Review of The Longest Day (1962) by Eric P — 22 Jul 2007

The Longest Day's strength rests in individual scenes rather than its cohesive whole. Some scenes will leave you on the edge of your seat in suspense, while others seem to dwindle without giving you an idea of the bigger picture.

For me, the most interesting part of the film was the first half, in which we see the planning from both sides. Everyone is playing the waiting game, and the build-up to D-Day is intriguing and suspenseful. The second part seems to linger a lot. Once the initial parts of the invasion occur (the great scene with the British gliders coming in to take the bridge, as well as the chaos of the landing paratroopers and the confusion amongst the Nazis), the direction seems to be much looser, less focused, and there doesn't appear to be much of a guiding thread to some of the segments.

Some of the characterizations in this part leave something to be desired, as well. Everyone seems to be portrayed as buffoons at one point or another (save the Americans, of course). It was great to see elements of the French resistance integrated, though, as most films about WW2 omit the role that they played.

The cast and acting are great as a whole, but there is some awful overacting on the part of some of the Americans (especially near the start).

Finally, as a bit of a side-note, the R1 DVD which I watched is sadly quite weak. The subtitling, which is key to the film, leaves much to be desired. Many parts of the german scenes are not translated at all, and I got the sense that I was missing much subtlety in the dialogue. I'm a native French speaker, so the French parts did not bother me, but I did notice that the subtitles were often lagging far behind what was going on, and many parts of dialogue were indeed omitted. The 2002 DVD release of this film is letterboxed and not ananorphic, which is a real shame. Thankfully, the 2006 release (which I did not watch) is indeed anamorphic as all scope films should be. I would hope the subtitling issues have been fixed, too.