Saving Private Ryan - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Saving Private Ryan or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Saving Private Ryan

[melinda]

According to the opening title card and the cross on a grave at the end of the movie, the events of the movie take place from June 6th to June 13th, 1944.

[sara]

During the ending sequence when Upham emerges from hiding, he speaks in German without subtitles. Roughly translated, he says, "Hands up!" and "Lay down your weapons!" several times. One of the Germans says, "I know this soldier. I know this man." Upham responds, "Hold your snout!" The German soldier responds, "Upham," then after a pause, Upham shoots him. Then, to the rest of the soldiers, he says, "Scram! Vanish!"

[wesley]

Although Steven Spielberg reduced the color saturation of the movie by sixty percent for artistic reasons, both major American satellite providers (DirecTV and Dish Newtork) and numerous cable television providers turned up the chroma gain to re-enhance the color saturation to normal-looking levels when broadcasting the movie. They did this because on the first day or two of the movie's broadcast run, their customer service centers were swamped with calls from viewers complaining that something was wrong with the color. For this reason, most copies of the movie since then have come with a disclaimer in the beginning, explaining that the presentation of the colors was the full intention of the filmmakers.

[clayton]

Filming switched from England to Ireland after the British Ministry of Defence declined to provide the huge numbers of soldiers requested to act as extras in the film. The Irish Defence Forces supplied 2,500 men drawn from a mix of units of the FCA (Army Reserve) and Slua Muiri (Navy) reserves. They spent four weeks in the surf on the beaches while filming the landing scenes. The UK MoD also supplied a couple of hundred soldiers from their reserves, but not the thousands that Steven Spielberg had asked for.

[ronnie]

Michael Madsen was offered the role of Sergeant Horvath. He turned it down, recommending friend Tom Sizemore for the part instead.

[kyle]

There is also a novel to this film by author Max Allan Collins. In the novel, Private Reiben gives Corporal Upham the nickname "upchuck" and the German sniper that kills Private Caparzo is named Wolfgang Gottberg.

[ken]

The man that saved Fritz Niland, the real-life "Private Ryan," was Catholic chaplain Father Francis L. Sampson (1912-1996). It was he who was ordered by military authorities to find Niland, who had lost his three brothers a few days earlier on D-Day.

[veronica]

Captain Dale Dye (USMC Retired), the film's military advisor, makes an appearance as a War Department Colonel in the scene with General George C. Marshall. He is the white-haired officer advising Marshall against sending a rescue party after Ryan.

[liam]

Steven Spielberg donated an undisclosed amount of money to build a theater at America's National D-Day Memorial in honor of his father, who flew Army Air Corps missions and was a radio operator in Burma during World War II.

[wesley]

On D-Day, the anti-landing obstacles made out of long poles pointing at an angle (officially called Hemmbalken), were made out of wood or metal and were designed to be angled towards the beach. In the movie's D-Day landing sequence, these anti-tank obstacles have been placed facing the wrong direction to what they should have been, and face away from the beach.

[victoria]

The two "German" soldiers who are shot trying to surrender were speaking Czech. They were saying, "Please don't shoot me, I am not German, I am Czech, I didn't kill anyone, I am Czech!" They were members of what the Germans called Ost [East] Battalions, men, mostly Czech and Polish, taken prisoner in eastern European countries invaded by Germany and forced into the German army.

[alyssa]

When using the field radio on the beach, Captain Miller says something that sounds like "Cadaff, Cadaff" into the radio. He is actually saying CATF, meaning he is calling the Commander: Amphibious Task Force.

[ava]

Out of the eight men sent to find Private Ryan, only two survive in the end: Private Richard Reiben (Edward Burns) and Corporal Timothy P. Upham (Jeremy Davies).

[fred]

The events from Normandy beach to the battle at Ramelle take place over the course of a week from June 6 to June 13 as indicated by the date on Captain Miller's cross.

[willard]

During the final battle in Ramelle when Reiben gets on the "rabbit" for the Germans to chase, Horvath tells him "Good luck reiben" to which Reiben says "I don't need any luck Sarge I was born lucky" is ironic as Horvath gets killed near the end of the battle and Reiben actually survives the whole battle indeed making him lucky.

[kenzi]

Caparzo's bloodied V-Mail letter reveals that his parents lived on West 112th Street in New York and that he had written the letter on June 9th. Knowing that his letter would be read and possibly censored, Caparzo puts down his location as "Somewhere in France."

[bernard]

The battle of Normandy at the start and the battle to defend Ramelle at the end both run about 25 minutes in length comprising nearly an hour of the film.

[frances]

Michael Bay once reflected on this film being one of several that he turned down. "I had gotten movie offers and turned them down. I took my time. They sent me Saving Private Ryan, but I wouldn't have known what to do with it." Bay would later direct the World War II movie Pearl Harbor (2001) and the contemporary war movie 13 Hours (2016).

[lena]

This is the last film edited on a non-digital editing system to win an Academy Award for editing.