Memorial Day 2010

We're going to do something a bit different here on this solemn day of remembrance and gratitude for those of ours in uniform who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation's values and freedom. The post will consist of two parts. First, an essay I did a few years back on The Longest Day commemorating the Allied invasion at Normandy on D-Day. A fitting testament to the fallen in what has plainly become America's last "good" war. Certainly the last war that we fought for noble purposes and not as a ruse for our greed or want of empire.

The second part of the post is an excerpt from a Hugo Award winning short story by Ursula K. Le Guin entitled The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, an allegorical piece inspired by themes of William James - psychologist, philosopher, physician and brother to novelist Henry James. I will not bore you with any deep-minded associations regarding the story's metaphorical relevance to our nation of today. It speaks volumes on its own as you fill in the blanks. You can find the entire text here or purchase her collection here.

The Longest Day

In 1961, Daryl F. Zanuck’s reputation and career were spiraling downward. The former studio mogul, who had founded the 20^th Century Fox Film Corporation in 1935 and brought it to the heights of industry success, was weakened by a scandalous extra-marital affair, a minor stroke, bad press and a string of independently produced flops in Europe.

This would have driven most fifty-nine year old expatriate millionaires into retirement and seclusion, resting on the laurels of their former achievements. Ever the maverick, it spurred “DFZ” to embark on the most costly and ambitious project of his storied career -  an adaptation of Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day, a sweeping, epic account of the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day, the sixth of June, 1944.

It would end up with a budget of $10 million, utilize tens of thousands of extras (including active NATO forces), employ four directors and boast a cast of over forty international stars. It was the grandest, most expensive film ever to be shot in black and white (until Schindler’s List some thirty-one years later) and became the gold standard for big budget war pictures until Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now in 1979.

The success of The Longest Day would also save 20^th Century Fox from bankruptcy, as the studio’s production of the now infamous Cleopatra had become a very heavy albatross around its neck. So grateful were the board members of the studio that they put Zanuck back in charge of production. He got the excesses of Cleopatra under control and placed his son Richard in charge of the studio. However, what could have been a triumphant return to glory and a needed helping of crow for the board of 20^th Century Fox became a decade long decline that would result in DFZ’s retirement (not with a bang but a whimper) and the inevitable death knell for the studio system. The independent producers, empowered directors, stars and agents would restructure and take over the industry.

Fittingly though, as a testament to his innate understanding of the filmmaking process and audience, Zanuck was the last of the great studio heads to go. 

A brief history lesson for the historically wanting: on June 5, 1944, the fifth year of the war in Europe (not even the third for the U.S.), Nazi Germany was reeling from setbacks in the Soviet Union (namely Stalingrad) and North Africa. The Luftwaffe had lost control of the skies over Europe. The once mighty German army who had brought the “Blitzkrieg” was now in a holding pattern, tenuously occupying its conquered territories through terror and an iron fist.

The Allies of the west (The U.S., Great Britain, Free French Forces) needed to gain a foothold on continental Europe in order to ease the pressure on the Soviet Union and more quickly bring about an end to the deadliest war in human history.

They had amassed their forces in coastal England for an invasion and, on June 6, 1944, Operation Overlord was unleashed across the English Channel - the largest collective force of men and materiel that the world had ever seen.

The Longest Day chronicles the first, vital twenty-four hours of that day as the Allies tried to find purchase on the beaches of France at Normandy and the Germans fought to push them back into the sea.

The ensuing history of the world was forever marked by it.

The Longest Day opens with an ominous tympani drum banging out the familiar notes of Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony” as an overturned army helmet sits on a beach. It is one of the few times that minimalism will be used in this colossal and monumental motion picture.

Zanuck wanted an epic feel to the picture. Unlike the majority of World War II films coming out of Hollywood since 1944, the producer focused his attention on the event, not the men. While there are individual stories woven into the film, those details are fleeting, correctly insignificant (as were the actual men) when compared to the macro vision of the invasion.

Historical accuracy was important to Zanuck as it had been to Cornelius Ryan when he compiled the soldier’s remembrances of the day. It was felt, by both men, that it was the only true way to honor the sacrifices made. Often this led to a less than amicable relationship between the producer and the writer as Ryan regarded many of Zanuck’s changes to his script as “Hollywood-izing” the story. Zanuck was still a showman and had the final cut.

For a heightened sense of realism, the film would use black and white photography. The various soldiers from different countries would speak in their native language with subtitles provided for the non-English dialogue. Actual participants from all countries involved were used as advisors on the film. Some of the players, like English actor Richard Todd, had actually been part of the invasion.

The Longest Day is one of the rare war films to feature the strategic aspects of the battle. Through sequences in meeting rooms, hangars, briefing areas, offices, tents and even Eisenhower’s command post, we learn the plans, directives and goals of the operation as well as the German responses and frustrations to a possible invasion. This technique has all but been abandoned in war films since, Tora, Tora, Tora being one of the few that also applies the unique approach.    

