The Longest Day (1962, NR)

Directed by: Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Gerd Oswald, Darryl F. Zanuck

Grade: B

The Longest Day is an example of pure Hollywood filmmaking in a good way.  I respect the picture for it's grand formality in rendering almost every aspect of the events leading up to and happening on June 6, 1944, but even so, I also feel that I might not be as supportive of the Longest Day as I should be.

The film is about the Normandy Landings in World War II, though more precisely, it is based off of the book by Cornelius Ryan, which I have read and enjoyed.  Ryan wrote three major books on the war: the Longest Day, the Last Battle, and A Bridge too Far.  So far, the Longest Day and a Bridge too Far have made it to the screen, and I would like to see the Last Battle perhaps make it to the screen to, but oh well.

The Longest Day is a spectacle in that it is so impressively performed.  A handful of directors, dozens, maybe hundreds, of movie stars and thousands of extras all put their work into the film.  The Longest Day, even in it's black and white, looks great on screen and involves the viewer into what's going on.

This is not a masterpiece though, in fact, it is far from that.  We never exactly feel that we are in the midst of the battle, rather, we feel that we are on the sidegrounds watching.  As a Hollywood war film, the Longest Day works far better then I would have originally expected even though it plays out almost the same as any other war film from the 50s through the 70s would.

The Longest Day is definitely not a movie that lacks vision.  The other Cornelius Ryan adaptation that was led to the screen, the very underestimated a Bridge too Far, I think I like slightly better then the Longest Day, mainly because that a Bridge too Far I felt was the first, even if partial, breakaway from the Hollywood standards for a war film that led into the more modern generation of war films from the Big Red One, to Platoon, and then to the Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan.  A Bridge too Far was similar to the Longest Day in having an all star cast and presenting the battle from an epic standpoint, but unlikely, a Bridge too Far had it's moments in showing how gritty and hellish war gets.  The Longest Day, for the most part, does not.

Really, the Longest Day's major flaw is that it fails to depict war from it's most highly realistical manner.  Even so, I could not finish this review without yet again commenting on how such an impressive scale the picture was made, and I do find appreciation in that I knew a lot more about the Normandy Landings of June 6, 1944 after I had watched the Longest Day then from before I had watched it.  B