3 images from Saving Private Ryan scenes filmed in Ireland.(please click on any of these photos for a larger version)
"I'll see you on the beach", as quoted by Tom Hanks in the opening of
Saving Private Ryan (1998), right before they land on Omaha Beach...
Movie location pilgrimages can be fun – I’ve stood on top of King’s Canyon (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), we’ve been to Katz’s Deli in New York (When Harry Met Sally), and this coming October we’re planning on driving to the Devils Tower in Wyoming (Close Encounters of the Third Kind). But Saving Private Ryan has always been a favourite of mine, and a few years back I got to see Omaha Beach for real when I took a ferry trip from Portsmouth to Cherbourg and explored the Normandy region.
So yesterday (Sunday) I went for a drive down to
Ballinesker Beach (part of Curracloe Beach), County Wexford. This is where they filmed the incredible first 30-40 minutes or so (the Omaha Beach scenes), of Saving Private Ryan.
Steven Spielberg’s locations team surveyed virtually every inch of coastline in Western Europe and decided that Ballinesker/Curracloe was the beach that most closely resembled Omaha Beach in France, a preserved and protected historical monument that could not be filmed on. So this beach and local area are quite famous now, and reminders can still be found that the filming took place there. All of the opening scenes of the film
were made here - the landing craft, water &
beach scenes, as well as the fighting to the dune tops with
2 massive German pillboxes, machine gun nests and trenches, etc. (this was all built on top of the dunes). Then the entire area was rehabilitated and turned back exactly the way it was.
So what can you see today? Well, if you start at the Ballinesker Beach carpark, you'll find a large
"Saving Private Ryan" sign that shows the
area of movie filming. There are no physical traces left in the dune tops except for
some stairs going up to the area where a
massive German pillbox was built facing the beach. There are also some
tarmac paths left in the dune tops. In terms of props, the only thing left is a
landing craft in the grounds of the nearby Curracloe Holiday Villas, which is open to the public. In Curracloe village, 4km away, an exhibition is currently running in Furlong's "
Omaha Beach Restaurant" (Furlongs was frequented by the cast and crew seeking a Guinness during the filming!) A large number of photos are displayed around the walls of the restaurant, along with some other memorabilia from the making of the movie.
Sunday was cool, around 14c, with cloudy skies. This, of course, is Summer in Ireland so you don’t need to worry about high temperatures. Some kids (brave souls) were actually swimming, but I wondered
along the beach taking photos and trying to figure out which
escarpment or hilltop section was the “gap” that Tom Hanks and crew finally seized from the Germans. I eventually found the
sandy path/stairs into a gully, with a bluff above that looked really familiar from the movie, with a
small tarmac path (big enough for vehicles), ending nearby. I'm sure this is where some of the crucial scenes took place.
There's quite a bit of information on the net about the making of Saving Private Ryan in this area. June 2007 was the 10th anniversary of the filming taking place, so I found a couple of articles that were interesting...
(1)Curracloe Beach. Also known as Omaha Beach. This is where the first thirty minutes of Saving Private Ryan were filmed. The location scouters evidently felt that it was the closest thing to the beaches of Normandy that they'd find outside, well, Normandy. Curracloe is actually a lot smaller than the Normandy beaches, with no large area of swampland before the bluffs, but it did a passable imitation on film.
I found out about the filming by accident, before the publicity machine started. The producers had laid a helpful trail of little pointy signs with DW on them all the way from the main Wexford-Dublin road, to help crew. On a lonely impulse of delight, we followed the signs one day to a small caravan park just off the beach, where there were all lots of locked caravans with exciting and provocative signs like 'Special Effects' and 'Film Editing' in the windows. So DW stood for DreamWorks, I suppose.
There was great excitement in Wexford and Curracloe at having Hollywood bigshots like Spielberg and Hanks in town - not that they were physically in town, they were staying at the most expensive hotel within a helicopter's range. Apparently they brought obscene amounts of money to the town, so that's okay.
We saw the beach transformed. They put up huge wooden Xs, the type used to stop the boats from coming in to shore, and cut away a section of cliff to build one of the bunkers in. This was a wooden constructions aged to look like concrete, and is sadly no longer there. Only the steps up to it remain. During filming one whole end of the beach was cordoned off, but there was no obstacle to stop us from gathering and gawping at all the nice explosions and maimings. One of the landing craft was given to the caravan park next to the beach; it stands in pride of place next to the tennis courts.
