The Longest Day

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The Longest Day (1962 film)

In 1959, 15 years after the Allied invasion of Normandy, former war correspondent Cornelius Ryan wrote The Longest Day, his popular and critically-acclaimed account of the D-Day landings. Based on painstaking research and interviews with Allied and German veterans and the French civilians swept up in the events of June 6, 1944, The Longest Day remains among the best books on the topic.

It is not surprising, then, that 20th Century-Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck bought the film rights and asked Ryan, (who, besides having been a reporter, had also written plays) to adapt The Longest Day into a screenplay for a major motion picture. Zanuck, who had served in the Army Signal Corps as a lieutenant colonel and helped document the D-Day landings, had always wanted to make a feature film about the invasion. He also had another pressing reason to make what he thought would be a big hit: 20th Century-Fox, nearly crippled by box office flops and the costly production of Cleopatra, was on the brink of bankruptcy.

In order to attract audiences, Zanuck and his massive production team assembled a cast almost as large as the actual invasion force. 48 major international stars from three countries were signed on to what a World War II trivia book described as "the most expensive black-and-white movie made." Shot in studios near Paris and on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, The Longest Day required not one but three directors. Andrew Marton shot the American exterior episodes, Bernhard Wicki handled the German exterior episodes, and Ken Annakin directed the British exterior episodes. Overseeing the entire project were Zanuck and Associate Producer Elmo Williams, who would later executive produce the Japanese-American Pearl Harbor classic, Tora! Tora! Tora!

The movie basically follows the book's structure in its three major acts: The Wait, about the preparations on both sides for the invasion; The Night, about the night airborne assault; and The Day, about the landings on the five invasion beaches. The DVD breaks these three acts into 12 chapters.

While by early 21st Century standards The Longest Day's combat scenes are rather tame - there are no extremely gory scenes as explicit as those in Saving Private Ryan - they do capture the vastness and complexity of the Normandy landings. Shot in a semi-documentary style (major characters are introduced with identifying "credits" so we know who is who), The Longest Day is as accurate as a 1962-era film studio could depict an actual event. The black-and-white presentation allows insertion of a few snippets of actual documentary footage (mainly of German soldiers marching through Paris and running to their fortifications near the beaches) seamlessly into the film. Of course, some characters (such as Eddie Albert's Col. Thompson) seem to be composites or even fictitious, and some actors (such as John Wayne and Robert Ryan) look nothing like the officers they are portraying. Wayne plays Lt. Col. Benjamin Vandenvoort, who in 1944 was in his 30s, while Ryan plays Brig. Gen. James "Slim Jim" Gavin, who at 38 was the Army's youngest general. (The more accurate, but far less popular sequel, A Bridge Too Far, cast Ryan O'Neal as Gavin.)

Accuracy goes out the window in at least one respect, and this one is at the top of most D-Day veterans' list of gripes. While the movie does mention the awful conditions on the transports and landing craft ("Man, that stink! Diesel oil, backed up toilets, vomit. And there ain't no place to get sick in!" gripes one soldier to Roddy McDowell), when the Allied soldiers get out of the landing craft, they hit the beaches running and screaming like banshees. In Stephen E. Ambrose's 1994 D-Day, June 6, 1944, veterans scoff at Zanuck's fanciful depiction, pointing out that they were too tired and too sick to run across the beach, much less yell like Confederates at Gettysburg.

Nevertheless, The Longest Day remains one of the best war movies ever made. Released in October of 1962 and enjoying a long run at the theaters, it was the box office's top draw for 1963, earning an Academy Award for special effects and, luckily for Zanuck, saving 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy.

The DVD presents The Longest Day to its original CinemaScope wide screen presentation, improving on the CBS-Fox two-cassette VHS version, which was released on the usual pan-and-scan "full screen" re-edit. Other improvements are a sound remastering by THX and a few tiny bits of additional footage. The single disc, however, has very few extra features; only the theatrical trailers to The Longest Day, Patton, and Tora! Tora! Tora!

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