"The Longest Day" was a gigantic project dramatizing D-day, the Allied invasion of France. It was almost three hours long and with a huge cast, all in supporting roles. The production was very scrupulous about realism, the actors were always of the same nationality as their characters and spoke in their native languages, which led to many subtitles translating the dialogue into French and German. While the film was historically correct, it was also supposed to be a hit starring John Wane, Robert Mitchum, Sean Connery, and Henry Fonda. But the American role in the invasion is not exaggerated, and the German soldiers and officers are not depicted as brutal stereotypes. The date of the invasion was decided in Washington in May 1943, but due to some difficulties it was postponed to June 5. The 5th was the mandatory date on which the invasion would take place. The troops and officers had been stationed in the barracks for months and were quite eager to carry out the invasion. On 5 June, due to bad weather, the invasion was postponed again, some ships were already on their way and had to be recalled. The film shows the meeting that General Eisenhower (supreme commander of the Allied forces in charge of Operation Overlord) held to decide whether to continue with the invasion. They decided to delay the invasion for twenty-four hours. The soldiers and officers became very emotional when they learned that the invasion had only been delayed for 24 hours, they were worried, if the invasion was delayed any longer they would have to wait another two months for the tide to return. The Allies put a lot of thought into deceiving German intelligence. The Allies had air supremacy, so German reconnaissance planes were not very successful. The Allies used the situation to their advantage, setting up dummy landing craft and purposely allowing German planes to fly into those areas. The Germans had also underestimated the Allies. They did not believe the Allies would ever muster a fleet large enough to attack the French coast, but on June 6 a fleet of more than 5,000 ships set out for the French beaches. Before the landing of the Allied troops there were several invasion bombings, which had little effect on the German fortifications. The film did a great job of portraying... middle of paper... the parts of the invasion were so intimately connected that if one had failed, the others would have had almost no chance of succeeding. The film also focused on an aspect that is not mentioned in most of the books, the French underground resistance. They played a small but extremely significant role in the D-Day invasion. They were marking places for paratroopers, had disabled some German communications and had sabotaged the railways. The manufacturer did a great job researching this aspect of The Longest Day. “The Longest Day” was an extremely well made film that reconstructed the events that occurred on June 6, 1944. The production was very scrupulous about realism, the actors were always of the same nationality as their characters and spoke in their native language, which leads to many subtitles that translate the dialogue into French and German. Even if the movie was historically correct. This was one of the best American war films I have ever seen. Bibliography D-Day, Warren Tute, Collier Books, 1974 Red Berets '44, Official Publication of the Airborne Forces Pegasus Bridge - June 6th 1944, Stephen E. Ambrose, 1985