The Longest The Longest Day Review

I have a clear pro-Longest Day bias. I loved The Longest Day before I saw most of the movies that are or will someday be reviewed on this site. So when I say you should treasure this movie, buy it on Blu Ray (Steelbook, obviously) and watch it at least once a year, perhaps I’m going a bit too far. It is not too far to say that if you are interested in war movies, World War II, World War II movies and/or American cinema, you must see this movie. Producer Darryl Zanuck (Twelve O’Clock High, Tora! Tora! Tora!) touted how the movie would be full of stars, creating an event that would draw audiences to theaters. But the stars don’t make this movie great: Its truly epic scale and the depictions of combat that are simultaneously grand and personal make this movie worth seeing over and over again.

Based on Cornelius Ryan’s book of the same name, the movie covers the events of June fifth and sixth of 1944 from a number of angles. All characters speak their own languages with subtitles instead of having Germans and French speak English with either native or British accents. Many of the stars are American, but there are stars from French, British and German cinema, mainly playing historical figures. Ken Annakin (Battle of the Bulge) directed the British segments and my two favorite battle scenes, Andrew Marton (The Thin Red Line, 1964) directed American scenes including those of Omaha Beach, the attack on Pointe du Hoc and the American paratroopers in St. Mere Eglise, and German Bernhard Wicki (The Bridge, Morituri) directed scenes mostly featuring German officers saying the weather is too bad for an invasion or that Hitler is asleep. Zanuck and Gerd Oswald reportedly directed some portions as well. 

They needed multiple directors because the movie is huge in almost every way. The movie is very big indeed; some shots have hundreds, if not thousands, of extras with realistic-looking equipment. An early scene in a staging area is filled with tanks, trucks, soldiers and their tents—giving a real sense of the crowding, and of how much stuff they had available, both the Allies and the producers. Soldiers and equipment are squeezed on a ship and pelted by the driving rain.

The wide shots can safely be called epic. We see a slew of landing craft heading to the beach, and it isn’t archival footage—there are a slew of boats heading to the beach.

Later from the top of Pointe du Hoc, you can see Americans, Germans, the whole German position and ships offshore. There are huge tracking shots on Omaha beach with men crawling through chaotic waters. Another shot gives us the view from a German Messerschmidt cockpit while it strafes a beach, forcing hundreds of extras to scramble for cover, and at one point the plane flies through the smoke plume of a burning vehicle. These impressive wide shots show the immense scope of the story

One of the inherent difficulties for a film of this scope is that there are so many moving pieces it is difficult to have a cohesive story. It is even more difficult to build tension when the audience knows what’s going to happen. The first section of the movie focuses on the terrible weather and whether or not the invasion should precede. Apparently the entire Allied command was all rarin‘ to go, while the complacent Germans thought the weather was too bad and that Calais was the real target. We get told that a great deal. Allies who say go: Five and then Eisenhower. Germans who say the weather is too bad: Six, including one maverick rule breaker, General Erich Marcks, (Richard Münch: Patton, The Train) who claims he would attack in this weather and at Normandy, as if the Allies hoped for terrible weather, but says Eisenhower would never take the gamble.

The weather is of course crucial to the story and the history, but there can’t be any real tension—Will they go on June sixth?

We already know there will be an invasion on that day, so there isn’t much drama—only this sort of smug satisfaction we get from seeing the Germans ignoring evidence of the impending invasion. Even though the weather conditions were terrible, and it was entirely reasonable to assume the Allies would not attack in this weather, we sit back mocking their obtuseness, like armchair quarterbacks saying “the Nazis should have kicked a field goal instead of going for the fourth and two” the day after the game. If you’re unfamiliar with American football you might say, “they should have been batting for a draw” or “they should have used a flat back four.” Okay, I don’t know all the sports metaphors, and I think the Germans were using a flat back four, but the point is that maybe the Germans weren’t idiots to think the Allies wouldn’t attack in bad weather, and we know they did, so the movie starts slow and has little dramatic tension as we introduce all the stars and tell a story most viewers already know. 

There’s a big number of stars and some of the stars are big, too. John Wayne plays Lt. Col. Benjamin Vandevoort of the 82^nd Airborne Division (and yes, Wayne was literally twice as old as Vandervoort was on D-Day; it happens—get over it), and he gets a lot of screen time as he establishes his gruff character and helps set the scene. He establishes two important ideas early—Europe has been at war since the late thirties and the Americans are “relative newcomers,” and “We’re on the threshold of the most crucial day of our times,“ in case you weren’t aware of the invasion’s importance. He’s also curt with his subordinates and complains about the placement of his drop zones and tells his men to send the Germans “to Hell,“ and I don’t care: let’s go fight some Germans already.

But we don’t. We see Robert Mitchum and Eddie Albert and Roddy McDowall and Bernard Fox (who I recognize as Colonel Crittendon from Hogan’s Heroes), trying to eat in the driving rain, and Robert Ryan and Rod Stieger and Peter Lawford, inexplicably wearing a sweater, and Hey! there’s Auric Goldfinger! (Gert Frobe, Goldfinger, Is Paris Burning?) and Hans Christian Blech (Battle of the Bulge) and Wolfgang Priess (Almost every war movie ever) and a great many German actors I’m not familiar with and some French actors I’m not familiar with, and the producer’s girlfriend, allegedly, who is in the French resistance. That wasn’t in exact order, but there are many people in this movie, and we are introduced to pretty much all of them before the invasion begins.

