What to Watch on D-Day

I’m a little too busy to do this today, but I’ve been thinking about what to put on a D-Day film festival–more of a D-Day film binge, really. A festival would have 1975’s Overlord, while a film binge may not.

If you want an Omaha Beach-centered day, that can be arranged: Breakthrough, The Longest Day, The Big Red One and Saving Private Ryan all have Omaha Beach segments because–America. That’s an oversimplification of the reasoning that may also be an oversimplification. All four of those films were produced in America, and so spend considerable time focused on American forces.

The American bias that these films, with the possible exception of The Longest Day, have is presented in a far too close to a parodic manner in D-Day: Battle of Omaha Beach, but the less said about that movie, the better. I will say this–don’t watch D-Day: Battle of Omaha Beach. It’s on as I’m typing this because I never actually saw it before today, and I think it’s common courtesy to watch something before you judge it, but, wow, is it bad. The Red Rose of Normandy (sometimes listed as Normandy (2011)), which is terrible and you should not watch either, is better.

But the questions was: which ones to watch on this day? I’m kind of stuck because the obvious answer is to watch The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan and the second episode of Band of Brothers, “Day of Days.” That’s a perfectly good list and about seven hours, but I’m disqualifying Band of Brothers because it’s not a movie, and it should just get its own day anyway. That gets us under six hours (5:47) with room for at most one more movie, unless we’re a little more committed to watching hours and hours of film in a single day than I’m comfortable with.

This is where I may be less typical because my third choice is not The Big Red One though its Omaha Beach segment is a highlight of that film and very well done. That movie has a wider focus than just D-Day, but it’s also pretty long, so something else.

There are two other D-Day films I have watched yet not reviewed, D-Day Sixth of June and Screaming Eagles, both from 1956. I would watch Breakthrough before either of those two, unless I wanted to watch a reasonably well-done love triangle partially about Americans being oversexed, overpaid and over here; Screaming Eagles doesn’t have a love triangle, or an interesting story.

I haven’t watched 2018’s Overlord, and if I do that today, after having seen the film that will no longer be spoken of, I would probably be experiencing the worst possible D-Day movie binge possible–but I don’t know that for a fact.

You could add Storming Juno to honor the fact that Canada was in the Second World War, something you might not be aware of if you watched most of the films on this list, or most World War II films. I think a Longest Day, Storming Juno, Saving Private Ryan screening, in that order, could work out pretty well. This is the choice I think I’d recommend to people who were looking for which movie should be third.

Another, and gorier, approach would be to run Saving Private Ryan and the South Korean film My Way. My Way’s final big battle is on a fictionalized Normandy beach. I think comparing those two D-Day scenes, which are impressive to say the least, might be both interesting and entertaining, given how My Way director Je-kyu Kang is clearly influenced by Steven Spielberg’s work.

A run of The Longest Day and Overlord (1975’s) might actually work–both are in black and white and look really good, and watching Overlord after The Longest Day‘s ambivalent ending is more thematically consistent than some might think.

If I have time today, I might try that final choice.

The lesson through all of this is that you should buy The Longest Day, preferably in Steelbook, and treasure it forever.