the longest day

        The movie “the longest day” takes place during D-day the Normandy invasion. Which is where America and the allies invaded Normandy France to regain furnace from Germany. There are no real main characters in the story just groups of men who show the different parts of the invasion and tie the story together. Some men are parachutists some are French rebel’s others invade from the beaches all of them tell the story of D-day and the invasion of Normandy. The movie is very realistic in some parts and even uses some real clips of German troops marching. And its visuals of the battles seem realistic. I liked the movie a lot. I thought some of the special effects where funny because of how dated they were especially the green screen scene where the German soldiers are standing in front of the beach. Also, when the plane is landing in France it is very funny. But they worked with what they had and they did a good job. However, it was a very long movie but it is called the longest day so what did I expect.
        Later it shows parachutists falling to the ground invading in the night. Many die and one is even trapped on a steeple and is later rescued he seemed to be one of the main characters. Later in the morning troops started attacking by the sea and invading the beach. They eventually break through the German wall with explosives. And invade through the wall taking over Normandy for the allies. In the movie, the troops face little resistance on the beach which is contradictory to what happened. The movie cuts around to the different invasion groups and in the end, all the groups meet up and march up through France showing allied victory.
        The movie starts out with a group of French rebels sneaking people across the border. The French rebels have a very important role in the beginning of the movie. They tear down German communication lines and help he us soldiers. Also, the beginning shows a lot of the preparation on both the sides. On the German sides, it shows people trying to break the British codes to the occupied French rebels. On the allied side, it showed the Americans and British deciding when to invade and considering to change the invasion date because of the bad weather. Many of the Germans do not believe there will be an invasion because of the bad weather.
        The movie confronts ideas of war such as how ware affects us. At the end of the movie one of the unknown men finds a dead German and then meets a crippled man on the ground. The begin to talk and the crippled man says he split his leg in half and had to kill the German soldier. Than the man says he is lost and cannot find the rest of his battalion. Than the crippled man replied that’s how war is you will either end up dead, crippled or lost. Also, another soldier says we have all been changed by this day.
        This movie is not completely one hundred percent historically accurate it is more of a dramatization of the invasion.  A French military advisor was asked if the film represented the ally invasion of Normandy correctly. First, the aircrafts used in the movie where made in the sixties instead of the ones used in the forties. Also, this was first movie to portray the D-day invasion of Normandy. In the movie, there are nuns left in Normandy at the German bunker however there where never nuns there because before the Germans took over the bunker it was a casino not an abbey. However, this movie did a very good job at accurately depicting world war two’s invasion of Normandy beach.
        I believe this move portrays the invasion of Normandy France accurately. Per several sources, it portrays it almost correctly besides a few small things. However, a movie about history cannot get everything correct. It probably shaped how a lot of people saw the war. However, this movie was made only twenty years after the actual war so people would probably still remember world war two. History is very permanent if we keep a good record of it. This movie will be one of many that permanently record the events of D-day and the invasion of Normandy. History is permanent if we have records of it and historical movies like the longest day keep records and make history permanent.
        I feel like this movie only sacrifices a little bit of historical inaccuracy just for dramatism and movie appeal. When this movie came out it attracted a big audience and if it had copied the whole invasion of Normandy completely it would probably not have been as popular to people who were seeing the movie at that time. But the movie does not have to sacrifice that much because it is mostly correct in its historical accuracy.



http://www.dday-overlord.com/eng/longest_day.htm

http://allreaders.com/movie-review-summary/the-longest-day-4147

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056197/plotsummary