The Longest Day (1962)

For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day.

The events of D-Day, told on a grand scale from both the Allied and German points of view.

The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French gets an all star production. One of the great war movie epics, it has all the requisite blunderbuss spectacle and heroism as the Allies invade Normandy. It's not hard to see why it was such a box office winner, sure it's a touch too long given that a lot of characters don't really have much to do, but performances are strong and the slices of humour off set some of the national stereotypes on show.

One has to marvel at the ambition of the production, Fox Studios boss Darryl F. Zanuck spent $10 million to get it on...

John Wayne may have featured just slightly more than anyone else in this drama, but it's very much an ensemble effort that delivers a film with a great deal of authenticity to it. It's all set around the day of the D-Day landings in 1944. The weather on England's south coast was, in the words of their meteorologist, "akin to mid-winter". Delay meant more frustrations for everyone so off they go using just about every form of transportation available - gliders, planes, tanks, landing craft - you name it, as a quarter of a million men (plus lots of sparkling "Tommies") headed to Normandy. Meantime, we also see a fairly plausible perspective from the Nazi side of the channel. They've been preparing for an invasion for a while, but are unsure where and when it will come and the apprehension is...