Art can only imitate life, not (re)create it. So I think the best we can hope for in movies is to capture the emotional feel of an event such as D-Day, not an 'accurate in all details' recreation. As such, I think The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan (1st 30 minutes) capture the feelings of soldiers entering combat as well as any.
I agree. After the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan was basically fiction. Now recently there have been several movies and Television movies based of stories written by the actual participants... Such as Eugene Sledge and Desmond Doss
I bought a VHS tape of Saving Private Ryan and played it for y Dad. A WWII Navy Veteran of the Pacific, during the beach scene he turned to me and said, "Now you know why I enlisted in the Navy".
He sounds like my father. Must have had a great sense of humor. My father served in the Navy on the USS Hornet (CV 12). Once when he was visiting my sister in San Francisco where the Hornet is docked as a museum ship, she asked him if he wanted to go see the ship. He said, "I've seen it."
The Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan is chock full of historical inaccuracies. The beach is wrong, the obstacles are wrong, the Vierville draw is wrong, the bunkers are wrong, the boats are wrong as well as the people operating them...and on and on. I get it that some of those things were beyond Spielberg's control, and the movie is amazing and terrific in many many other ways, but a lot of folks don't understand that the landing scene is much more realistic...with a few exceptions like flamethrowers and underwater bullets... than it is accurate to history.
I wouldn't include Saving Private Ryan. The distance between the German machine guns and the landing crafts was wildly exaggerated (The landing occurred at low tide so the American forces did not land right into the laps of the German defenders.). and the beach obstacles were facing the wrong way. The Longest Day was much more accurate in these regards.
Another inaccuracy of the opening beach landing sequence is the movement of bullets underwater. It may have been great cinema, but I understand the velocity of bullets is significantly diminished upon entering water.
Given that most movies are 2 to 3 hours long, I have low expectations of accuracy for historical films, especially since some historical facts are disputed in some instances (the most recent movie of the Alamo is very good but it accepts the validity of the de la Pena diary for the way David Crockett died and that has not been proven). The suggestion of accuracy is the best you can hope for. Even 6 hour movies like Gettysburg are not totally accurate.
D-Day, The Sixth of June is a crummy film whatever the accuracy of its battle scenes. It was hard for me to find any sympathy for Robert Taylor's character who has a wife back home that wants to bed down another man's girlfriend. It is a disservice to those who served that day with a movie mostly about someone who can't keep his pants zipped.
Art can only imitate life, not (re)create it. So I think the best we can hope for in movies is to capture the emotional feel of an event such as D-Day, not an 'accurate in all details' recreation.
As such, I think The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan (1st 30 minutes) capture the feelings of soldiers entering combat as well as any.
I agree. After the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan was basically fiction. Now recently there have been several movies and Television movies based of stories written by the actual participants... Such as Eugene Sledge and Desmond Doss
I bought a VHS tape of Saving Private Ryan and played it for y Dad. A WWII Navy Veteran of the Pacific, during the beach scene he turned to me and said, "Now you know why I enlisted in the Navy".
He sounds like my father. Must have had a great sense of humor. My father served in the Navy on the USS Hornet (CV 12). Once when he was visiting my sister in San Francisco where the Hornet is docked as a museum ship, she asked him if he wanted to go see the ship. He said, "I've seen it."
The Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan is chock full of historical inaccuracies. The beach is wrong, the obstacles are wrong, the Vierville draw is wrong, the bunkers are wrong, the boats are wrong as well as the people operating them...and on and on. I get it that some of those things were beyond Spielberg's control, and the movie is amazing and terrific in many many other ways, but a lot of folks don't understand that the landing scene is much more realistic...with a few exceptions like flamethrowers and underwater bullets... than it is accurate to history.
I wouldn't include Saving Private Ryan. The distance between the German machine guns and the landing crafts was wildly exaggerated (The landing occurred at low tide so the American forces did not land right into the laps of the German defenders.). and the beach obstacles were facing the wrong way. The Longest Day was much more accurate in these regards.
Another inaccuracy of the opening beach landing sequence is the movement of bullets underwater. It may have been great cinema, but I understand the velocity of bullets is significantly diminished upon entering water.
Given that most movies are 2 to 3 hours long, I have low expectations of accuracy for historical films, especially since some historical facts are disputed in some instances (the most recent movie of the Alamo is very good but it accepts the validity of the de la Pena diary for the way David Crockett died and that has not been proven). The suggestion of accuracy is the best you can hope for. Even 6 hour movies like Gettysburg are not totally accurate.
D-Day, The Sixth of June is a crummy film whatever the accuracy of its battle scenes. It was hard for me to find any sympathy for Robert Taylor's character who has a wife back home that wants to bed down another man's girlfriend. It is a disservice to those who served that day with a movie mostly about someone who can't keep his pants zipped.