We get all of these stories and more. I didn’t mention Henry Fonda as Brigadier General Teddy Roosevelt Jr., who has arthritis, one really good line and is the son of a President whose face is carved into a mountain.

We also get some stories of average soldiers that fall flat with two exceptions—maybe three. Red Buttons plays Private John Steele of the 82nd Airborne; his story is interesting. His parachute gets stuck on a church steeple in the middle of a town full of Germans—John Wayne was right about the drop zones! But we don’t care about Red Buttons‘ character because Buttons is famous or likable—we see the predicament Steele is in, watching helplessly while his comrades are slaughtered, and he could well be next. One drops into a burning building. One fires his weapon, distracting a German about to kill Steele and is then shot. The situation carries its own inherent drama and doesn’t really need the actor’s help. So many scenes of soldiers the day before the landing don’t particularly increase our investment in them or their comrades—the action sometimes does.

But before we get to the the compelling part we watch him play craps in the barracks. Buttons is likable in this scene where we’re also introduced to Sal Mineo (Rebel Without a Cause) in an exceedingly small role and Private Dwight Schultz, played by Richard Beymer (Twin Peaks) who had just starred in West Side Story and is the official American everyman. Neither he nor his arc are particularly interesting or believable until he parachutes into France and wanders around, trying to find a battle. Almost none of the individual stories before the invasion begins are compelling, except maybe the next character introduced.

Richard Burton (Desert Rats, Where Eagles Dare) plays an RAF pilot, one of The Few who won the Battle of Britain, and he’s tired, unlike Schultz, and reinforcing Wayne’s “relative newcomer“ statement. He does well here, as another pilot slowly plays the movie’s theme on a nearby piano, and he’s good in a later scene with Beymer. Burton is tired, but he’s ready to go now, well . . . after he finishes his beer. Wayne and Mitchum say “go“ and finally an actor who looks very much like Eisenhower says go—so let’s go already.

It’s okay with me if all this exposition takes too long for you, and you don’t like the movie; you’re wrong, but that’s okay with me—maybe you also think asparagus is great—but some of the exposition is interesting and certainly necessary for audience members unfamiliar with the history, and the quality of the combat scenes is worth the investment.

Eventually we do go into the first of the many excellent battle scenes. We’re in the cockpit of a glider as it silently approaches its objective, Pegasus Bridge. Director Annakin keeps us in the cockpit as the glider turns and begins landing. The troops pile out, remove or fall on barbwire obstacles and attack the bridge’s defenses under cover of smoke grenades. This is one example of how everyone in this movie uses grenades and fights at close quarters in a bloodless but otherwise realistic fashion. In one instance a British officer’s grenade kills two Germans and one British soldier who is also rushing the position. The whole movie shows how close people often are to each other during combat.

My favorite sequence is the Free French attack of the casino at Ouisterham. Its center is an extended helicopter shot that is, by itself, worth the price of admission. The whole battle is excellent, but this may be the best shot in any war movie.

The Helicopter Shot

During this battle, we see a spotter on the roof telephoning the gun in the bunker below. Shells hit the casino from the perspective of a tank that is shooting. The tank blows up a whole building, and we see its destruction from two angles.

The attack on Pointe du Hoc is also very well done, though there may be too much comic relief.The Germans use grenades and machine guns to repel the climbing Americans. Americans flank a German position and take it out with grenades. And hey! There’s a young George Segal! With a BAR!

The British landing on Sword Beach is played almost entirely for laughs, showcasing a very young Sean Connery (A Bridge too Far, The Hill) and Norman Rossington (Tobruk, A Hard Day’s Night). We don’t see the Canadians on Juno at all, except for possibly in the strafing run shot, though Lawford throws some Canadians a “bon chance.”

Mitchum plays a big role as Brigadier General Norman Cota, who apparently personally led a breakthrough at Omaha Beach. At the film’s climax, German General Max Pemsel (Priess) breaks the battle down for us; he says Omaha is the key—if the Germans can hold there, the invasion can be repelled.

When we cut to Cota and the cluttered chaos around him, maybe he should despair; for black and white and 1962, you can’t say it is in any way inferior to Saving Private Ryan; there are bodies, soldiers and working and wrecked equipment all over the beach. Cota is despairing before he gives the big rallying speech, but he gives it with realistic resolve. I have to give Mitchum credit here because the same speech falls horribly flat in The Big Red One and because I’m going to say he’s lackluster in Anzio, whenever I write that review (Hey! I did write it!).

This review is far too long because the movie has so many parts and many parts that may drag for many viewers, but the combat scenes are excellent, for 1962, and exciting and engaging. Some are unqualifedly excellent. Being able to tell a story this big is a logistical and technical achievement, and this is a World War II epic that set a standard for all the movies that follow it.

Recommendation

Buy the Steelbook and treasure it forever

   Undaunted: Normandy combines deck building, area control and combat in a real interesting way, and The Modern Library has an excellent edition containing both Ryan’s The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far