The Longest Day | Eddie Albert, Paul Anka | Great vehicle for exposing popular actors of the time.

The Longest Day | Eddie Albert, Paul Anka | The Longest Day

DVDs:

The Longest Day

	The Longest Day Eddie Albert, Paul Anka 20th Century Fox, 2002 average customer review:based on 203 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Longest Day is Hollywood's definitive D-day movie. More modern accounts such as Saving Private Ryan are more vividly realistic, but producer Darryl F. Zanuck's epic 1962 account is the only one to attempt the daunting task of covering that fateful day from all perspectives. From the German high command and front-line officers to the French Resistance and all the key Allied participants, the screenplay by Cornelius Ryan, based on his own authoritative book, is as factually accurate as possible. The endless parade of stars (John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Sean Connery, and Richard Burton, to name a few) makes for an uneasy mix of verisimilitude and Hollywood star-power, however, and the film falls a little flat for too much of its three-hour running time. But the set-piece battles are still spectacular, and if the landings on Omaha Beach lack the graphic gore of Private Ryan they nonetheless show the sheer scale and audacity of the invasion. --Mark Walker

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Great vehicle for exposing popular actors of the time.

This is a 1962 attempt to be an accurate rendition of D day, based on Cornelius Ryan's book, "The Longest Day", when the allied forces of world war two crossed the English Channel and fought their way up the beaches of France. The whole film is of the events of that day.

The list of popular actors playing the parts of the various countries and ethnicities of the time is too long to mention in this review. However Eddy Albert (a method actor) was quite believable and contributed much to the energy of this rendition. Be sure to see Eddy Albert again in uniform in "Teahouse of the August Moon" (1956.) And that little cutie Irina Demark was the girlfriend of the producer, Darryl F. Zanuck.

You can tell this picture was remastered some time recently as it looks as crisp as the day it was made. And you can only find a few missed specks on the Blu-ray rendition. The Blu-ray version has the obligatory voice-over recollections forom the only remaining director.

The film is a keeper and is worth the purchase.

The Teahouse Of The August Moon (DVD) Marlon Brando, Glenn Ford

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The Longest Day

I love this classic war movie! Because it has
the best Actor of all times is John Wayne. Well
anyway the movie looks really good on Blu-ray. But it
is not in color. But you should own it today and yes it's
a great movie.

Good Copy

Nice reproduction. It was originally filmed in great quality. Not real sure if the Blue-ray version is that much better. I viewed it on a 720p 42" LCD. But the price made it worth it.

Overrated and dated, but still a great subject

I've just been listening to a BBC program called "And The Academy Award Goes To..." when I heard a film reviewer make a sacrilegious statement, "The Longest Day is not a very good movie". I've felt that for years. The first weekend The Longest Day opened, my buddy & I rode the bus 14 miles into Seattle to see this. We were thrilled, but since we were watching through our clear 10 year old eyes, we could spot a "fakey" movie when we saw it. The use of Messerschmidt bf-108's was glaring, and of course most of the cast was too old, like John Wayne as Gen. James Gavin(no wonder his ankle broke, the Duke weighed about 500 pounds), or was too phoney, like Paul Anka. Still, at least this was not "woven around the love of a man and a woman", and this is a decent interpretation of the events around the D-Day invasion. The scenes of Omaha & Utah beaches were too wide open, the weather too good. The cinematographer should have concentrated on quality of image, rather than always going for sweeping views of the beaches, where the 2- or 3 thousand extras were swallowed up by the vastness of the undertaking. I feel the best battle scenes are around the fortified casino in Ouistreham. The contribution of the Brits, Commonwealth Forces, and French were overexpanded, everyone knows the US did this alone. HEY, I am KIDDING about that- I'm sick of war flicks where so-called artistic license is taken to overemphasize, maximize, or invent the American contribution, such as in the equally overrated "The Great Escape", and "U-571". At least this isn't colorized, which some people think would enhance this film. Personally, when I think of the war in the Pacific, I think in color, for the ETO, it's black & white, "The Great Escape" notwithstanding. The bottom line: this isn't a "great" movie, only a fair one, but the events depicted are pivotal to civilization. If the panzer reserves were closer to the beaches, if the weather was worse, or too fine, the Allies could easily have been thrown back into the sea. Like the Battle Of Britain, El Alamein, the Coral Sea, Midway, the Normandy invasion plays a pivotal role in the recovery and preservation of a free Western Europe. And "The Longest Day" played a pivotal role in the preservation of 20th Century Fox, make Fox safe for reality TV

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