After losing control of Twentieth Century Fox in the late 50s, Darry F. Zanuck initiated a number of European co-productions, usually based from France and often starring his personal discoveries like Juliette Greco. He was therefore in a perfect position to organize and produce this kingsized patriotic epic, shot by several directors in B&W for speed and economy.

Second-unit specialists like Andrew Marton (who would go on to direct a sizeable chunk of Nicholas Ray's 55 Days at Peking) and Elmo Williams collaborated on different sequences with British director Ken Annakin (Third Man on the Mountain, Across the Bridge) and German Director Bernhard Wicki (The Visit, The Bridge), each handling their own national scenes. The Longest Day cemented the idea of allowing everyone to speak at least some of their lines in the appropriate language: The Germans Speak Real German. It was movies like this one that got more Americans used to the idea of watching movies with subtitles.

There's plenty of action to go around - almost every scene is an action scene and many are not only elaborate but monumentally complex as well. Backgrounds may have hundreds or (occasionally) thousands of costumed extras. The film's most famous shot is an aerial view of the beach at Normandy, swooping over several thousand scrambling invaders. The most memorable scene overall is the traumatic chaos at St. Mer Eglise, where an entire paratroop battallion is dropped into a town awake and alert due to a fire. We have already been treated to the 'joke' of Germans wasting ammunition on dummy toy paratroops dropped to throw them off the scent. It's no longer amusing when we see dozens of real parachutists picked off before they ever reach the ground. Some of The Longest Day has the morbid-spectacle feel of a disaster movie.

The script alludes to but does not depict the disaster that befell many airborne troops when their gliders crash-landed in the dark of the night, instead giving us a thrilling capture of a major bridge. Curiously, we're shown many of the same tactics used in the later Market Garden fiasco, the military tragedy depicted in the same author's A Bridge Too Far. Here the same maneuvers seem to function like clockwork. The cruel insanity of combat becomes emotionally wrenching in at least two scenes. Breaking out of the Normandy beachhead is dependent on a long string of soldiers sacrificing themselves under withering fire to place demolition charges called Bangalore torpedoes against the only exit. At a later seaport town, a showoff helicopter shot is used to let us see a massive charge of invaders moving house-to-house down the harbor, only to be stopped by some well-manned German guns in a building overlooking the bay.

Any 6 year-old kid can follow the logic of the attack and be drawn into it. With much more technical and strategic information to communicate than the average war movie, the script makes sure that every key bit of exposition is covered several times - so much so that some scenes sound more like a radio program.

The Longest Day is well-known as a movie star sightseeing extravaganza on the order of Around the World in 80 Days but with everybody in uniform. There are far too many stars to name. We have to conclude that Zanuck succeeded in creating such a publicity whirlpool around his project that big names competed to volunteer for cameo duty, while the agent of every up-and-coming male actor was hot on getting his boy into the fray. Irina Demick (The Sicilian Clan) and Arletty (Children of Paradise) are two of the few female faces on view, while top names such as Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, Rod Steiger and John Wayne all have fair-sized roles. Hollywood pretty boys abound (Fabian, Richard Beymer, Paul Anka, Sal Mineo, Tommy Sands) still leaving plenty of room for war-movie stalwarts like Eddie Albert, Steve Forrest, Jeffrey Hunter, Dewey Martin, Edmond O'Brien, Robert Wagner and Robert Ryan. Savant can mentally picture John Wayne making phone calls to get his pals choice roles: by this time in his career Wayne behaved as if he owned WW2. Nervy Hollywood go-getter Red Buttons nails an especially good part, and ends up doing it justice.

It's just as much a free-for-all on the other side of the Atlantic, where only top names need apply as well. Arletty's Children of Paradise co-star Jean-Louis Barrault is present, along with Leo Genn, Alexander Knox, Christian Marquand, Jean Servais and Richard Wattis. All get glorified bits, with Peter Lawford as a sort of mid-Atlantic switch hitter.

The top male German stars of the day are also present, at least the more mature ones and those already seen in American movies. One may not recognize Hans Christian Blech on sight, but the faces of Gert Fröbe, Curd Jürgens, Wolfgang Preiss and Peter van Eyck are hard to miss. In the average American war picture we might see one or two of them cursing their bad luck or mumbling anti-Hitler sentiments, but director Wicki presents them as competent members of a huge defensive army having a particularly bad day.

Using all the stars is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, picking them all out is as enjoyable as a party game. On the other it's more than a little odd to see such a serious historical subject trivialized into a giant game of Hollywood Squares. Are the actors in bigger roles more patriotic? Does Henry Fonda, playing a meek relative of Teddy Roosevelt (wandering around as he did in King Vidor's War and Peace) wrap himself in the flag any less than John Wayne does as a gung-ho paratroop commander with a broken leg? A lot of screen time is alotted to giveaway 'supporting actor audition' scenes with cherub-faced GIs like Richard Beymer. Was someone like Russ Tamblyn ix-nayed from the ast-kay because he wasn't in with the right crowd?

At three hours, The Longest Day is an exhausting workout that will fulfill anybody's need to hear a lot of guns go off while the world is being saved in the biggest battle in history. Now over forty years old, it's still a solid, if somewhat dated, entertainment.

Fox's DVD of The Longest Day is a clean non-enhanced transfer of this very long picture. The letterboxed picture is reasonably sharp and detailed, with the only drawback being that it cannot look as good as it could if it were formatted in 16:9. Subtitles are shoved into the black area below the picture, making it difficult to watch the film blown up on most 16:9 displays. Many purchasers are going to be misled by the stats on the back of the box, which use the term 'widescreen' instead of 'letterboxed.'

They are more likely to be interested in hearing the disc's THX 5.0 soundtrack. When Cleopatra bogged down, The Longest Day became Fox's bail-out release of 1962 and for many venues was promoted to a full 70mm stereophonic release. That means we get to hear Mitch Miller's other rousing chorus title theme of the 1960s in full surround.

Apparently Fox thinks The Longest Day is just another war title, for there are no extras. The Fox vaults must be full of special promotional material for this one - I remember seeing TV specials setting it up as the ultimate in war pix, backed by endorsements from military leaders who participated. In 1962, D-Day was only 18 years in the past.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, The Longest Day rates:
Movie: Very Good
Video: Good, but flat-letterboxed (not enhanced as implied by the package text
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: trailers
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: July 3rd, 2005