‘Ten-hut! Gentlemen (and exactly two ladies, plus some nuns), gird yourselves for I’d Like to Blank The Academy’s coverage of the World War II drama The Longest Day. It is fittingly the longest movie covered to date here on ILTBTA and, as such, things will look a little different here for our first Epic. You already knew that, though, didn’t you, Soldiers? You always read all the way through the Post-Credits Scene, right? Fear not, brave souls: grab yourself a pint of sludge and read on!
Previews
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?
Ellen: I truly didn’t know this movie existed until I saw it on the Spreadsheet. Imagine my surprise when Tyler had not only heard of it, but seen it once!
Tyler: I watched this maybe like fifteen years ago on a rainy, war-associated holiday weekend afternoon (Memorial Day weekend? Veterans Day weekend? Who can say). At the time, because I had not yet seen Gone With The Wind, it was easily the longest movie I had ever watched. Just about the only scene of it that I remember well is one in which an American soldier uses a “cricket” in an attempt to communicate with someone nearby. For fear of spoiling the rest of the scene, I’ll leave it at that. Time to see if I remember the remaining 99% of it!
Plots & Feelings
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
A PSA before we crack into the plot summary: since this is a long movie1, we’re going to let the Wikipedia summary ride almost entirely as-written.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): The events of D-Day, told on a grand scale from both the Allied and German points of view.
Long Version (copied directly from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
Shot in a docudrama style (with captions identifying the different participants), the film opens in the days leading up to D-Day, depicting events on both sides of the English Channel. There is disagreement within the German High Command as to where the Allies will land and how the Wehrmacht (Nazi armed forces) should respond, but the threat is not perceived to be imminent, given the stormy weather. On June 5, 1944, not wanting to keep his forces waiting any longer, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower2 makes the decision to go ahead with plans to invade France through Normandy the following day after receiving a somewhat hopeful weather report. Since it will be dark when American paratroopers land, they are all given toy crickets to help identify each other as friendly.
Tyler: Maybe I haven’t seen enough “docudramas” from that time, but I wonder what exactly made it feel like one stylistically.
Ellen: Perhaps it’s the identification of main players? Though stylistically, what I really noticed was a lot of play-like monologues to oneself from several characters, as though they were stuck in a certain type of storytelling and didn’t have a better idea for how to show inner conflict and turmoil.
In the early hours of June 6, Allied airborne troops are sent in to take key locations, and the French Resistance reacts to the news that the invasion has started. British troops arrive in gliders to secure Pegasus Bridge, American paratroopers land scattered around Sainte-Mère-Église to defend a road that will be a vital artery for the invasion, and French Resistance and SOE agents conduct infiltration and sabotage work3.
Tyler: I believe it is around this time that the cricket scene I remembered occurred, in which a German soldier replicated the two clicks with his gun, thereby fooling (and allowing him to easily kill) the tense American soldier. As someone in the comments section of the linked Youtube video says, this scene also adds some tension later on when you see another lone American soldier use the cricket. Can he trust it?
Ellen: I liked getting different reactions from French people, including both active Resistance and just randos getting their house shaken from the shelling.
Tyler: Me too! The movie easily could’ve cut the French perspectives and only focused on the American/British and Germans, but I like that they kept the local French views in.
There is uncertainty among German commanders about whether these events are a feint to distract from Allied crossings at the Strait of Dover (see Operation Fortitude), where the senior German staff had always assumed the invasion would begin.
Ellen: You know it’s serious when they cancel dinner reservations in Paris!
As day breaks, Allied forces land on several beaches in Normandy and attempt to push inland, having particular trouble at Omaha Beach. Two lone Luftwaffe pilots strafe the beaches before flying away.
Ellen: One of the pilots, Pips, was so furious about only having one other dude with him and was just letting German command absolutely have it over the phone, and he thus became one of my favorite characters to watch.
Tyler: Pips said what every person frustrated with workplace bureaucracy wishes they could say to their boss.
