I’ve seen The Longest Day over a dozen times. But I’ve only seen it uncut a few times. Most of my viewings were via broadcast television where its three-hour-length jostles was compromised by commercials. The Longest Day is a docudrama about the Allies’ invasion of Normandy. A docudrama is just what it sounds like. Parts of it do a pretty good job of providing details of that fateful day, like names and locations. The drama part is everything else. The scale of production for The Longest Day was huge. So large, in fact, that three different directors were assigned to different countries at the same time to meet the production deadline. And there was no shortage of stars for this film. Both Richard Burton and Roddy McDowall flew over from the stalled production of Cleopatra to participate. The Longest Day would receive five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. But there were a lot of great films that year and the Best Picture win went to Lawrence of Arabia.
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