The Longest Day, a day that will repeat itself. The Longest Day is a film recounting the events leading up to the operation on 6th June 1944, codenamed OVERLORD, where over 2 million allied forces delivered five naval assault divisions to the beaches of Normandy, France.
The beaches were given the code names UTAH, OMAHA, GOLD, JUNO, and SWORD and this was the largest amphibious invasion in the history of warfare. The statistics of D-Day, as it is known,are staggering. The Allies used over 5,000 ships and landing craft to land more than 150,000 troops on five beaches in Normandy.
Th Germans defending the beaches against this invasion were caught off guard by successful disinformation, and internal command problems.
The film recreates the main invasion, and some other less major operations that were carried out simultaneously, but as part of the overall strategy.
Overlord has gone down in history as one of the most ambitious and successful invasions ever carried out during wartime, and the film is told mostly from the American view, but also from a British and French view too, and also plenty of screen time showing the mistakes made by the Germans.
It's reasonably historically accurate and remains a great reminder of the task taken on by Allied forces from the 12 nations involved and the huge success that was achieved that day.
Despite the film being over 60 years old it still stands as one of the great wartime films ever made, and is a source of pride for all of the countries who gave men to the allied assault. It's almost empty of the typical Hollywood smush that we expect now: it's more of a soldiers film, showing the reality and the brutality of war.
It would take a whole page to list the major stars in this film, but even the non-stars make a great contribution and the film to me embodies warfare: the glory of it, the futility of it, and the necessity for it. It does make your heart swell with pride when all these men were sacrificed on a beach to free a country and a continent from the tyranny of the Nazis. But it also is incredibly sad for so many men to die for the sake of one dictators vision.
It also reminds us that nothing has been learned from it. To this day there is conflict in the world, taking 100's of 000's of lives for the sake of the ideology of a handful of men in power.
I gave it a solid 8 because it stands as a historical document.