The Longest Day (1962)
Directed by Ken Annakin
The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"
8 connections found
View:
8 connections, in both directions
What critics compared The Longest Day to
"Private Ryan" makes "The Longest Day" look like "Beach Blanket Bingo."
Though the film runs close to three hours and includes a large cast of extras and several large, meticulously staged battle scenes, it is by no means a vast, impersonal epic in the tradition of "The Longest Day.
Those recreations, which set a high standard for WWII action not fully eclipsed until Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, are the film's enduring achievement.
Considered violent and realistic when it was made, how does The Longest Day compare, in terms of both tone and on-screen brutality, to more recent combat films ( Saving Private Ryan , Lone Survivor )?
"Ryan" is more of a piece with Ken Annakin's 1962 epic, "The Longest Day," featuring an all-star cast in a retelling of the Allied invasion of Normandy--a re-creation of historical events emphasizing the actuality of battle more than an exploration of the lives of its combatants.
Nothing the soldiers do to escape or fight back is of any avail -- in fact, their efforts backfire with diabolical irony, the kind of cruel poetic injustices that mark the lumbering D-Day epic The Longest Day (1961), and more cynically that underrated paean to World War II disillusionment, The Victors (1963).
It’s a breath-taking reveal, yet ideas of Saving Private Ryan or The Longest Day are quickly dissipated as Dunkirk then cleaves into three distinct parts and timelines.
Christopher Nolan’s new film may be his The Longest Day, but it’s very close to being his shortest film.
It doesn’t sprawl over several star-studded hours, like “The Longest Day.” It’s not even about a daring assault.
By making a big and bold tentpole war movie in the mold of The Longest Day or A Bridge Too Far, told about a battle or campaign and not a character-centered story using the battle as thrilling backdrop, Nolan left himself no escape hatch.
The big trick that “The Longest Day” used, and it became the primary casting solution for battle movies ever since, was to cast big-name and familiar actors into small parts that fit their public persona.
Criminally under-represented in the annals of movie history, the wartime evacuation of Dunkirk has been crying out for a classic film interpretation to rank alongside genre leaders The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far and Saving Private Ryan.
The CGI-ed thousand ships en route to Ilium evoke a chill, but for my money (considerably less than Troys budget of a quarter of a billion), Ill take the first glimpse of the Allied armada in The Longest Day.
And in 1962, he co-directed “The Longest Day”.
Advertisement
Firstly, it recalls to mind older war film classics like The Longest Day, which also featured a large ensemble of the era’s hottest stars, only to end up subverting the expectations of those war-film roles.
The late author Jones, who also wrote the novels that inspired From Here To Eternity and The Longest Day, would be proud to see this highly thoughtful version of his work.
…there's George Clooney! is this The Longest Day?), the performances range from drab uniformity (everyone looks the same; everyone utters, in relentless, Southern-accented voiceovers, the same pseudo-philosophical apostrophes) to jarring cameos.
"Apollo 13" is the squarest movie Hollywood has made since "The Longest Day," and in many ways it celebrates the same values: teamwork, labor, valor and commitment to mission.
In any event, one way to look at this is as " The Longest Day " of wizard movies: It's a grand battle, everybody shows up, various strategies are tried and abandoned, the price of the sacrifice is assessed, and so on.
''Terminator 2: Judgment Day'' may include the largest and most varied arsenal ever employed in one film, and that includes ''The Longest Day.''