The Longest Day

An absolute classic about the allied invasion in normandy darning WW2, the event that marked the beginning of the end of the war. The movie draws a quite good picture of the preparation of the invasion, and the events following the invasion. A classic, well made movie about this key event of WW2 with an impressive star power of the time. A must see for all.

A sweeping World War II epic, _The Longest Day_ tells the story behind the Normandy invasion; one of the most daring and complex military operations ever conceived. Shot in a docudrama style, the film emphasizes several dozen Allied and Axis leaders and follows their actions during the course of the invasion. Featuring John Wayne, Sean Connery, Robert Mitchum, Red Buttons, Henry Fonda, and Roddy McDowall (just to name a few), the ensemble cast that’s been assembled is incredible. However, there’s a bit of jingoism going on, as the Nazi’s are shown mostly as incompetent and the American/British forces are selfless and brave. There’s also very little blood and carnage; which is indicative of the time in which the film was made. Still, the coverage of the various battle fronts on the land and sea is comprehensive, and gives a sense of scope to how massive the operation was. Though it overemphasizes the historical information over the storytelling at times, _The Longest Day_ is an extraordinarily powerful film about a seminal event in world history.

Far too many cameos somewhat detract from the story being told here. You are left feeling a little short-changed, but the effort to show the multiple facets of D-Day is to be commended.

The Normandy landing in this movie.

Good actors for the most part. B/w still looks good. Effort (material, number of actors) put into this picture is remarkable. Epic wide-angle fighting scenes. Liked the idea of the various perspectives and the use of actual French and German actors (not fake Germans like in so many movies). Highly entertaining, although it's maybe a bit too long. It's not very realistic though (compared to more modern attempts like Saving Private Ryan). It's full of cliches (no side/nationality is depicted w/o stereotypes): Germans wear shiny boots and tidy uniforms and never laugh; French drink champagne and have the most beautiful women; Irish are retards; Brits are eccentric but adventurous tea drinkers - you get the idea. Showing the atrocities of war, social aspects of war, compassion with the killed or wounded, military strategies or historic accuracy was sadly not the main focus of this movie. It's basically another hero movie in which charismatic Americans (most notable the true story of a US president's son) supported by odd British save the day.

The problem with watching this movie today is that it depicts WWII in a way they wanted the (mostly American) audience to see it. All Americans are heroes, all speeches are grand, all French are resistance and, of course, all Germans are morons.
In truth it is so full of inacuracies, bad dialogue and acting, cliched and dull characters that it does a disservice to the actual soldiers. But the same can be said of almost any WWII movie that came out of Hollywood in that era. Now, I know what to expect from those type of movies and normally I am fine with that because I usually see them in the context of it's timeframe but I could not bring myself to finish this one (I have seen it in the past before, though). While many US war movies are somewhat fictional this is about true events. I quit after the landings which where shown as, litarally, a walk on the beach.
Now, I don't want to be unfair and rip this movie apart with a bad rating. As I said , different times. Just don't take this as a history lesson.

People criticizing the historical aspect are not taking in consideration when it was made. It's an old fashioned Hollywood movie, ffs. At least it showed more sides than Saving Private Ryan.