Longest Day, The (1962)

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.