The Longest Day (1962)

Tonight. I know it’s tonight. In the days leading up to D-Day, 6th June 1944, concentrating on events on both sides of the English Channel the Allies wait for a break in the poor weather while anticipating the reaction of the Axis forces defending northern France which they plan to invade at Normandy. As Supreme Commander of Supreme Headquarters of Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) Gen. Dwight Eisenhower (Henry Grace) makes the decision to go after reviewing the initial bad weather reports and the reports about the divisions within the German High Command as to where an invasion might happen and what should be their response as the Allies have made fake preparations for Operation Fortitude, to take place in a quite different landing position:  are the Germans fooled? Allied airborne troops land inland.The French Resistance react. British gliders secure Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal. American paratroopers launch counter-attacks at Manche in Normandy. The Resistance carries out sabotage and infiltrate the German ranks. The Wehrmacht responds ….  He’s dead. I’m crippled. You’re lost. Do you suppose it’s always like that? I mean war. Funny, intense, jaw-dropping in scale, this landmark war epic produced by D-Day veteran Darryl F. Zanuck, whose dream project this was, is a 6th June commemoration like no other, a tribute to the armed forces who launched the magnificent amphibian assault. The screenplay is by Cornelius Ryan (who did not get along with DFZ) who was adapting his 1959 non-fiction book, with additional scenes written by novelists Romain Gary and James Jones, and David Pursall & Jack Seddon. DFZ knew the difficulties of such a mammoth undertaking which included eight battle scenes and hired directors from each of the major participating countries/regions: Ken Annakin directed the British and French exteriors, with Gerd Oswald the uncredited director of the Sainte-Marie-Église parachute drop sequence; while the American exteriors were directed by Andrew Marton; and Austria’s Bernhard Wicki shot the German scenes. Zanuck himself shot some pick ups. There are cameos by the major actors of the era, some of whom actually participated in the events depicted: Irish-born Richard Todd plays Major Howard of D Company and he really was at Pegasus Bridge and is wearing his own beret from the event; Leo Genn plays Major-General Hollander of SHAEF; Kenneth More is Acting Captain Colin Maud of the Royal Navy at Juno Beach and is carrying his shillelagh; Rod Steiger plays Lt. Commander Joseph Witherow Jr., Commander of the USS Satterlee; Eddie Albert is Colonel Lloyd Thompson, ADC to General Norman Cota (Robert Mitchum) of the Fighting 29th Infantry Division; Henry Fonda plays Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Assistant Commander of the 4th Infantry Division. The all-star cast also includes John Wayne (replacing Charlton Heston), Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien, Mel Ferrer, Tom Tryon, Stuart Whitman, George Segal, Jeffrey Hunter (who’s probably got the best role), Sal Mineo, Robert Wagner; Peter Lawford, Richard Burton and Roddy McDowall (who both volunteered to appear for nothing out of boredom on the Cleopatra set in Rome), Sean Connery,  Leslie Phillips, Frank Finlay; Christian Marquand, Georges Wilson (Lambert’s dad), Bourvil, Jean-Louis Barrault, Arletty;  Paul Hartmann, Werner Hinz (as Rommel), Curd Jürgens, Walter Gotell, Peter van Eyck, Gert Fröbe, Dietmar Schönherr. An astonishing lineup in a production which does not shirk the horrors of war, the number of casualties or the overwhelming noise of terror. It’s a stunning achievement, measured and wonderfully realistically staged with the co-operation of all the forces organised by producer Frank McCarthy who worked at the US Department of War during WW2.  The key scene-sequences are the parachute drop into Sainte-Mère-Église; the advance from the Normandy beaches; the U.S. Ranger Assault Group’s assault on the Pointe du Hoc; the attack on the town of Ouistreham by Free French Forces; and the strafing of the beaches by the only two Luftwaffe pilots in the area. The vastness of the project inevitably means there are flaws:  where’s the point of view? Where are the Canadians?! But it is a majestic reconstruction made at the height of the Cold War of one of the biggest events of the twentieth century. Or, as Basil Fawlty said before he was muzzled by the BBC yesterday, Don’t Mention The War. Yeah, right. Or maybe do like Hitler did – take a sleeping pill and pretend it’s not happening. Thank God for common sense, great soldiers and DFZ, come to think of it. Spectacular.  You remember it. Remember every bit of it, ’cause we are on the eve of a day that people are going to talk about long after we are dead and gone

