Talk:Hemingway & Gellhorn

Guns

I was an extra playing a Republican soldier during the Spanish Civil War scenes in this film. We managed to take some behind the scenes photographs, which I will link to momentarily.

There were only two types of firing rifles used by us soldier extras - Mosin-Nagants (see the guy in the white shirt behind the first guy) and what i was told by the armorers were Mauser rifles, but don't appear to look like the "Spanish Mauser" listed on this website (note the interesting sloping rear sight)

Anytime the camera wasn't close enough or there was no live firing, we were given lightweight replica guns. Most of them were these wood and metal amalgamations that appeared strikingly like an M1903 Springfield. They were old and beat up replicas, many missing the front or back sights, or both. They were non functioning reproduction guns. They seemed like ROTC training rifles.

There were also 2 Lee-Enfield No.1 Mk.IIIs floating around, one was a non-functioning reproduction, the other was solid resin.

There were a handful of rubber guns. -See the guy on the left and the kneeling guy These were used primarily by soldiers on horseback, stunt people who had to "die" in a scene, but a couple were given to the general soldiers. These are especially conspicuous because the barrel extended slightly longer beyond the front sight than the rest of the guns, they had an oversize bayonet lug, and also none of the rubber guns had shoulder straps. --Variableorange 22:29, 28 May 2011 (CDT)

In your first photo, the guy shooting closest to camera looks like he's firing a Mauser Gewehr 1898. However on the last photo, the kneeling fellow to the right looks like he's carrying an 1893 Spanish Mauser, albeit the barrel is too long, but sometimes deactivated rifles have plugs welded onto the ends of the barrels. Actually the budget was too small for the war scenes so the first thing they cut was the armorer's budget. I know the propmaster didn't want live firing guns to save money, so she negotiated a deal with ISS to ship them hundreds of broken or deactivated rifles. The cost for the rentals was unbelievable. ISS cut this movie an incredible deal for 6 weeks of filming. Thanks for the Behind the Scenes stuff! :) Looking forward to more! hope you contribute more cool stuff to IMFDB. :) MoviePropMaster2008 23:45, 28 May 2011 (CDT)

Yes, the live firing guns besides the Nagants do indeed seem to be Gewehr 98s. The kneeling fellow in the last photo (as well as the standing fellow on the left) is carrying a rubber rifle. See the one the guy on the left is holding - the bolt and the receiver (hope that's the proper terminology) is one solid mass, and the bolt's handle is quite flimsy. And you're absolutely right, they do indeed look like Spanish Mausers. Therefore, I'm concluding that the only Spanish Mausers we had on set were the rubber ones, and all of them had that conspicuous extended barrel. The other thing that set them apart is they didn't have loops for a strap, so they were the only guns that couldn't be shouldered. Also, thank you for the cool background info! I wondered why there wasn't more variety to the weapons - there were no pistols, no heavier weapons (at least not for us extras! But there was a tank!) And yes, I noticed a lot of the guns, even the functional ones, were missing sights, had splitting furniture, and other signs of wear.

Here's some more BTS stuff- A Nagant & Gewehr 98, another Nagant & Gewehr 98, a Nagant, another Nagant (i think) and Gewehr, another Gewehr (with missing rear sight), another shot of the Rubber Spanish Mausers, and a clearer shot of one of the nonfiring replica 1903 Springfields --Variableorange 00:10, 29 May 2011 (CDT)