The movie celebrates what Britain did.
Best World War II movie?
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besides the fact that they took a wheelsystem from a T34 for both Tiger Tanks and the MG 42’s where fired continuesly without overheating on the beach and a few Gi’s held off a half AA group of the Waffen SS?..… :? :-D
The movie may make people believe that the Americans knew allready about the Holocaust and that the pur anger and hatred for the Germans and all who were allies with 'em was justified but it wasn’t the case!!..the western allies started to know about the Holocaust after August '44 when the Soviets liberated the first of many KZ’s -concentrationcamps in Poland.
I’m not trying to justify the Germans but to punish the people who tried to do their job and defend the Atlanticwall ON THE BEACH dosen’t sound fair to me either,they were soldiers swore the oath and believed a Lie…Spielberg did a way better job w. Schindlers List and B.o.B.This movie is not helping anyone to recall the truth or remind Generations of the glorious and heroic liberation of France from the Evil Nazisim, rather a pre-runner of Inglorious…
If I have to choose between Longest day and Ryan , I go for Longest day…I just wouldn’t count saving Ryan as a best WWII movie…
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@aequitas:
besides the fact that they took a wheelsystem from a T34 for both Tiger Tanks and the MG 42’s where fired continuesly without overheating on the beach and a few Gi’s held off a half AA group of the Waffen SS?..… :? :-D
I’m not sure what you are talking about concerning the wheel system (maybe they couldn’t get Tigers for production?), but certainly you can explaining away the MGs with either multiple guns firing or dramatic effect. Hell, the Longest Day, if we are only faulting unrealistic portrayals, has Germans speaking English and no blood/gore/effects of gunfire/explosions. People just fall over and die. On your last point - yeah, I can somewhat agree with it, but it was again for dramatic effect (something Spielberg himself has said to defend inaccuracies), but it was more than a few men, not to mention Rangers & Airborne and not standard Army.
The movie may make people believe that the Americans knew allready about the Holocaust and that the pur anger and hatred for the Germans and all who were allies with 'em was justified but it wasn’t the case!!…
Where? I haven’t seen the movie in a while and still don’t know every line of dialogue, but where do they talk about the Holocaust in SPR?
This movie is not helping anyone to recall the truth or remind Generations of the glorious and heroic liberation of France from the Evil Nazisim, rather a pre-runner of Inglorious…
If I have to choose between Longest day and Ryan , I go for Longest day…The only thing that relates Inglourious Basterds and SPR are that both have Nazis in it.
I liked the Longest Day book, but the movie is fairly boring to me. I appreciate the talent in it, but for being an account of D-Day, it’s just kind of hokey because of the film age then. SPR is gritty, dirty, visceral, and damn realistic even though it’s a mostly fictional account with an historic backdrop.I just wouldn’t count saving Ryan as a best WWII movie…
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Longest Day by a huge margin is much better film. It was way ahead of its time for 1960. Incredible cinematography and various interesting subplots and stories. That is my all time favorite because they had everything in it and the kitchen sink.
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@Imperious:
Longest Day by a huge margin is much better film. It was way ahead of its time for 1960. Incredible cinematography and various interesting subplots and stories. That is my all time favorite because they had everything in it and the kitchen sink.
I think A Bridge Too Far is a better book and movie. The only problem is it needed to be longer since there was a lot more going on that they didn’t show (like how rough it was at the end of the bridge they held with nearly nothing).
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Bridge too far dragged on too long, but i consider it pretty good. Longest day was paced much better with much more interesting things going on.
I have seen both countless times, but for entertainment i take longest day because of the action.
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I like the part in longest day where that one G.I. is stuck on the roof in St. Mer Eglise…they still have to this very day a puppet hung from that roof to celebrate their Liberation day…Cool huh?!..I think his name was Steeles…
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I like the part when that french guy listens to the radio while eating dinner and runs out the house with his gun and ww1 helmet and his wife tastes the soup thinking the soup made him crazy. Latter another french old man waves the flag from his window and nearly gets blown up by shore bombardment fire.
The best shot was that continuous shot of the fighting all in one take.
And the glider part when they land Major. Howard’s detachment was actually in the real operation in 1944 to take that bridge. He was replaying his role in that battle…just a bit older than before.
Never figured out that part when one GI was winning at craps and the bunkmate reminded him of fort Benning where he was laid up for an injury on jump training. I dont understand why he was so upset about hurting his leg.