As for the action, the film features (near chronologically) the major events of the day. The French Underground blows up a train and communication poles in the early morning hours. There is the eerily silent glider assault of British commandos at Pegasus Bridge on the Orne River. The huge airdrop over Caen features the use of dummy paratroopers (“Ruperts”) that helped confuse the Germans. The American drops near St. Mere-Eglise go off course proving disastrous to the paratroopers who land either directly in the town square where the awaiting Germans slaughter them or in the surrounding flooded fields where they drowned or became hopelessly lost. The U.S. Rangers scale the cliffs at Pointe Du Hoc to destroy the large guns that could wreak havoc on the landings at the beaches. The film surprisingly does not follow up on their successes.

In the film’s most technically impressive sequence, Free French forces storm the town of Ouistreham where director Ken Annakin shoots a seamlessly stunning ninety-second sequence of the raid from a helicopter maneuvering above the town. The choreography and execution of the scene is arguably more intricately planned than was the actual raid. Other directors had failed seven previous attempts until Annakin gave it a whirl. He nailed it on the first take.

Then, there are the beach landings. Here, Zanuck puts the money on the screen. Thousands of extras, tanks, LTDs, ships, and planes all work within the camera frame to provide one of the most glorious feats of grand scale filmmaking in history. Remember, this was before CGI. Those are swooping aerial shots of real people, real water, real beaches, real cliffs and real equipment. It is a testament to film producing organization. A side of the business that rarely receives the credit it is due.

The film is not without its clichés however. There are the typically trite bits of exposition for many of the individual soldiers, the “Aw shucks, I wish I was back on the farm with my best girl” sentimentality that every war movie contains. The ethnic stereotypes are here also; the overtly passionate romanticism of the French, the folksy practicality of the American, the unflappable “chin up” of the British Tommy and the intense humorlessness of the German.

Most problematic is the remarkably bloodless violence throughout the film. Whether riddled with bullets, blown up by grenades, or thrown by bomb blasts, the soldiers fall and lie dead without a scratch on them. Apologists will argue that audiences were not ready for such graphic violence in 1962. Although, it was only five years later that Bonnie and Clyde saw filmgoers grateful for a grim, realistic portrayal of violence and its repercussions. Given, it was a hell of a period in this country (1962-1967), but it was a cop out and a mistake on Zanuck’s part. Never a timid man, he claimed he was making an anti-war picture but truthfully, he was as guilty of romanticizing battle as any pro-war propaganda film.

Nitpicking about jingoism and hindsight regarding 1960s American film audience’s mores takes very little away from this marvelous motion picture. It won the Oscar for black and white cinematography and special effects. As historian Mary Corey relates on the DVD commentary, the visual imagery in the film is strong enough to make it work as a silent motion picture. It’s true. Try it with the sound off. Impressive.

The Longest Day has since been eclipsed by the grittier, more realistic war films of the late 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s (Vietnam War films matured audiences greatly), but for many years it was unparalleled.

It is, perhaps, not as poignant as its predecessors, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Grand Illusion, or Paths of Glory. Nor as honest and gut wrenching as Full Metal Jacket, The Big Red One or the first thirty minutes of Saving Private Ryan, or as brilliantly expressionistic as Apocalypse Now or The Thin Red Line.

Nonetheless, The Longest Day is an astonishing cinematic achievement, organized by one of filmdom’s pioneers as a tribute to the men who served and a crowning culmination of his own life’s work.

In that, it is flawless.

Excerpt from The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No?

Then let me describe one more thing.

In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas,

or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there

is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps

in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed

window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a

couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a

rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar

dirt usually is.

The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet

or disused tool room. In the room, a child is sitting. It could be a

boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is

feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become

imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose

and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits

hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is

afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it

knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and

nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes,

except that sometimes--the child has no understanding of time or

interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person,

or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the

child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at

it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug

are hastily filled, the door is locked; the eyes disappear. The people

at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always

lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's

voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good, " it says. "Please let me

out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for

help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of

whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is so

thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on

a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks

and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own

excrement continually.

They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have

come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They

all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and

some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty

of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of

their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their

makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of

their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.

This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and

twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those

who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an

adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the

matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always

shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had

thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence,

despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the

child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up

into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed

and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were

done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight

of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To

exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that

single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands

for the chance of happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within

the walls indeed.

The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word

spoken to the child.

Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when

they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may

brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to

realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get

much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food,

no real doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to

know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of

fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane

treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without

walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own

excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they

begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept

it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity

and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true

source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is no vapid,

irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not

free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and

their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of

their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of

their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with

children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling

in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful

music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the

sunlight of the first morning of summer.

Now do you believe them? Are they not more credible? But there is one

more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible. 

At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go see the child does

not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at

all. Sometimes also a man or a woman much older falls silent for a day

or two, then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and

walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out

of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking

across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl,

man or woman.

Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the

houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the

fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They

go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they

do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less

imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe

it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to

know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.