OVP: The Longest Day (1962)

Film: The Longest Day (1962)
Stars: John Wayne, Richard Todd, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Red Buttons, Peter Lawford, Eddie Albert, Jeffrey Hunter, Stuart Whitman, Rod Steiger, Leo Genn, George Segal, Paul Anka, Fabian, Roddy McDowall, Tommy Sands, Curd Jurgens, Frank Finlay, Sal Mineo, Richard Beymer, Robert Wagner, Alexander Knox, Edmund O'Brien, Mel Ferrer, Arletty
Director: Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, & Bernhard Wicki
Oscar History: 5 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Art Direction, Editing, Cinematography*, Special Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Does size matter?  That's the question looming over much of The Longest Day, our last film in a week dedicated to Best Editing nominees.  The Longest Day might well have deserved a nomination for least edited film, considering it clocks in at three hours long, and it's honestly very difficult to review, as we'll find below.  The film was gargantuan at the time, one as you see above that's filled with star cameos (we'll get into this in the review), and one that cost upwards of $8 million at the time, but earned that back 4x over to a sum of $30 million (the modern day equivalent of about $250 million, a blockbuster by any standard).  The movie is certainly big, and something to behold-the war film is realistic, frequently showing unfathomable aerial and maritime shots, and it's an achievement, without a doubt.  The question I kept coming back to as I watched the (VERY) long war movie is...is it any good?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is told in a somewhat documentary style (at least by 1960's standards), with characters identified with name plates rather than more expositional dialogue, and focuses on the lead-up to D-Day.  The planning & battle are really the central characters in the movie; no character takes on the role of "lead" in the film, though certain actors like John Wayne & Robert Mitchum are in more of the movie than most of the cast-of-characters (today everyone would be marketed as a supporting actor here, but I suspect these two would've been lead if the film had scored acting nominations).  Again, especially in a pre-The Wild Bunch era, the film is merciless in its body count, even if the effect of the violence isn't what it would be in later war classics simply due to keeping the obvious bloodshed off screen.

For a three-hour movie, you'd expect a longer summary paragraph, but The Longest Day is unusual because it doesn't really have a proper narrative story.  The film's script is its weakest asset not just because there's no character development, but also because other than D-Day, there's no real story.  To a modern audience member, The Longest Day is weird because I don't have the "I lived through it" mentality that most people in 1962 would have of the sheer size & scope of D-Day (even if you weren't at Normandy at the time, most would've lived through the war, read about this in the newspaper, and heard from people they knew who were at Normandy).  As a result, you have to be a student-of-history to know a lot of the names flashing up onscreen, and while I knew some of them, I didn't know all, and with no character development or better grounding of the D-Day invasion's place in the war, the movie lacks a bit of context, and occasionally even purpose.

The star cameos by this point in the 1960's had become a recurring theme in epic films (look at Around the World in 80 Days or Pepe for other examples), and this would prove to be the biggest for this trend.  There are so many it becomes kind of like a game of "Where's Waldo" with certain faces.  You're like "oh, there's Mel Ferrer" or "I think that's Red Buttons," but the shocking thing about it is how many of these cameos are onscreen for mere seconds.  I had to rewind to confirm the Sean Connery scene, and Roddy McDowall's face is onscreen for roughly a minute.  This makes the movie one I'd theoretically re-watch just to confirm I caught all of the cameos, but it also means you aren't really emotionally-invested in the characters onscreen, just in awe of the cast.  It's too much-the film feels bloated and sort of a "so what" by the end of the picture.

And so I'm going with 2-stars here, which I honestly didn't think I would pick.  The Longest Day is very watchable, and the technical achievements are impressive.  The visual effects are glorious, extensive, and surely cost a fortune, particularly the aerial & maritime shoots.  Ditto the cinematography, which shot from the air, land, or sea is fascinating & beautiful-this is one of the last black-and-white films of the era to really capture a sense of majesty in the camerawork (it seems like most of the best cinematographers had moved to color photography by this era).  The editing is easy to mock because of the film's length, but it has extended longshots (also a nod to the cinematographer) on the beach that gave the film a smoother focus, and while you don't care about the characters, you're never bored-there's always "more, more, more" coming at you visually.  Best of the bunch is the art direction, meticulously recreating multiple battle scenes, war rooms, and seemingly a whole, destructed town.

But technical achievements, while novel at the time, don't make a strong movie, and in many ways this feels like Transformers or Armageddon with a better cast-it's large, advanced, and surely meant a lot at the time, but in retrospect it feels bloated, without any sense of passion, and is using the memory of one of the 20th Century's most important days to coast on not having anything to say.