Movie · 1962 · War, Action, Drama · 2h 58m · PG · English
Curator score: 7.3/10 (87.1K ratings)
THE INTERNATIONAL ACCLAIMED HIT JUST AS IT WAS SHOWN IN THE MAJOR CAPITALS OF THE WORLD!
Overview
The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"
Ratings
Curator score: 7.3/10
IMDb: 7.7/10
Letterboxd: 3.81/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
Metacritic: 75
TMDB: 7.6/10
Director
Ken Annakin, Bernhard Wicki, Andrew Marton
Production
Darryl F. Zanuck Productions, 20th Century Fox
Cast
John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Leslie Phillips, Robert Ryan, Paul Anka, Wolfgang Büttner, Mel Ferrer, Ray Danton, Peter Lawford, Eddie Albert, Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Richard Beymer, Hans Christian Blech, Bourvil, Red Buttons, Pauline Carton
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A big, old-school D-Day epic that still impresses with its scale, multi-national perspective, and meticulous battle staging. It’s more procedural and panoramic than emotionally intimate, but as a historical war spectacle it remains a landmark.
Best for
classic war-epic fans
viewers who like ensemble casts and multiple viewpoints
history buffs interested in D-Day and WWII operations
fans of large-scale practical battle staging
Skip if
you want a modern, psychologically intense war film
you prefer a tightly focused character drama
you’re impatient with long runtimes and episodic structure
you need strong anti-war commentary or moral ambiguity
Overview
The Longest Day is a monument of studio-era war filmmaking: sprawling, orderly, and astonishingly committed to recreating the mechanics of D-Day from several national viewpoints. Its appeal is less in individual character arcs than in the sheer accumulation of detail, movement, and logistics. The result feels like a battlefield chronicle made with the confidence of a prestige production and the patience of a history book.
Worth noting
What stands out most today is the scale of the undertaking. The film juggles Allied and German perspectives, uses its starry cast as a kind of civic roll call, and treats the invasion as a coordinated event rather than a single hero’s story. That can make it feel a little impersonal, but it also gives the movie a rare sense of breadth and momentum.
Bottom line
If you come for emotional depth, later war films may hit harder. If you come for craftsmanship, historical sweep, and the thrill of seeing a massive operation dramatized with old-school seriousness, this is still essential viewing. It’s one of the defining war epics of its era and a major precursor to the modern ensemble combat film.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Leighton Trent (4★) · 208 likes
"He's dead. I'm crippled. You're lost. Do you suppose it's always like that? I mean war.
Daryl Zanuck's finest hour as a producer was also the finest cinematic hour for the D-Day invasion up until Steven Spielberg put his directorial stamp on that historic day with Saving Private Ryan in 1998. I can't imagine American audiences going to see what they thought was a Richard Burton film or a John Wayne film or a Henry Fonda film and then feeling… more
WraithApe (3.5★) · 143 likes
Boasting no less than five different directors, The Longest Day is an attempt to meticulously recreate the events surrounding D-Day and the Normandy landings. It was hugely ambitious in its scope and fairly expensive for the time ( class="h-100"0m budget); the result is technically remarkable, but lacking in substantive commentary beyond documenting the pivotal operation that precipitated the end of WW2. It has a huge cast of recognizable stars: Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, as well as the… more Boasting no less than five different directors, The Longest Day is an attempt to meticulously recreate the events surrounding D-Day and the Normandy landings. It was hugely ambitious in its scope and fairly expensive for the time ( class="h-100"0m budget); the result is technically remarkable, but lacking in substantive commentary beyond documenting the pivotal operation that precipitated the end of WW2. It has a huge cast of recognizable stars: Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, as well as the… more
mackenzie 🪖 (3★) · 107 likes
“he's dead. I'm crippled. you're lost. do you suppose it's always like that? I mean war.”
been meaning to watch this and I grabbed it when I was thrifting yesterday. was looking forward to watching it but sad to say that I wanted to love it more than I did 😭
I don’t have much to say about the film itself except that the last 40 or so minutes were great. not to mention, the battle scenes were some of the… more
Sam (3★) · 88 likes
"The Longest Day" is a sprawling, three-hour epic war film and certainly has a lot of ambition, capturing the events of the invasion of Normandy from multiple countries' perspectives, but it's far from perfect. It presents the whole attack as a unified effort, and there's a great buildup with perspectives from English, French, and German sides. Obviously, with such an ambitious plot, there's a huge, ambitious cast here, and it's a very good cast, ranging from the likes of Robert… more "The Longest Day" is a sprawling, three-hour epic war film and certainly has a lot of ambition, capturing the events of the invasion of Normandy from multiple countries' perspectives, but it's far from perfect. It presents the whole attack as a unified effort, and there's a great buildup with perspectives from English, French, and German sides. Obviously, with such an ambitious plot, there's a huge, ambitious cast here, and it's a very good cast, ranging from the likes of Robert… more
📀 Cammmalot 📀 (4★) · 80 likes
Cinematic Time Capsule1962 Marathon - Film #57
”Next stop: Normandy.”
Multiple directors, multiple storylines and a sprawling all-star cast all come together to make this one of the most ambitious war epics ever made.
Documenting the D-Day invasion from seemingly every angle this must have been an amazing film to watch on the big screen back in the day. It even held to the record for the world’s most expensive B&W film all the way up until 1993’s Schindler's… more