Tag: Henry Fonda

Film Review: The Longest Day (and a D-Day Remembrance)

It’s fitting that I bring this movie up now because as I’m sure anyone who’s watched the news or read a newspaper this last week will realise, today is the 70th anniversary of this most indelible event.

6 June 1944. D-Day. The commencement of the Normandy landings and the subsequent Allied invasion of Normandy. It remains the largest seaborne invasion in history and it led to the restoration of the French Republic and the defeat of Nazi Germany.

With even the youngest of veterans from the Normandy campaign now being in their late 80s, it’s perhaps little wonder that the number of those making the pilgrimage across the channel this year for the 70th anniversary has prompted the Normandy Veterans Association to declare this their final official commemoration of the event. It plans to disband in November owing to dwindling numbers and the increased difficulty of its remaining members to travel. The association, which was set up in the 1980s, had 16,000 members by the 1990s however, five years ago that number had fallen to around 4,500 and now the number is closer to 600. And while this is sad but ultimately inevitable, I don’t imagine it will be the end of our commemorating this epic undertaking. And epic it was.

While The Longest Day may be a flawed movie, it does a fair job of depicting the scale of the operation. It was, after all, a multi-national effort on behalf of the Allies and required careful coordination between all three branches of the armed forces, as well as the French resistance networks. There are many threads running through the near three hour run time showing us as much detail of the operation as time allows. We see numerous individual companies and battalions tasked with their own objectives, the success of each one vital to the next. We see the efforts of the Resistance putting explosives to good use and we also get a perspective from the German side which shows us that some incompetence on their part undoubtably contributed to the final outcome. The truth is (and this is where there are literally hundreds of fascinating individual stories), if it weren’t for a whole host of other factors such as sabotage by the Resistance, misinformation (planned by an organisation called the London Controlling Section) and bad decision making by the Nazis the outcome could have been very different.

Indeed to properly appreciate the complexities of the battle of Normandy would mean to remember everything (and everyone involved) that happened from the moment a cross channel invasion had been given the go ahead at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943 to the Liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944.

But this film is limited to the 6th June. D-Day. The Longest Day.

One of the film’s tag-lines reads – 42 International Stars!

And it’s not difficult to name them as they appear on screen – Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, John Wayne, Richard Burton, Sean Connery…etc, etc. The list really does go on. And on.

But for me, the stars (and let’s not forget some of them actually fought in WWII) are less important than the story itself. Having said that, if you want to watch a serious account of D-Day, you’ll really have to watch a documentary of which I’m sure there are plenty. You could even go one step further and plan a visit, take in a museum or two and put yourself on the same ground that saw that terrible action all those years ago. Trust me, it meddles with your emotions.

Okay, so this is part film review and part a salute to what was undoubtably one of the most important operations of the entire Second World War. But a film review it is, so…

With the help of four other writers, The Longest Day was adapted for the screen by Cornelius Ryan from his own book of the same name which had been an instant hit upon release in 1959. Ryan was an Irish journalist and author of several books on World War II whose interest in the D-Day invasion began during a trip to Normandy in 1949. He also wrote A Bridge Too Far in 1974 which was given the movie treatment in ’77.

The Longest Day had no less than five directors, each responsible for a particular section. Ken Annakin directed the British and French exteriors, Andrew Marton, the American exteriors, Gerd Oswald, the parachute drop and Bernard Wicki, the German scenes. Producer Darryl F. Zanuck was an uncredited fifth director.

Because it was made only 18 years after the actual events portrayed, many of those who participated were still alive and therefore the producers employed several generals and high-ranking officers from both sides as military consultants. Curiously, one of them was Lucie Rommel, widow of Erwin Rommel. It won Oscars for Black and White Cinematography and Special Effects and was nominated thrice more.

The film divides opinion. Some like it, some loathe it. There are others movies (and an excellent HBO TV series) that depict D-Day and they may be more explicit and graphic in their action but they aren’t as concentrated on that fateful day and therefore don’t quite capture the immensity of the event.

That these 80 and 90 year old heroes continue to return to the northern shores of France, to the scenes that shaped the rest of their lives and likely still haunt their dreams is nothing short of inspiring. Many of them are accompanied by their families and friends, younger people who will hopefully keep the spirit of the campaign alive for generations to come.

Yesterday a TV reporter asked one of the veterans why he feels the need to keep coming back and as the old soldier’s voice cracked and his eyes pooled, he replied that he comes back to pay his respects to the friends that fell beside him and all those others who didn’t make it home.

God bless them all.

 

 

 

Film Review: The Tin Star

Well, I don’t know about you but my weekend was wet and windy and, compared to of late, pretty darn chilly. At least for August. Had it been more clement, I would probably have busied myself with one or two little jobs that are awaiting my attention outside. Or I might have taken a languid stroll around the park. Alas, Hey Ho! the weather kept me indoors. So what better way to spend a wet Sunday afternoon than to watch an old sun-drenched western, particularly one directed by Anthony Mann whose CV includes some of the finest of the genre ever made.

