The Longest Day vs Saving Private Ryan. Which do you prefer?

[the ringo kid]

They were both excellent, however I will never forget "A Bridge Too Far" - one of the best I've ever seen.

Love ABTF, but, its not a D Day June 6th movie, its an Operation Market Garden movie.

 

[mike from st pete]

The Longest Day.

 

[the ringo kid]

I have mixed emotions about these two movies. As a historian and a teacher, I like "The Longest Day", because it gives a reasonable overview of D Day, and I would be able (in the early part of my career) to use it to teach about D Day and it's significance.

I have attempted to watch "Saving Private Ryan" three or four times, and I can barely make it to the half way point. The special effects are great, it is just that they are too realistic for me. Having been caught in a cross fire is not fun, and "Ryan" just triggers my PTSD.

I realize that some people see it as the best movie ever. For me, being raised on movies and such that didn't include excessive, gratuitous levels of blood and gore, I tend to find the graphic movies a little too much.

Same here, I dont need to see a man carrying his leg or guts spilling out to get the idea. Too much needless bad language too. I realise both happens but, not necessary for a movie.

 

[the ringo kid]

The thing about John Wayne as the light Colonel. Had he not taken the role? Charlton Heston would have.

 

[Watchdog]

The Longest Day earned a lot of money (for back then) and it earned its accolades, but it looks somewhat dated to me now.

TLD is a Classic not dated. Would you call Casablanca dated?

I guess you might be talking to me, since I'm the one who first mentioned the film looks dated to me?

I should have made myself more clear. I'm talking about "dated" from a filmmaking standpoint, a technical viewpoint. I'm not disparaging the whole film at once. Anything I say about the film is my opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

The film had four directors, and even the producer, Darryl F. Zanuck crept in there with some directing. So you have four or five different filmmaking techniques in play and four or five different viewpoints and interpretations of one single event. The film looks fragmented to me because of that. The effects were state of the art for 1962, but they look kinda hokey to me now.

Other stuff:

John Wayne was too old and fat to be playing a paratrooper. He was fifty-five at the time, or close to it. He got the role because he was a "star", even though he was a mediocre actor until his later years. His part was actually offered to Charlton Heston who was only thirty-eight at the time, but for some reason he turned it down. Heston was already a big star, having done The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur (for which he won the Best Actor Academy Award), and El Cid. He may have wanted a vacation or maybe figured he didn't need The Longest Day to further his reputation. I mean, let's face facts, he wasn't gonna top Moses by playing some soldier or officer in a war film, no matter how epic the film.

Dwight Eisenhower walked out of a screening of the film after only a few minutes. It's reported he was angered at the film's inaccuracies. What those inaccuracies are, I wouldn't know, but Ike wasn't one to beat around the bush when making his dislikes known.

What's really funny to me is that Christopher Lee (aka Dracula in his Hammer Films days) was rejected for a role in the film, because he supposedly didn't look like a military man. Lee was actually in the RAF during WWII, even though after some early flying time, the RAF grounded him because of damage to his optic nerve...he could no longer see well enough to be a pilot.

Regarding Casablanca and The Longest Day, no, I don't consider Casablanca to be dated. For one thing, it's totally fictional and it's in a completely different genre. Even though it's loosely based on a real situation, it doesn't even pretend to be real or factual. It isn't a quasi-documentary like The Longest Day. And its techniques hold up today, seventy-four years after it was made (and it was filmed during WWII).

What's interesting is that Patton was released only about eight years later and it doesn't look dated to me at all.

I loved Day when it first came out. My buddies and I went to see it in theaters multiple times when it was released. We did the same thing for other true-to-life WWII films like Sink the Bismark and Hell to Eternity (an almost forgotten film about real life war hero Guy Gabaldon).

The Longest Day loses its impact on television, even when shown in its original aspect ratio. So I don't watch it on TV. If it had a revival and was shown on the big screen again, I'd go see it for sure.

It'll always be a classic war film, of course.
I'm just saying it doesn't appeal to me now as it did over a half-century ago.

 

[Dude]

If you want to enjoy a war movie, it's hard to beat TLD. If you want to get kicked in the nuts, it's SPR. That D-Day sequence in SPR is very visceral and very real. It really makes you think of our veterans and what they went through on D-Day. I think SPR might be the better, more emotionally moving movie, but isn't one I'd want to pop in the DVD player and watch over and over.

 

[wnwitzell]

TLD is full of cliches, old over the hill actors, and fake scenery. If I want to see an old war movie I watch "Zulu" with a young Michael Cain. Otherwise I will gladly watch SPR!

 

[Gulfecho]

Anything Hanks is involved with regarding history is golden to me. I prefer SPR and Band of Brothers. Both were ground breaking films in my opinion.

 

[wbraswell]

These are two different movies, made in different eras, telling two different stories, with common settings. SPR was a dramatic story of a mission to save the last son of a family, during the most crucial battle of the ETO and possibly the entire war. TLD was a flag waving blockbuster with starpower. Wayne, Mitchum, Fonda, Burton, Connery, Albert, and the list goes on. The posters would have rows of pictures of the stars in the cast. It was from the genre of pictures like In Harm's Way, How the West Was Won, Battle of the Bulge, and Midway. Movies are made with the technologies available. SPR wouldn't have been much of a movie if it had been made in the early '60s. Lord save us from a remake of TLD, full of big name socialist, PC pansies.I like them both for what they are. I love the scene in TLD with the body of the German officer with his boots on the wrong feet.

 

[the ringo kid]

Speaking of Midway,, its anniversary was a couple days ago. 72 years on since the turning point of our war against Japan.

 

[the ringo kid]

also speaking of Hell To Eternity. Its almost impossible to find god and originaal stills to that movie. Ive been trying for years to find ones that are worthy. However, recently I did find one original to Sahara.