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

And that’s how you play Get the Guest. Associate University Professor of history George (Richard Burton) and wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) engage in dangerous emotional games. Martha is the daughter of the president of the college where George teaches. After they return home from a faculty party, Martha reveals she has invited a young married couple she met at the party over for a drink.  Before they arrive George makes promise not to tell the story about the kid. The guests arrive -Nick (George Segal) a biology professor (who Martha thinks teaches maths), and his wife Honey (Sandy Dennis). As the four drink, Martha and George engage in scathing verbal abuse of each other in front of Nick and Honey. The younger couple is first embarrassed and later enmeshed. They stay. Martha taunts George aggressively, and he retaliates with customary passive aggression. Martha tells an embarrassing story about how she humiliated him in front of her father. During the telling, George appears with a gun and fires at Martha, but an umbrella pops out. After this scare, Martha’s taunts continue. George reacts violently by breaking a bottle. Nick and Honey become increasingly unsettled and, at the end of the act, Honey runs to the bathroom to vomit, having had too much to drink … Martha, will you show her where we keep the, uh, euphemism? Edward Albee’s shocking 1962 play was bought by Jack Warner and the intention was to hire Bette Davis and James Mason – and how fun would that have been, having Davis quote herself with that unforgettable first line, What a dump!? But it’s the gloriously unkempt Taylor who gets to declare the immortal line, squinting, bug-eyed with drink, into the harsh light after a night out on campus with unambitious lecturer hubby Burton. When young marrieds Segal and Dennis enter their den of iniquitous untruths and illusion their own marriage is laid bare as well in a devastating series of tragicomic slurs and fantasies, a miasma of lies, put downs and storytelling. Albee’s play was of course a profane satire about the sham foundations of marriage and social mores of the time;  this film helped dismantle the Production Code and was the first film Jack Valenti really had to look at in terms of what constituted entertainment for consenting adults. Albee said of the leads that Taylor was quite good while Burton was incredible. That’s in the eye of the beholder – in fact Taylor is extraordinary and it is remarkable that she gave her greatest exhibition of not merely star quality but intensely affecting emotional performances in works written by homosexual playwrights – one thinks of her in Suddenly Last Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, complex works that, like this, have a strain of flagrant misogyny running through them. Ernest Lehman did the adaptation which mostly cleaves to the play with just a couple of exceptions and it’s ‘opened out’ with the dance scene in the diner – and what a humdinger that is! (Yet debutante director Mike Nichols said Lehman was neither writer nor producer). What is perhaps most astonishing is that this was Nichols’ first time out onscreen, supposedly at Taylor’s insistence. Just look at the way he frames shots with Haskell Wexler as his DoP: he said he learned everything he knew about directing from watching A Place in the Sun. More to the point, he didn’t get on at all with Wexler and his friend Anthony Perkins, the only person he really knew who knew movies, taught him about lenses over three days prior to production. Taylor and Burton are at the apex of their careers here, particularly with regard to their joint projects. But despite the plethora of nominations it was she and Dennis who walked away with the Academy Awards – A Man For All Seasons took all the other big plaudits that year. Unfair to Burton, but true. The first film to be nominated in every category in which it was eligible. There is a reason that Taylor is known for being the last great Hollywood star – and it’s right here. Phenomenal. George, my husband… George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me – whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. Yes, I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad. Whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: yes, this will do

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1965)

It was a foul, foul operation, but it paid off. With a screenplay by Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper from the groundbreaking realist espionage novel of 1963 by the man known as John le Carré, this is just as complex – in terms of narrative and morals – as the source material. Richard Burton is Alec Leamas, the British agent unwillingly retired who plays a role to entice an operation run by Control (Cyril Cusack) that will bring him back in the game. Along the way he falls in love with naive Communist Party member Nan Perry (Claire Bloom, a real-life former lover) and we meet George Smiley for the first time on screen (played here by Rupert Davies). How big does a cause have to be before you kill your friends? What about your Party? There’s a few million bodies on that path! The stakes are high and agent Fiedler (Oskar Werner) is running a very dangerous line of enquiry which ends up in a trial at the East German’s presidium. Lives are exchanged with a brutal ending. Shot on location for the most part in Dublin which brought glamour to the dear old dirty place in the form of Burton and Taylor at the height of their fame. Berlin never looked like this – did it?! Grim but repays at the very least a second viewing for unbelievers. Burton is great in a production that returns spy thrillers to a gritty realism and a moral grey area that the James Bond series eschewed. We have to live without sympathy, don’t we? We can’t do that forever. One can’t stay out of doors all the time. One needs to come in from the cold

Where Eagles Dare (1968)

Why do you think we were chosen for his mission as if not to make social contact? A crack team of Allied soldiers stages a daring rescue during World War II. U.S. General George Carnaby (Robert Beatty) is being held captive in an imposing castle fort, Schloss Adler, high in the Bavarian Alps. The audacious plan calls for US Lt. Morris Schaffer (Clint Eastwood), Major John Smith (Richard Burton) and other operatives – Christiansen (Donald Houston), Peter Barkworth (Berkeley), Thomas (William Squire), Jock MacPherson (Neil McCarthy), Harrod (Brook Williams) and Carpenter (Vincent Ball) to parachute down wearing Nazi disguises. They’ll penetrate the mountain outpost while undercover operatives Mary Ellison (Mary Ure) and Ingrid Pitt (Heidi) assist them from within. But their mission changes when they discover that there’s a traitor in their midst and SS man Von Hapen (Derren Nesbitt) suspects something is amiss … Look, Major, this is primarily a British operation. I’m an American. I don’t even know why the hell I’m here. If you don’t like this, there’s a high probability that you’re either dead or German (preferably both) and you definitely hate Top Gear. So stop reading now.  And there is a mystery attached to the mission – is it to stop losing headway on the planned D-Day landings.  Or … something else???? Twisty Twister McTwisted! The team start dropping like flies just as the Nazis get their teeth into the plot. Fabulous stunts, great scenery, terrifying cable-car scenes, amazing tension, wonderful action. Just what you want, really, from a film. Written by Alistair MacLean adapting his own novel and directed by Brian G. Hutton. Another reminder that the prolific MacLean wrote brilliant books. This, like The Great Escape and The Guns of Navarone, is the only litmus test for a common humanity among right-thinking viewers and is on permanent rotation in our home. Happy New Year. Look, Major, either you start playing it straight or you can deal me out of this mess. Now we both know that radio operator wasn’t killed in any drop. Now with MacPherson dead, there’s only five of us left. So either you let me know what’s going on or there’s only gonna be four