12/14/09 - The Longest Day

The Longest Day (1962, 178 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056197/

This was the second in the wave of three movies I watched for my film class. I got the impression this film was an "epic" and even though it wasn't really high up on IMDb's ratings, I felt like I would like it. Sure, war movies have changed since 1962 quite a lot, but I was still excited to check this one out.

The cast for The Longest Day is huge. Just watching the trailer I got the impression that pretty much any character with a line of dialogue was an actor that the people watching knew. Because of that I won't go over the characters, but just the basic plot. The movie follows the attacks on Normandy during World War II. The film explores this turning point in the war from all sides involved: the French, the Germans, the British, and the Americans, using native speakers where appropriate and with the separate nations directed by their own directors. The whole thing is then put together into one long epic.

As this was done in 1962, most of the guys in the film are all "tough guys" and it works. There's no wimps or anybody really scared or cowardly. While this sometimes makes the film unbelievable (compared to modern treatments) it's forgivable. It's how the movies were back then so it's hard to fault the movie for that. However, with so many characters moving around and the movie focusing on all the nationalities involved in the battle, there are sometimes too many figures shown. With a 178 minute runtime there's plenty of time to try and focus enough attention on enough important figures that you can pick and choose who you remember, but it's still daunting sometimes remembering what everyone does throughout the movie. Certain big name actors help alleviate this for some people, naturally, but not being wholly familiar with 1960s Hollywood I felt out of the loop many times knowing who these names were.

To be quite honest, I do not see how any other word but "epic" can be used to describe this film. It uses the sometimes cliché black and white approach to depict the movie even though it was made in 1962. But it doesn't come off as pretentious here. I'm unsure of the exact reasons for this choice - perhaps to pay tribute to the old black and white films of old - but it gives the film an odd and unique blend of fantasy and realism. It works, though. Sometimes I admit the movie really goes the "realism" route by giving specific times. I'm not brushed up no my history enough to know how accurate these are but it does provide a time spacing for the movie which is valuable because of how many different settings and people of which there are to keep track.

In an odd choice, the Germans were never really shown except as officers whereas we were frequently introduced to Allied "grunts." Typically, movies show officers as stupid and slow and prone to error. While The Longest Day seems to attempt to keep lots of the details correct, it's still perhaps unjust to only show German officers in what comes off as incompetence. No German soldier is anything more than an extra shooting a gun when the battle scenes are going so I didn't really like this style choice.

Overall, I gave this film an 8/10. This film seems made to be the "be all end all" of World War II films for the time. And it really does succeed at being epic. I cannot imagine seeing this in a theater inn 1962 and walking out disappointed. While it somewhat falls flat in comparison to the more modern visceral depictions, it can't be faulted in this regard. It's an awesome movie, no question, but the long running length and too many "main" characters really hurt it. But I'm still glad I watched this monumental film.