Utah Beach would have had direct and much shorter routes, relatively unencumbered by enemy positions, and were already in contact with some teams from both US airborne divisions landed in the area.

In contrast, the Utah Beach landings were relatively uncontested, with assault units landing on largely unoccupied beaches and experiencing far less action than the landings at Omaha. The filmmakers chose to begin the narrative with a depiction of the more dramatic story of Omaha, despite the historical inaccuracies it would create. In addition, the film depicts the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich as the adversary during the fictional Battle of Ramelle; in fact, there is no town called Ramelle and the 2nd SS was not engaged in Normandy until July, and then at Caen

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