OSCARS '62: The Longest Day

“He's dead. I'm crippled. You're lost. Do you suppose it's always like that? I mean war.”

CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of war, death.

D-Day happened over 80 years ago, and to this day, there’s only been two films that capture the scope and scale of that bloody day. This movie is one of those, and unfortunately it’s the boring one. To be clear, the battle sequences are among some of the best committed to celluloid; there’s a few moments that will make you gasp at how well legendary ringleader Darryl F. Zanuck captures the battlefield. But then we turn to the characters, and they’re all a) played by actors double the age of the characters and b) say the absolute hokiest lines you’ll hear in a war movie. It may be an accurate film, but this definitely isn’t entertaining history. We continue Oscars ‘62 as we discuss The Longest Day on Macintosh & Maud Haven’t Seen What?!

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Intro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.

Excerpt taken from the main theme in the original soundtrack to the film The Longest Day, written and composed by Maurice Jarre. Copyright 1962 Darryl F. Zanuck Productions, Inc. and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, renewed 1990. All rights reserved.

Excerpt taken from the film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, copyright 1962 The Associates & Aldrich Company Inc.; 1962 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.