The U.S. Provisional Ranger Group conducts an assault on the artillery at Pointe du Hoc, only to discover the guns are not functional. Free French Forces destroy a German stronghold in Ouistreham. In one of the more visceral scenes, a lost American paratrooper comes across a British pilot who’s wounded badly. The British man says a medic came by who had lost most of his equipment, so he patched up the wound with safety pins4. After blowing through a concrete barrier, the American troops on Omaha Beach are able to begin their advance and join the rest of the Allied troops on the march to retake France and, eventually, conquer Germany.
Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
The Longest Day’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
The Longest Day is based on the 1959 book of the same by Cornelius Ryan. Ryan and researchers for the book spent nearly three years finding and interviewing over 3,000 survivors of D-Day across the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, and Germany. Ryan was eventually paid $175,000 by producer Darryl F. Zanuck for the film rights to the book.
The book’s editor, Peter Schwed, gave the book its title, based on a quote from Nazi field marshal Erwin Rommel to an aide about the upcoming Allied invasion: “... the first 24 hours of the invasion will be decisive … the fate of Germany depends on the outcome … for the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest day.”
Ellen: As this was uttered almost verbatim in the movie, we must ask ourselves: does it count toward saying the title of the movie in the movie if it’s in a different language?
Tyler: I say yes!
General Dwight D. Eisenhower was apparently interested in playing himself in the film, but make-up artists could not successfully make him look like his younger self. Instead, Oscar-winning production designer Henry Grace, who bore a striking resemblance to the former general, played Eisenhower in his only film role. His voice was dubbed by noted voice actor Allen Swift.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (played by Henry Fonda, whom we met previously in Mister Roberts) was the oldest man in the D-Day invasion (at age 56) and the only general to land by sea with the first wave of the invasion. He was also the only one with a son who also landed on D-Day.
Writers of the main nationalities portrayed in the film were brought in to tighten the script, including American author James Jones, who wrote the novel From Here To Eternity (another connection to a previous ILTBTA post!).
Ellen: This was very smart, and I also appreciate that this movie wasn’t afraid to make us read French and German subtitles.
Tyler: On the subtitles point, I found it interesting that the German subtitles only popped up for certain parts of their conversations. It's like the movie knows which parts are important to the audience, which I think helps it maintain some sense of realism.
Actor Charlton Heston (of potential future Epic ILTBTA movies The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur) actively pursued the role of Lt. Col. Benjamin H. Vandervoort, but John Wayne made a last-minute decision to take the role instead, despite being 28 years older than Vadervoort was on D-Day. In a wildly petty move that you almost have to respect, Wayne demanded a $250,000 salary from Zanuck (the film’s producer) after Zanuck called him “poor John Wayne” following issues with the Wayne-produced and -directed The Alamo. Other major actors accepted only $25,000 for their appearance.
Tyler: Maybe I need to watch more westerns that he’s been in, but I don’t understand the appeal of John Wayne as an actor. If you’re going off vibes and a very particular sort of charisma, then I guess I understand, but every time he opens his mouth he sounds the exact same as every other John Wayne character. Can you not modulate your voice or portray any emotion other than anger?
The Longest Day was Sean Connery’s last role before being cast as James Bond. Two of the German actors from the film, Gert Fröbe and Karl Stromberg, would go on to play Bond villains in Goldfinger and The Spy Who Loved Me.
While The Longest Day was filming, Richard Burton and Roddy McDowall were filming Cleopatra in Rome. Bored after having not been used for weeks at a time on Cleopatra, they begged to be in The Longest Day. They ended up flying themselves to The Longest Day set and filming their roles in one day for free.
Ellen: Also me, asking to move away from Houston lol
The “paradummies” shown in the film (nicknamed “Rupert” and “Oscar”) were much more lifelike than those used in the real Operation Titanic. In reality, canvas and burlap sacks were filled with sand and dropped while SAS soldiers played recordings of loud battle noises as distractions
Ellen: All I could think about was the time and effort they took to make these lil guys look realistic, and I’m really glad it was actually just a props department getting to have fun as opposed to a genuine wartime effort.
Honorable Mentions
What other movies should you be watching?