The acting in that movie was really good. They had like everybody who was anybody in the 1960’s in one movie.
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I don’t know that it is the Best but my favorite is Patton.
Band of Brothers would be second.
And The Longest Day is bloody well awesome. I have the Blu-ray version of it and it is a terrific transfer.
I think the bit about the craps game in Longest Day though is more a superstition issue or a karma issue. Last time he had such great luck gambling he balanced it out with terrible luck the next morning breaking a leg. It might have felt like having even better luck would lead to the next morning having even worse luck. It is what he needed to do to be less scared about going into battle. Later he even says, “Now we’re both jumping clean.”
I always thought it a statement on the irrationality that fear can cause or as an elegant comment on the fatalism many soldiers probably felt.
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Yes that makes more sence. The GI wanted to not experience another bad luck episode ( such as dying) after having really good luck, so he threw away his winnings to ‘get clean’ from that cycle.
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I just find acting from that period, especially something so graphic as war, to be really hokey. It makes me want to say “Zoinks!” or “Gadzooks!” I don’t think it’s really befitting of what actually happened. That’s why I like SPR way better - it LOOKS like a real war. It even made vets walk out, maybe even others that thought it was too much.
But probably one of my earliest childhood movie memories (and I think this is from the Longest Day) is where a paratrooper is using his kids toy clicker to try and find his comrades, and he hears another one. So he stands up and calls out and gets shot. Then a German soldier steps into the frame and reloads his K98, which sounded like the clicker. It could be a different movie though, I just remember it was black and white.
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Well its not a movie, but i like watching the old series of baa baa black sheep
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That part was in the movie Jermo.
SPR didnt have the numbers of men to make much of a battle scene. They did it with cute editing and sound. Longest Day actually had thousands of extras and a panoramic view of the beaches, so you got the full measure of the landings, plus all the other operations. SPR was essentially a movie about not about the actual campaign, but a more personal story of war and the price of humanity for the few men it was dealing with. I prefer the movie about the battle and what it meant to the allies who fought it. Watch it again and compare.
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I will, Thank you for the tip IL, I do like the TRUE history of that era
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I don’t know that it is the Best but my favorite is Patton.
Band of Brothers would be second.
And The Longest Day is bloody well awesome. I have the Blu-ray version of it and it is a terrific transfer.
I think the bit about the craps game in Longest Day though is more a superstition issue or a karma issue. Last time he had such great luck gambling he balanced it out with terrible luck the next morning breaking a leg. It might have felt like having even better luck would lead to the next morning having even worse luck. It is what he needed to do to be less scared about going into battle. Later he even says, “Now we’re both jumping clean.”
I always thought it a statement on the irrationality that fear can cause or as an elegant comment on the fatalism many soldiers probably felt.
I have Patton on blu-ray…the movie looks like it was made yesterday…great transfer
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@Imperious:
SPR didnt have the numbers of men to make much of a battle scene. They did it with cute editing and sound. Longest Day actually had thousands of extras and a panoramic view of the beaches, so you got the full measure of the landings, plus all the other operations. SPR was essentially a movie about not about the actual campaign, but a more personal story of war and the price of humanity for the few men it was dealing with. I prefer the movie about the battle and what it meant to the allies who fought it. Watch it again and compare.
Yeah, they have different direction, but I think realistic combat and a great story beats 1000 men running up a beach any day. The big stage production is cool, no doubt, but it’s hard for me to get past that “acting” when they are in a war.
Of course you could always watch them both and not worry about it.
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@Imperious:
SPR didnt have the numbers of men to make much of a battle scene. They did it with cute editing and sound. Longest Day actually had thousands of extras and a panoramic view of the beaches, so you got the full measure of the landings, plus all the other operations. SPR was essentially a movie about not about the actual campaign, but a more personal story of war and the price of humanity for the few men it was dealing with. I prefer the movie about the battle and what it meant to the allies who fought it. Watch it again and compare.
Yeah, they have different direction, but I think realistic combat and a great story beats 1000 men running up a beach any day. The big stage production is cool, no doubt, but it’s hard for me to get past that “acting” when they are in a war.
Of course you could always watch them both and not worry about it.
