The Longest Day  (1962)

By the early 1960s, Hollywood produced some of its most ambitious international productions. Producer Darryl F. Zanuck aimed to set the bar high for World War II epics with this account of the Allied forces' D-Day invasion of German-occupied France. To handle the film's multiple perspectives and massive cast, Zanuck recruited several directors, multiple filming units, and a dizzying cast of tough-guy stars and teen idols. Shot in France, Germany and the UK, the film treats war as a procedural, dissecting the gradual advances the Allies needed to take to win the war.

DCP, b/w, 180 min. Director: Andrew Martin, Ken Annakin, Bernard Wicki, Ger Oswald. Screenwriter: Cornelius Ryan. Cast: John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda.

Part of: Runaway Hollywood: Global Production in the Postwar World