"The Longest Day" (The Longest Day) filmed the Normandy Landing. From the soldiers' guesses the day before the landing, the war game of Nazi Germany, to Eisenhower's final decision, the landing operation began, and finally the Allied forces successfully logged in. "The Longest Day" is not a documentary, but it has the truth of a documentary. At the same time, as a well-known historical fact, it can also produce wonderful drama conflicts, making the three-hour movie watching moments tense.
"The Longest Day" is different from other war movies in many ways. War movies often have protagonists' main lines, focusing on setting off the heroic role, and even praising the main theme-"most" none of these. Its narrative angle is constantly switched between Allied forces and Nazi Germany. The film does not describe the evil of the German army, nor does it clearly eulogize the justice of the Allied forces. Instead, it allows the audience to observe the strategic and tactical game between the two sides of the war as a third party. The filming of the war film was so neutral, which made me, posterity, in awe.
It can be seen that the special effects of the movie at that time were still very primitive, and some scenes such as fighter piloting, ship deck and other plots will see the light edge left by the keying, and the direction of the character lighting and the background light is also somewhat deviated. However, these occasional flaws did not affect the viewing experience of the whole film in the slightest—in fact, this film half a century ago had extremely good special effects. Exquisite indoor and outdoor scenery, excellent pyrotechnic effects, highly reproduced vehicles and tanks, and amazing lens scheduling have brought back the largest sea landing battle in human history before the eyes of viewers.
After watching "The Longest Day", the biggest feeling is the truth. This reality is not created by CG special effects. Some real shots of the year are interspersed in some parts of the film. It's all black and white films, except for the dense noise, it's not so obtrusive when inserted in the movie. A closer look will reveal that there is not much difference between the scenes in the recorded images and the scenes shot in the movie, and I feel that the movie has restored the scenes of the war to be realistic enough. Many sound effects were not added in the battle scenes. Soldiers fell silently when shot, and fell to the ground when climbing cliffs. There was no sound effect at all. These noises would have been inaudible on the battlefield where the artillery fires, but their indifferent handling methods have highlighted the cruelty of the war. We have always only cared about the outcome of the battle, and did not pay too much attention to the chess pieces that participated in the battle. The cliff-climbing soldier fell heavily to the ground, his body twitched twice, face down, and there was no more movement.
Everyone knows the ending, how should the suspense of the movie be created? "The Longest Day" did it. "The Most" has very little description of the big scenes, and more time is devoted to the details of the plot and characters. The French resistance, the German front-line commander, the airborne division, and the Allied Command. The stories that happened to everyone in each place are connected together to form the entire epic. What impressed me the most was the clip of F Airborne Company. The entire F company was annihilated because they missed the landing site and landed in the center of the town. They were completely exposed under the noses of the German soldiers guarding the place, and they were brutally killed in mid-air. In the first half of the film, the commander of the airborne division said more than once: If you miss the landing place, just wait to die, which unfortunately added a lot of chips for the F company. After that, the plot description of the entire F Company's destruction was even more extraordinary, and it was described through the perspective of a surviving soldier. The soldier's parachute hung from the bell tower window of the monastery, making him immobile. The camera switched between his close-up and the scene of his comrades being tortured and killed by the Germans: he watched his comrades die, but he could not help. He took out a knife and tried to cut the rope, but the knife fell to the ground. The sound alarmed a German soldier on the ground. The German soldier aimed at him. He closed his eyes and was about to accept his fate. The German soldier was knocked down by a shuttle from a comrade who had just landed. There are still not too many sound effects, only the expression on the soldier's face and the silver eyes. The 5-minute clip makes people startled at each step, and then feels full of emotion.
Although there are few big scenes, they are definitely comparable to contemporary Hollywood war films. In the climax of the film, the passage of a French commando attacking a German-controlled area is the most typical. The long, overhead shot at the beginning is admirable: a group of French soldiers launched a surprise attack from a street corner, all the way to the local German army headquarters. The camera is followed up from mid-air, and the difficulty of shooting angle, the large number of actors, and the complexity of scheduling are comparable to the beginning of "Lady in the Tribulation". After that was the only armored battle scene in the film: the French commando encountered a heavy German counterattack, and a Sherman tank was urgently dispatched. Unlike the special effects movies, "Most" has no frequent editing, no slow motion of cannonballs, and no flesh and blood. "Most" is a slow-paced war movie. The shots show close-ups of the barrels of the German anti-tank gun and Sherman. The two barrels rotate slowly, and the muzzle brake looks huge under perspective. Sherman fired first, and two cannons blasted the small building down. The tension felt in slow-paced shots is longer than CG special effects.
Compared with movies of the same type, the predecessor "Most" looks so different. Most contemporary movies have unparalleled audiovisual effects, fast and smooth plot development, and absolute political correctness of the main theme, but they often ignore the connotation of the film. My criteria for a good movie: A good movie does not anaesthetize the viewer and does not please the viewer, but it must be able to cause the viewer to think. As at the end of "The Most", what is war? He's dead. I'm crippled. You're lost. I suppose it's always like that. I mean war.
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