Hey Jermo, this is why SPR is just another fast paced Hollywood Blockbuster w. the only purpose to make money…it has not much to do w. realistic combat scene or story, because the Story of D-Day is only scratched on the surface the rest is fiction or a nother die hard movie ,wich a lot of people like but has nothing to do w. History.
for example the final battle, their are so many mistakes and misleads…anyhow, good to watch but not to tell your kids or friends “that was exactly how it looked like”…
Longest day of course a lot of acting but the impression supossed to be made to let the people know that war isn’t walk on sunset strip!!..I like the actor who plays Marcks and Curd Juergens, R. Mitchum I like as well…
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@aequitas:
Hey Jermo, this is why SPR is just another fast paced Hollywood Blockbuster
:lol: :lol: :lol: Sure, whatever you say…completely ignoring the fact they dumped as many stars as they could into Longest Day.
w. the only purpose to make money…
That is the purpose of all movies, perhaps excepting documentaries.
it has not much to do w. realistic combat scene or story, because the Story of D-Day is only scratched on the surface the rest is fiction or a nother die hard movie ,wich a lot of people like but has nothing to do w. History.
It is the most realistic combat ever seen in a war movie, particularly a WW2 one. The point wasn’t to highlight the history (which had been done ad nauseum for 50+ years), it was to use it as a backdrop to a much more personal story. It involved the viewer far more than saying “here’s a cleaned up rendition of what happened that day.” There certainly was enough history in the movie, but that wasn’t the concern.
for example the final battle, their are so many mistakes and misleads…anyhow, good to watch but not to tell your kids or friends “that was exactly how it looked like”…
Longest day of course a lot of acting but the impression supossed to be made to let the people know that war isn’t walk on sunset strip!!..SPR consistently tops best of lists with the Omaha beach landing - best scene, best battle, most realistic battle, etc. - and if not outright at #1 it’s in the top few. You never see the Longest Day on the lists because it’s not at all realistic, so if that’s your metric, The Longest Day is blown away by SPR in comparison.
_‘Private Ryan’: What’s different?
PHIL PONCE: What-how difficult-would you say-or what this makes film different from other war movies? You’ve seen others.
STEPHEN AMBROSE: You watch “The Longest Day” by Darryl Zhanek. It’s the same beach Robert Mitchum and Henry Fonda are taking it instead of Tom Hanks, and they’ve got-as Russell Baker wrote yesterday in the Times-this manly set to their jaws, and they’re so calm, and they’re so competent, and nobody’s scared, and they’re going about their business. And it wasn’t anything at all like that. Zhanek’s movie is just kindergarten stuff. In Zhanek’s movie, for example, there’s no battle noise, so that whenever John Wayne or the other actors that he’s paying all those big bucks to, and something to say, then he makes sure the audience hears you.
Well, in this movie you’re leaning forward to hear what Hanks has got to say and you lose about half of it. In Wayne’s movie, as Paul Fussell just said, I should say in Zhanek’s movie. When an American gets hit-it’s either just a little flesh wound-I’m all right, Sarge-or he gets it between the eyes or in the heart, and he’s dead, and the Sarge with the captain can write home to the grieving parents that he never knew what him. He didn’t suffer. You suffer in the Spielberg film. You see what the bullets do the human body. He makes you look at it._
Really it’s like comparing Adam West’s Batman to Christian Bale’s.
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I really got a kick out of Connery in The Longest Day. There were a few little things that made me do a double take in that one (both book and film), the poor guys who put their boots on the wrong feet, the two opposing squads who were so shocked when they passed each other that neither started a fight, bagpipes on the beach, a number of others.
I read Band of Brothers some time after seeing Saving Private Ryan and have not watched SPR since then. Interestingly enough Hanks produced Band of Brothers after SPR. I must say I got into Band of Brothers more than any other WW2 film or series in recent memory.
And while Jermo is correct in stating that the purpose of all movies excepting documentaries is to make money there are some types of people involved in the movie industry who also want to do their best to get the story right, as close as they can. Midway, A Bridge Too Far, The Longest Day, and We Were Soldiers (not WW2 but still a pretty good example) all can fit into this category. A few things always get changed from books or history to the screen sadly.
The films of that era were different. Not just the acting but special effects and the types of things in film in general. John Wayne always seemed to play John Wayne (which is fine with me by the way). There were a lot more films of that era that I don’t mind watching with my kids awake. But I can’t watch Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers with the little ones awake.
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Band of Brothers
Ingenious Bastards :) fun one
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