While it may be easier to recall the more famous Mann westerns starring James Stewart, of which there were five (starting with Winchester ’73 in 1950 and ending with The Man From Laramie in 1955), The Tin Star, made two years later, stars Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins. This time, instead of one main protagonist – the emotionally tortured soul that Steward embodied so well – here we have two main characters – Fonda’s laconic and sagacious bounty hunter and Perkins’ young and inexperienced town sheriff. There are no sweeping vistas of snow-capped mountains, beautiful pine sided valleys or white-water gorges here either, an element that Mann captured so beautifully in those earlier films. Indeed, in complete contrast to the Stewart films, there is no travel at all involved for the characters here, not in a geographical sense anyway. The only journeys undertaken are in the characters of the characters, if you get my drift.

It is dialogue that drives this movie forward more than an cross-country pursuit peppered with gunfights, that and the influence that Fonda’s age and experience has on Perkins’ naivety. Apart from a couple of forays out into the surrounding dusty countryside, the action takes place in a little old town in the middle of nowhere. It’s shot in black and white too which seems to add to the film’s parched appearance. Also worth noting is that the film opens with a shot of the town’s main street as Fonda trots in on his horse and closes with exactly the same shot with him riding out in a buggy. Whether Mann meant anything by this is down to one’s interpretation.

And so to the plot. Morgan Hickman (Fonda) rides into town with a dead outlaw slung over his pack horse. He goes to the sheriff’s office to claim the bounty on it. The townsfolk don’t want him around because bounty hunters are bad news. Ben Owens (Perkins) has been appointed temporary sheriff by the townsfolk (the last one having been killed) on account nobody else wants the job. Nobody that is, but the town bully Bogardus (Neville Brand) who would use the post as a licence to kill.

Owens is a likeable young man with a rather unconfident manner and a sweetheart who won’t marry him while he’s wearing a star and Bogardus is a distinctly nasty piece of work who has the townsfolk standing behind him because they’re all afraid of him. He is a racist bully and it’s not long before he shoots an Indian in the back claiming it was self-defence. Owens swallows hard and steps forward to do his job but Bogardus resists arrest, prompting Hickman to step forward and lend an experienced hand.

Hickman has to stick around a day or two while his bounty claim is processed and gets lodgings with widow Nona Mayfield (Betsy Palmer), a young woman who lives just outside of town with her son, a half-Indian boy named Kip (Michael Ray). Strong feelings rapidly develop between Morgan and Nona and Kip is thrilled to have a father figure around.

With Bogardus released from jail after witnesses claim he did indeed act in self-defence, the young sheriff asks Hickman for some coaching on how to become a better sheriff. Hickman, at first reluctant, telling Owens to quit while he still can and go marry his girl, has a change of heart when he admits to having once been a lawman himself before turning bounty hunter. For all his naivety, Owens is a decent, upstanding man but simply lacks the basic knowledge of being a lawman. He has the heart but not the tools. So Hickman begins to advise the younger man.

Later, the town doctor is murdered by two brothers and the town demands justice. Owens is adamant he wants to bring the perpetrators back alive so they can face a fair trial but Hickman is certain that filling them with lead is the only way the brothers will allow themselves to be brought in. Bogardus takes off with a large posse to capture them, his intention to string them up from the nearest tree.

With Hickman’s help, the brothers are taken alive by the sheriff and thrown in jail. But the rowdy posse – headed by Bogardus – threatens to storm the jail and hang the brothers in the street. Owens, having learned much from Hickman in the last few days, faces the crowd and Bogardus and soon earns the respect of the town. He is now the competent lawman he wanted to be. The film ends on a happy note with Hickman riding out of town to start afresh somewhere else a changed man, with a new woman and a young boy beside him.

Overall this is a very good film and an often overlooked western gem. The acting is terrific from a strong cast, particularly from the two leads. Fonda, who in my opinion, is always worth his fee, plays the jaded hero figure with just the right blend of cruelness and compassion. Sure, he’s as mean as hell, he’s got to be, it’s a tough job and someone has to do it. Perkins, who was only twenty five and in one of his first roles portrays being wet behind the ears at the outset with real honesty but by the end of the film, he’s grown in stature and maturity. A great performance from him.

The screenplay written by Dudley Nichols from a story by Joel Kane and Barney Slater was nominated for an Academy Award, something that very rarely happened to low budget westerns at the time (or ever). There are words of wisdom in Hickman’s dialogue as he tries to instruct Owens in the art of staying alive and in return for this, by collaborating with the younger, idealistic man, Hickman manages to re-find the virtues that he lost years ago through personal tragedy. The movie deals with racism, friendship, romance and the ways of the old west in an intelligent and subtle way that few of the genre ever did and whether you like ‘cowboy’ films or not, the penmanship is such that it’s simply a great story well told. Definitely worth seeing.