The Longest Day
Composite Score: 82.97
Starring: John Wayne, Robert Ryan, Richard Burton, Henry Fonda, Eddie Albert, Richard Beymer, Hans Christian Blech, Wolfgang Büttner, Red Buttons, Sean Connery, Ray Danton, Irina Demick, Mel Ferrer, Steve Forrest, Gert Fröbe, Leo Genn, Paul Hartmann, Werner Hinz, Christian Marquand, Robert Mitchum, and Georges Wilson
Directors: Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, and Bernhard Wicki
Writers: Cornelius Ryan, Romain Gary, James Jones, David Pursall, and Jack Seddon
Genres: Action, Drama, History, War
MPAA Rating: G
Box Office: $50.10 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
The Longest Day is a World War II epic about the D-Day invasion in June of 1944 told from many different perspectives over the course of the day. The film follows soldiers in the American, British, French, and German militaries as they attempt to survive and win amidst the chaos of the day. The ensemble film has plenty of star power for each of its sequences and blends big action pieces with intimate character moments to create a picture of the day that gives the audience historical facts and emotional impact in balanced measure. Technically, this is one of the best war films ever made, winning Oscars for both its special effects and its cinematography, awards that it is well-deserving of. If you can make it through the three-hour run-time, you’ll find yourself at the end of a high-quality war film that contains some pieces that most films that came before and after have yet to rival.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
This film is unmistakably a slog, filling its lengthy time with stories that touch on just about every military engagement that took place on D-Day in and around Normandy. Every time you think you’ve reached the end, it circles back to yet another unresolved story line to give you its conclusion. Containing and connecting all those pieces together is certainly a feat to be respected, and the action moves along at a solid pace, but this is by no means a film to put on when you’ve got other stuff going on the rest of the day.
I should also mention the film’s complex treatment of its Nazi characters. Because the Nazi high command features fairly prominently in the film, there are a few of them that receive some more detailed character treatments that are not entirely condemning. While appreciating the military and tactical skill of someone is not inherently bad, portraying those qualities as borderline redemptive and characters with those traits as worthy of admiration without engaging at all with the atrocities they either participated in or allowed leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s not like the film’s Nazi characters are foot soldiers either; they are heads of the German military. I don’t care how good someone was a “doing war”; I’m not going to come around and say that a Nazi shouldn’t be vilified because of it.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
The Longest Day does two things remarkably well – its impactful cinematographic choices and a few intimate character moments. In terms of cinematography, it’s hard to watch this particular film without seeing the visuals of the war movies that have been made in the sixty years since reflected therein. The beach scene of Saving Private Ryan, the long shot run of 1917, the airplane combat of Dunkirk, even the guerilla mountain combat of Lone Survivor all have parallels in this film. The directors of the film have left a consistently lasting impact on the war/action genre with their camera work and action set pieces.
As good as it is visually, the human moments are the bits that truly hold the epic together. From privates gambling in the barracks to officers anxiously awaiting their orders, the first act of the film builds tension and connections with each of its featured players well. The final act brings all the work of the first to fruition, after the chaos of the second act. German generals exhibiting a combination of frustration with their high command and respect for the bold tactics of the Allies kick it all off. Henry Fonda’s Theodore Roosevelt Jr. leading the charge on Utah Beach adds a sense of pride in the “old school” generals who lead from the front. John Wayne’s Vandervoort and Richard Todd’s Howard holding their positions with honor evokes some of that old Alamo energy. The elderly Frenchman witnessing the start of the invasion and waving a flag out his window even as the Allies shell the coast remains markedly memorable. But perhaps the best moment of the film comes in an interaction between Richard Beymer’s Schultz and Richard Burton’s Campbell toward the film’s end. Both have been cut off from the rest of their companies, and Campbell sits gravely wounded while Schultz offers him a cigarette. The two reminisce about the chaos and serendipity of the day, wondering aloud “who won?” bringing home a powerful message offered by the film. In all of the history books, it’s easy to lose the human element of the day; numbers and names only mean so much when there’s no face to a name, and the chaos of war is not something that we should just seek out.
The Longest Day is a triumph of war filmmaking, filled with cinematography that continues to inspire future generations of filmmakers, and held together by character moments that remind the audience of the humans at the heart of the invasion, making it a truly great film. Though its runtime is overlong, and it might not do the best job of addressing the problems with its Nazi characters, the film remains highly influential and surprisingly nuanced overall. This film is certainly worth seeing and is currently available to stream via DirecTV or to rent on most other streaming platforms.
