Conference bookie::movies

    Quick Summary:
    
    John Wayne invades Europe on D-Day and with a cast of thousands makes
    the world safe for Democracy.
    Based on a book by Cornelius Ryan.

    A thing with toy crickets sounding like a rifle bolt
    Henry Fonda's stick
    Richard Burton lieing in a field with a wound done up with safety pins
    after shooting a German with his boots on the wrong feet.
    Lots of white letters across the bottom of the screen.
    Very long and black and white.
    An odd bit with two German fightes taking out a beach on there own and
    getting away with it.
    Some "historical difficulties" to make the push off the beaches the
    important part rather than the more important battles such as Antwerp.
    
    
    R. Michael.
    

    And the guy hanging from his 'chute from a bell tower while german
    garrison troups kill the rest of the company before they hit the
    ground.
    
    Rupert the self detonating dummy
    
    The american soldier who has to looses all this gambling winnigs in
    order to get some of his luck back.
    
    Fat guy on a bicycle (who played Goring in the battle of Britain)
    
    The mayor of somewhere in a fireman's helmet dishing out champagne to
    Sean Connery.
    
    The beach master with the bull dog whose names I forget. (but quite
    famous.)
    
    Eighteen words spoken by women
    
    John Wayne in a cart trying to say "St Mary-Gleeze"
    
    Road signs that point the wrong way, often.
    
    Big dog
    
    "What does bitter bitter mean," after shooting Germans trying to
    surrender.
    
    Marines climbing up a rock face to destroy heavy guns that haven't been
    installed yet.
    
    I'll think of more later, not that I've seen it you understand.
    
    
    R. Michael.
     

    .3 "fat guy on a bicycle" was Gert Frobe who also played Auric
    Goldfinger in the James Bond movie Goldfinger, with the song by Shirley
    Bassie.
    
    The scene with the soldier hanging from his chute off the church
    steeple is a true incident. The Airborne troops dropped into St. Mere-
    Eglise were taking a lot of killed-in-action with the Naziis shooting
    them while drifting down in their chutes. 
    
    The cameo scenes, and John Wayne to save the day, make for a L-O-N-G
    show, hence the title "The Longest Day".  Kept waiting for John Wayne
    to say, "Remember, pardner, the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi".
    
    One moment of luck was when Rommel had decided to go visit his family 
    for those days. Could have been much worse for the Allies if he had
    been there in command.
    
    If you can make it through this one, then you are ready for "A Bridge
    Too Far". I believe Cornelius Ryan also wrote that book.
    
    

    The scene with the poor guy hanging off the steeple, and the "clicker"
    scene really stuck with me since having seen the movie on TV during my
    childhood.  Everytime I hear a 'clicker' noise, I half-expect to be
    shot with a bolt-action rifle.  :)
    
    
    kim

    
    *All* the incidents were true.  I think they picked two many of these
    incidents, so much so that the they overshadowed the larger story.
    Apparently the use of so many 'stars' was so that viewers could keep
    track of all the character/story threads with the familar faces.
    
    re.2 It *was* a key battle. They could easily have been thrown off the
         beaches if Panzer divisions had been right there.  They almost
         lost one beach, Omaha.
    
         Antwerp was important, but it wasn't key, and it wasn't on this
         kind of scale.  Wrong notes file for this discussion.
    
    Are there any non-war movies of this style, dozens of true, odd
    incidents to tell a large historical story?  With no real main
    characters?  The war movie versions include Battle of the Bulge, Is
    Paris Burning, A Bridge Too Far, etc.   Are there non-war examples?
    
    
    Marshall
    
    

    "A Night to Remember", about the sinking of the Titanic is in the same
    vein.  It's based on a book by Walter Lord.  Lord's style is similar to 
    Cornelius Ryan's, an anecdotal history, based on carefully documented 
    personal accounts.
    
    I also recommend "The Last 100 Days" by Ryan, about the end of the
    Third Reich and the fall of Berlin.

.6>  Are there any non-war movies of this style, dozens of true, odd
.6>  incidents to tell a large historical story?
    
    _The Right Stuff_ might qualify here, depending on your thresholds.
    
      John

 I knew I'd seen it! Thank goodness I asked 'cos I was on the threshold of 
 getting it as my free video from a mail order company. It was on a bestseller
 list with no description. 

 Think I'll go for "Bringing up Baby" instead...

 re .2  R. Michael
 
 I *DON'T* remember poor old Richard being held together with safety pins 
 (sorry I missed that bit!) - are you quite sure???

 re .4

 Yep, I've seen "A Bridge Too Far" too. I quite like these old war type 
 movies, but they're a bit short on interesting female characters for me...


 thanks,

 Linda

    As I remember Richard is an RAF flyer, one of the few by the tone of it. 
    He is sat, wounded,  in a garden waving a revolver about.  He points
    out to a passing grunt that the german he just shot has his boots on
    the wrong feet.  He also explained that his leg wound had been closed
    with safety pins and the morphine was wearing off.
    
    As for the style, doesa it tell the bigger picture?  I think not,
    though it certainly is a very watchable movie.  I don't think it would
    be possible to give the bigger picture without resorting to a voice
    overs and the like.
    
    R. Michael
     

    
    re-.1
    
    I'd have to agree, I don't think it gives a sense of the size of the
    landings, or the real cost.  Unlike a "A Bridge Too Far" which did do
    that, but got panned in the process.
    
    I guess that style of journalism has worn off.  Hundreds of detailed
    interviews, woven into a story.  There seems the modern tendency is
    just to make up what the author think happened, and chunks of dialog by
    real persons get invented.
    
    Marshall
    
    

    At first I was surprised Linda couldn't place The Longest Day by
    title alone (June of '44, Invasion of Hitler's "Fortress Europe", 
    *you* know...), but I realized that was a long time ago, back before 
    the Cold War, even (and they say *that's* over, too), and a lot of 
    small and medium wars (plus a lot of other history) have taken place
    since WWII, and most of the D-Day players are gone.
    
    So maybe someone should tell the video clubs to put a small blurb
    with the title so folks can more easily ID it (and buy it) so they can
    see what it was like to fight a global war for Mom's Apple Pie and 
    Hot Dogs at the Baseball Game, rather than politics, glory, & medals.
    (Was that a lecture? :-))
     
    One last thing (and its sort of a spoiler, so stop here if you wish);
    
    
    The final scene between the flyer and the GI was telling in that
    while we saw the Big Picture, they just saw their little piece of
    the invasion; the limey one-on-one with the wrong-booted German 
    officer, the yank never quite finding the fighting, and both not
    knowing whether the landings were successful or not.
    
    And the last thing (I promise), when a movie hits video I change my
    rating system a bit to help me decide if I want to own it.  I look at
    whether I would watch it more than a few times vs. how much I enjoyed
    it the first time.  This one has been through my VCR many times. 
    
                                                       Don