Saving Private Ryan (1998)

TTH, per what I read TS was quite a guy, but frankly I don't like him as an actor, sorry.

As this is beginning to look like a religious discussion, expect the Mods to close the thread any minute

 

Come on!

 

The opening sequence is great then the movie goes downhill from there.

Cheers
Paul

 

Went to pictures when it first came out, a very rare thing for me to do, fell asleep after the first bit when it got boring,and never hankered to see what I missed.
lofty

 

Lofty, in essence this is what you missed: How Saving Private Ryan Should Have Ended - YouTube

 

The first 20 minutes of the film brought back memories of some stories told by my dad, a medic, of his landing on the beach. He and his buddy (also a medic) had hit the beach and were making their way under heavy fire, trying to help who they could. My pop turned his head away from his buddy for an instant, turned back and his buddy was dead. He said the white crosses were like targets and he thought he would never make it off of the beach that day. Another story he told me was of a soldier who had lost his left arm after hitting the beach, he approached my dad with his arm in hand and asked him to put it back on cause he had to keep fighting( a similar scene in the movie freaked me out when I thought of the story my dad told me years before ). I do agree that " The Longest Day " is a great movie.

 

A medic's memories of Omaha Beach,June 6,1944 - YouTube

D-Day - Omaha Beach - YouTube

 

I do agree that " The Longest Day " is a great movie.

I have read some pretty harsh criticism of "The Longest Day." One of the criticisms (by Ambrose, Fussell, and others) is that the movie fails to show the vicious nature of WWII combat. That is true, but the same thing was true of all 1960's war movies, and it is not the whole story. "The Longest Day" gives the viewer a fairly good view of the overall development of the battle on 6 June, something "Saving Private Ryan" does not do. While "The Longest Day" omits the blood and guts every veteran remembers, the script is better than "Saving Private Ryan" and it often captures the reality of the event fairly accurately. Part of this is due to the strength of Cornelius Ryan's book, which is still one of the best ever written about D-Day. The other positive is the work of many WWII veterans on the film, beginning with James Jones, one of the scriptwriters. Jones served with the 25th Division on Guadalcanal. After the war, he wrote what I consider the three finest American novels of the Second World War: From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line, and Whistle.

Many members of the cast were WWII veterans. Eddie Albert distinguished himself at Tarawa, Rod Steiger and Henry Fonda served on destroyers in the Pacific, and Richard Todd was a D-Day veteran. I could go on listing them, but the point is that their wartime experience gave their performances a resonance and realism that contemporary actors can't approach.

 

TTH, I largely agree about the better overview of The Longest Day, especially as it documents the British and Commonwealth contribution to the operation.
Saving Private Ryan however took the realism and occasional brutality of war to a new level recognised by many veterans.
I wish someone could produce a 'revised' or much more up to date version of The Longest Day employing a 'Spielberg' approach to the subject, realism, warts and all but with no national emphasis. I doubt it will happen but we must live in hope. It would be a truly worthwhile film and possibly a reference for history in schools.

 

I wish someone could produce a 'revised' or much more up to date version of The Longest Day employing a 'Spielberg' approach to the subject, realism, warts and all but with no national emphasis. I doubt it will happen but we must live in hope. It would be a truly worthwhile film and possibly a reference for history in schools.

I agree heartily.

 

TTH,
I wish someone could produce a 'revised' or much more up to date version of The Longest Day employing a 'Spielberg' approach to the subject, realism, warts and all but with no national emphasis..

I'm going to disagree, Mike. In a dramatic movie, I prefer good writing and acting to tell the story. Documentaries might be different.

Dave

Ha. After I posted I remembered reading that to prepare for his role in Papillion, Dustin Hoffman went on a starvation diet to achieve the requisite gaunt look and also actually had somebody rough him up a bit to bruise his face and lips. When he told Laurence Olivier about this, Olivier said, 'Good gracious, man, haven't you ever heard of acting?'

 

When he told Laurence Olivier about this, Olivier said, 'Good gracious, man, haven't you ever heard of acting?'

My father is in the entertainment business in New York, and the version there went "Why don't you try acting, dear boy? It's so much easier." That sounds a lot more like Olivier to me. It's still a great comment on theatrical masochism.

 

Come on!
Yeah, toothpick and all

But what about Sam Peckinpah as in Cross of Iron? Another great movie to me.

 

I don't want to get this thread too far off the topic of the movie, but I assume you are responding to an earlier post of mine. I certainly did not intend to belittle the hardness of the fighting inland, or the greatness of the Allied achievement in finally winning in Normandy. But what followed 6 June was essentially a battle of attrition, and Rommel himself knew that the Germans had no chance of winning a battle like that. Of course, it took an immense amount of hard fighting and quick adaptation for the Allies to break through. They did adapt and fight hard, contrary to German expectation, and they won very convincingly.

The Germans might have won even after 6 June but only if the Allies had a) settled down into complete inertia, as at Salonika in WWI, or b) committed some gross errors that exposed their forces to defeat, as nearly happened at Anzio and Salerno. There was no likelihood of the first at all, and with Montgomery and other competent commanders in charge the Allies were safe from the second.

No, I was responding to the idea that Allied victory in Europe wasn't decided on D-day. Obviously saying that it was is an oversimplification, but my point is that driving the Allies back into the sea was pretty much the only chance the nazis had of winning- once the initial foothold had been got, the final outcome wasn't in much doubt (though I'm sure this was no comfort to the guys in the front line).

 

But what about Sam Peckinpah as in Cross of Iron? Another great movie to me.
Now you're talking, Za!

 

No, I was responding to the idea that Allied victory in Europe wasn't decided on D-day. Obviously saying that it was is an oversimplification, but my point is that driving the Allies back into the sea was pretty much the only chance the nazis had of winning- once the initial foothold had been got, the final outcome wasn't in much doubt (though I'm sure this was no comfort to the guys in the front line).

As my grandmother used to say, chances of winning are relative. While these momentous events were unfolding, on the Dark Side of the Moon - or so it appears to many - the Red Army were unleashing 2,400,000 men and 4000 tanks/SPGs in an operation which took them from Vitebsk to the gates of Warsaw. The popular name is Destruction of Army Group Centre.



Of course there were others too towards SW, Finland, etc. There is the story told by IIRC Guderian, that the German High Command looked at separate maps for each front. Let's not forget that OKH took care of the Russian Front, while OKW took care of the rest (which got messy in 1944 when the Sovs got to Romania and beyond, entering into OKW territory). When someone decided to put up a single map encompassing both East and West fronts under Hitler's eyes, the man flew into a terrible rage as looking at the complete picture was defeatist in extreme.

And to avoid accusations of threadjacking, here's another WW2 movie, this one concerned with the RAF and the French Résistance.

 

Saving private Ryan 2012:

Saving private Rémi (Rémi GAILLARD) - YouTube

Regards,

Marco

 

Without any doubt in my favorite top-5 WW2 movie ranking.
Especially the breakthrough blast of the bunkers at the beach is my favorite scene of the movie.

 

Best WWII Movie I've seen in a Long time. A few years after the end of the Bosnian War, Saving Private Ryan was one of the first Imported Movies to hit the shelves in Bosnia.

 

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