Accurate And Realistic D Day Movie example essay topic

For a long time, when anyone thought of a war movie, they immediately thought of Darryl F. Zanuck's, The Longest Day. Cornelius Ryan, who was the author of the book by the same name, and happened to be a D-day veteran himself, wrote the movie. The book meticulously recreates the events preceding and during the invasion. It is filled with detailed descriptions of multiple occurrences during the invasion.

It explains everything from mass attacks on beaches and towns to humorous anecdotes. The book wasn't exactly a story involving characters, and neither was the film. The Longest Day is more a story of tragedy, glory, and courage surrounding one very important day. And even though mainly American and English filmmakers produced the movie, the movie and book both portray the Germans fairly. But the film added so much to the story that the book could not. Without some of the stunning visuals that the five (Zanuck went unaccredited, but was said to have directed over half the movie) directors put in the film, it would have been impossible to comprehend the scale of it all.

Even though Ryan's book accurately describes many of the things that happened on D-day, he doesn't describe many of the situations well. The majority of his descriptions are minimal and are not that vivid. When it comes to describing scenes that would be visually amazing, he is very brief and factual. When he describes the scores of paratroopers sent into France, he simply states that "882 planes carrying thirteen thousand men" were sent in. He doesn't help the reader in visualizing just how that many planes looked in the sky, as well as what it looks like to see hundreds of paratroopers drifting to the ground. The film accomplishes this very well, with visuals that strived to strike awe in the viewer.

When the planes fly into France, the viewer is shown hundreds upon hundreds of planes flying in the same formation at many different altitudes. To actually see all those planes was incredible, most people haven't seen something that stunning in real life, or in a film. The same goes for when the paratroopers actually jump out of their planes. Ryan just states that there were "thirteen thousand men" sent to jump, but to show you a few hundred paratroopers has a different effect on a person. Gerd Oswald and the cinematographers did an amazing job in showing us just what it looked like when the paratroopers jumped. The movie needed to show the sheer volume of more things then just planes and paratroopers.

In the book, Ryan tends to quote just figures and doesn't expand on just how that many boats, planes, paratroopers, or soldiers would look if you actually saw them. Hundreds upon hundreds of boats were sent across the English Channel filled with men. They sailed across in orderly lines and rows, different ships of different sizes all moving along together as far as the eye could see. If you just read the book, the best idea you can get about the naval fleet is from a picture in the book of the boats. In the movie, the boats are shown from the view of the soldiers on the boats, to the Germans waiting on the shore. With the use of great special effects, we can get an accurate idea of the mind-boggling amount of ships waiting off the shores of France to invade.

Also as impressive as the boats, were the troops coming wave after wave onto the shore. In the invasion scenes, Ryan does a great job in explaining just what had happened to the men and their boats as they invaded the Omaha, Sword, Utah, and Gold beaches. But, the film does a better job of shocking the viewer with the amount of men actually there and the ones that actually die. It used an extraordinarily large amount of extras as soldiers to invade the beach, convincing the viewer that what they were seeing was in fact real. While the deaths are never gory, they get their point across without disturbing the viewer. But in the book, Ryan states simply that a certain number of people had died, and he rarely went into how they died, taking away the feeling of tragedy that some of the movie left you with.

The team of writers, directors, and cinematographers definitely helped bring Ryan's book to life. It seems that both Ryan and Zanuck worked on The Longest Day for the same reasons, to create an accurate and realistic D-day movie. Before the film, there weren't any truly accurate D-day movies around. Now, one can easily compare The Longest Day to Steven Spielberg's recent war film Saving Private Ryan, which had the same goal as a movie.

Both Robert Rodat and Cornelius Ryan did a beautiful job in their screenplays, but The Longest Day ended up as a more accurate and realistic film. The first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan are very accurate, and visually, it is more graphic and shocking. But after the opening invasion sequence the movie turns into a normal action movie, losing almost all of its historical accuracy. Rodat had simply written a story that didn't have much to do with the invasion. Ryan, on the other hand, had interviewed hundreds of veterans who were in the situations in his book, and as a result the movie and book were both extremely accurate from beginning to end. Although Spielberg did an excellent job in showing us the horrors of the beach assaults as accurately as possible, he failed to be truly accurate throughout the film, taking away the realism of the movie from the viewer.

I felt that The Longest Day left me more satisfied with the story of D-day then Saving Private Ryan did. Zanuck's determined goal of accuracy really paid off for the viewer, giving him / her the entire story instead of just thrusting the viewer into scenes of graphic violence and moving on as if nobody else was involved. Ryan and the rest of the team of writers did an amazing job of directly bringing the story to film. The book had very little dialogue in it, as well as the movie, but nearly all of the important dialogue in the book made it into the movie.

The same goes for important scenes and details. After reading the book, I was astonished to see just how many things were directly pulled from the book. The most obvious and effective was General Eisenhower's decision to launch the attack. It was a crucial point in the book, as well as in the movie. The book meticulously describes the setting and situation of the important conference.

Ryan describes who was in the room, what position they held, and the exact time at which the meeting had started. The book includes a photo of the group during the meeting as well. In the film we see the exact same setup, the same room, the same people, and the same dialogue. The same line uttered by Eisenhower in the book, and most likely in real life, was uttered in the movie as well. After hearing the weather situation Eisenhower thinks and then states that he is "quite positive [that] we must give the order... I don't like, but there it is".

That was one of the few lines in the book that stood out to me, and if was successfully recreated in the movie, providing a great visual on how the situation actually happened. There were so many instances in the movie that came straight from the book that I had trouble keeping track as I watched it. One of the very first scenes in the movie was exactly like one of the opening chapters from the book. Every morning, in a small occupied French, town a German soldier delivers coffee to the other troops as a member of the town watches. And just like in the book, the scene happens twice. Later in the movie the same exact shot happens, but this time the German notices the enormous naval fleet off in the distance and runs for his life as the villager celebrates the appearance of the Allied forces.

The same scene happens in the book, but it has a much greater effect when it is acted out, as you see just how excited the French were for the Allied forces to show up. Although the book did an incredible job in explaining every detail and story that happened throughout the day and preceding night, the movie did a much better job in helping the viewer visualize the entire ordeal. Without the film there would be no real way to understand how massive and tragic the invasion was, unless you were there. Which is one reason why both the book and the movie are both so accurate. Because Ryan had based everything in his book on his own personal accounts and hundreds of veteran accounts. The writers, directors, and producer successfully realized their goal of a truly exact D-day film, and they did it without a consistent story or gore.

While the stories in the movie were weak and were never truly completed, the movie and book still left the viewer satisfied with what they had watched or read. Without Ryan's book, I doubt that there would be a D-day movie out that accomplished the same goal of realism that Zanuck's The Longest Day had.