I've swam in the sea at Curracloe since I was a nipper, so it was a strange experience to see it run red with the blood of American soldiers. With the jerky, hand-held quality of the beach scene, it's difficult to make out familiar features of the beach. But there's one scene, after the invasion has been successful, when Tom Hanks is standing on the bluffs looking down at the boats, soldiers and balloons saying something like 'That's quite a view' and I can say: 'That's my beach!'
One of my friends, son of an FCA [Local defense force. ] soldier (oh yes, those were Irish soldiers dying messily for your Celluloid pleasure) was on a landing craft with all the haggard-looking soldiers, mugging unashamedly at the camera. Strangely, his film debut seems to have ended up on the cutting-room floor...
(2)
Wednesday June 06 2007
The 10th anniversary of the filming of Saving Private Ryan will be celebrated with an exhibition in Furlong's Omaha Beach Restaurant in Curracloe on June 27. The exhibition of photographs and memorablia will open on the day that filming started on Curracloe Beach in 1997 and will be on public view during the summer.
(3)
Wexford Echo - 10th anniversary of Saving Private Ryan 5/31/2007 - 12:11:38 PM
THE TENTH anniversary of the filming of Saving Private Ryan in County Wexford will be marked by a series of events next month. A group was formed last year to put in place a commemoration for the summer of 2007. Called, ‘Locating Private Ryan,’ the group comprises John Michael Murphy, John Billington, Stephen Eustace, Pat Furlong, Jimmy Lacey and Martin Mc Cool. The primary aim of ‘Locating Private Ryan’ is to promote Wexford as the primary film location of Saving Private Ryan. An elaborate commemoration has now been planned for Wednesday 27th June – the 10th anniversary of the first day of filming on Curracloe Beach. The focal point for the anniversary events will be Omaha Beach Restaurant/Furlong’s Pub in Curracloe village. It was felt that this venue has symbolic value as it is a lasting legacy of the filming of Saving Private Ryan locally, being named as it was in tribute to the filming of the D-Day landing on the beach nearby. In the film, Curracloe Beach stood in for Omaha Beach after Steven Spielberg’s locations team surveyed virtually every inch of coastline in western Europe and decided that Curracloe was the beach that most closely resembled Omaha Beach in France, a preserved and protected historical monument that could not be filmed on. As Saving Private Ryan recreated the disaster of the Omaha Beach landing, it was fitting that the only building in County Wexford to be named in tribute to the filming should be named so. Pat Furlong, frontman of Omaha Beach Restaurant, felt that this was the most fitting name for their premises which opened in 2001 to preserve the legacy of the filming as an important event in the history of the area. “We were going to call it the ’98 Bar originally, but it was not finished in time for that anniversary so, bearing in mind that the film about the Omaha Beach landing was made here, we decided to call it the Omaha Beach Restaurant instead,” Mr. Furlong said. The Furlongs have many fond memories of the filming of Saving Private Ryan at Curracloe. According to the publican, Furlong’s Pub was packed most days during filming between 1.00 and 2.00 p.m., then activity would subside, before the place came to life again at 5p.m. Many famous names and faces turned up in Furlong’s during the shooting, including Steven Spielberg, clad in baseball cap, sunglasses and denims One of Mr. Furlong’s best memories of the filming on Curracloe was the 41st birthday of Tom Hanks which fell during the Wexford shoot of Saving Private Ryan on 9th July 1997. A special request was received at Furlong’s Pub from Tom Hanks’ secretary for a barrel of beer. Pat Furlong recalls: “It was Tom Hanks’ birthday and they wanted me to bring a barrel of beer along. His secretary came up to the pub and asked for a keg of beer. Instead of giving them a keg of Guinness, which could not be poured out, I said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do – I’ll give you 41 cans of Guinness’. So I gave them 41 cans of draught, one for each year of Tom Hanks’ life. So they got the Guinness and they sent me back a signed autograph from Tom Hanks.” According to Mr. Furlong, the coming of Saving Private Ryan to Wexford was a fantastic boost for Curracloe, and the main reason he offers for this is the advent of 3—phase electricity in the area: “We were waiting about ten years for 3-phase electricity in Curracloe. With the coming of Saving Private Ryan, it finally came to Curracloe. Cloney’s put it in for petrol. You could say that Saving Private Ryan brought 3-phase electricity here.” On the evening of 27th June, at 7.30 p.m., there will be the launch of a Saving Private Ryan commemorative exhibition featuring war gear and uniforms used in the film and many other items which will revive the memories of the film being made here ten years ago. A letter sent by Tom Hanks to the ‘Locating Private Ryan’ group this year will also be visible to the public for the first time.
Irish Pub of the Week #8 - Katie Macs, Ballycastle. Trad music in County Mayo.
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