The Longest Film.
I kid, slightly.
This is a massive achievement in technical detail. The reconstruction of D-Day is done faithfully and on an epic scale. In fact, the whole thing is pretty epic. Multiple locations, multiple directors, multiple languages. Credit to everyone involved to coordinate something like this.
There’s also some fantastic moments. The quiet hush of the first hour might be the best part, everyone waiting with bated breath. When we finally exhale, the push very firmly on, it’s incredible.
However, perhaps by fault of the multiplicity I mentioned, the whole thing feels very listless. The direction is never anything to harp on about, the characters are sketched too thin and spread too wide, the themes are divided up to the point that they’re lost the maelstrom.
You’ve also gotta consider the company this film is keeping. Sure, no other film around this time was focusing on this specifically. But, we had Judgement at Nuremberg the year before and we’d go on to have The Train two years later. Compared to those masterpieces this thing crumbles.
Not a terrible time but certainly not in the top-tier of war films.
The Longest Film.
I kid, slightly.
This is a massive achievement in technical detail. The reconstruction of D-Day is done faithfully and on an epic scale. In fact, the whole thing is pretty epic. Multiple locations, multiple directors, multiple languages. Credit to everyone involved to coordinate something like this.
There’s also some fantastic moments. The quiet hush of the first hour might be the best part, everyone waiting with bated breath. When we finally exhale, the push very firmly on, it’s incredible.
However, perhaps by fault of the multiplicity I mentioned, the whole thing feels very listless. The direction is never anything to harp on about, the characters are sketched too thin and spread too wide, the themes are divided up to the point that they’re lost the maelstrom.
You’ve also gotta consider the company this film is keeping. Sure, no other film around this time was focusing on this specifically. But, we had Judgement at Nuremberg the year before and we’d go on to have The Train two years later. Compared to those masterpieces this thing crumbles.
Not a terrible time but certainly not in the top-tier of war films.