Need even more three-ish hour long D-Day content? We’ve got you covered. Saving Private Ryan, the 1998 war film by Steven Spielberg, is justifiably the gold standard for World War II movies. From the get-go with its epic opening sequence on Omaha Beach, Saving Private Ryan puts you in the thick of a group of soldiers (led by Tom Hanks’ Captain John Miller) who search through occupied France for a Private James Ryan (Matt Damon).
Saving Private Ryan is available to stream on Paramount+, or rent on all of the other streaming services. Or just wait until the next war-related holiday for it to play on TNT or whatever.
Fill In The Blank
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I’d like to answer The Academy with two clicks on my cricket and hope for the best! It’s called The Longest Day, so yeah, it’s a dang long movie. I really appreciated what it was trying to accomplish, however. In most of the WWII movies I’ve seen, it’s from the American perspective, and D-Day is more of a starting point as opposed to what they were building up to. The amount of preparation, speculation, and coordination that went into it was staggering, and I’m sure we only scratched the surface. I’m glad they tried to show us different perspectives, and while none of the performances particularly stood out to me, I also liked that we followed a wide range of characters. It was a little tough to get invested in the peril at times, especially when you compare it with something like Saving Private Ryan. Though, something such as previous Honorable Mention All Quiet on the Western Front proves you don’t need blood, CG, or even voices to make a compelling war movie. Could some stuff have been cut? Of course. But really, what else was I going to do - keep unpacking?!
Tyler: I’d like to thank The Academy for its service in nominating this movie. I agree that showing the various perspectives was positively unique, though it also made the film feel bloated. Perhaps it was intentional to reflect the complexity of the invasion, but there seemed to be too many characters and storylines going on at once. I felt like it jumped around too much and I found myself losing track of where some people were at in their respective storylines. Some of the transitions between scenes also felt rather abrupt, but again I’m not sure if that was done intentionally or not to mimic the “docudrama” look of the time. On the plus side, though, I thought it was very well written overall. I did not expect to chuckle that much while watching a movie about D-Day! I also generally give extra points to massively-scoped movies given the inherent difficulties in making them, as evidenced by the separate directors for The Longest Day’s American, French, and German sequences. Making a movie on a scale this large (fitting for the scale of the subject) is an audacious undertaking, and making anything this watchable should still be commended.
Bonus Parent Content: Ellen’s Dad Dennis recommends that you don’t get too attached to any of the characters, because they’re likely not long for this world, but thinks this movie does a good job bringing home why these incredible guys are called The Greatest Generation. Ellen’s Mom Denyce wonders why you’d bother getting pop stars such as Paul Anka and Fabian & Tommy Sands together for just one scene. Seems like a weird way to lure in the teens!
Tyler: The pop star angle was reminiscent of Harry Styles randomly appearing in Dunkirk.
Let The Credits Roll
Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:
If you have plots and feelings of your own (on the movie or ILTBTA in general), feel free to comment on the post or simply reply to the email. If you liked reading this: tell your friends! If you hated reading this: tell your friends how much you hated it by forwarding it to them!
If you’re a weirdo like Tyler and use Twitter, feel free to follow us there @BlankTheAcademy for ILTBTA updates, rejected jokes, and other random movie-related musings. Once we reach a million followers, we’ll offer to purchase the @ILTBTA handle from the butthead who snagged it before us.
If you’d like to start a wild Best Picture journey of your own, feel free to download a copy of The Spreadsheet. Bonus: checking off the boxes is oddly satisfying.
Post-Credits Scene
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
Get your detective hats on folks, because our next ILTBTA installment will cover the crime noir classic Double Indemnity. The 1944 thriller, directed and co-written by filmmaker Billy Wilder, stars Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson in a tale of insurance fraud and murder. Double Indemnity is available to rent from the corporate behemoth/streaming platform of your choice.
Until then, be careful what you put in writing!
Ellen: And I wanted to actually watch it rather than spending 3 straight hours taking notes
Ellen: Both of my parents joked “wow, they got Eisenhower to play Eisenhower!”
Tyler: Read Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat? to see how close this was to being a reality!
Sounds like my ex-wife!
To quote both of your authors: euuurrrrghhhhhhh!