‘A Midnight Clear’: The forgotten war movie that shaped ‘Saving Private Ryan’
There’s never been a war movie like Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, which opened with a jaw-dropping bang by parachuting audiences right into the thick of the action.
The depiction of the D-Day landings remains one of the most staggering sequences in modern cinema, with Spielberg’s intent to present the most unflinching, immersive, and realistic depiction of ground-level combat ever captured on celluloid. It’s not easy to watch, and it wasn’t easy to make by any stretch, but it’s impossible to deny that it’s one of the greatest sequences of a legendary career.
Although the narrative took its cues from real-life events, screenwriter Robert Rodat crafted the story of Tom Hanks’ John Miller and his ragtag group of soldiers travelling deep into enemy territory to ensure Matt Damon’s title character makes it out of the battlefield alive and returns home.
The problem was that the screenplay wasn’t quite finished when it came time to audition the prospective cast members for their parts. As a result, Spielberg and his casting directors had to find a feature that was at least somewhat spiritually similar to Saving Private Ryan and would be able to provide the actors with material that would reflect his still-unrealised vision.
Vin Diesel’s role was written specifically for him at Spielberg’s request after the filmmaker saw his self-created work in Strays and Multi-Facial, whereas Adam Goldberg’s audition was more conventional. Not that he was allowed to read lines from Saving Private Ryan, though, as he explained.
“My role wasn’t written until the movie was cast,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “During the auditions, we didn’t have scenes from Saving Private Ryan. Everyone who read for the film read sides from A Midnight Clear, a World War II movie from a few years before.”
Arriving in cinemas in April 1992, writer and director Keith Gordon’s adaptation of William Wharton’s novel starred Peter Berg, Kevin Dillon, Ethan Hawke, Gary Sinise and others, telling the story of American soldiers tasked to capture a German outpost located deep in the French forest, only for problems to arise when the war-weary opposing forces forge a tenuous alliance that doesn’t quite go according to plan.
Whereas Saving Private Ryan became the highest-grossing World War II movie of all time, seized the zeitgeist, and won five Academy Awards, including ‘Best Director’ for Spielberg, A Midnight Clear bombed after barely exceeding $1.5million at the box office despite enthusiastic responses from critics.
It might sound harsh, but only the most ardent of cinephiles would even recall that A Midnight Clear existed, such was the whimper it made among the moviegoing public. And yet, Saving Private Ryan owes a massive debt of gratitude to Gordon’s overlooked gem for playing a pivotal part in the casting process.
