When I was in junior high, I was assigned to do a book report on Cornelius Ryan's "The Longest Day."
Looking back, I would have to say that the book was probably a bit beyond my years. I mean, I love history — I have always loved history — and I love a good story, but the book was a bit technical for me, at least at that time in my life.
I didn't know who most of the people in the book were. I guess I hadn't studied World War II or D–Day too much at that point, had no idea, really, of their significance in American history.
And in my mind, too, I suppose, that was my parents' war — but they had been children when it was fought. It was probably more my grandparents' war. Either way, I probably saw it as their history, not mine.
Perhaps that is how it is for everyone. Major events that have gone before belong to someone else. The current ones belong to whoever is coming of age, and generations to come will have their own. It depends on whose time it is, and even though it is technically true that a time belongs to all who live through it, it truly belongs to those who are coming of age, whose impressions are still being formed. For the most part the rest of us share ownership of that time.
But not always.
Remember Sally Field in "Forrest Gump" and what she told her son as she was dying?
"It's my time," she said. "It's just my time."
People tend to be more in tune to what happens in their times — and less so about what happens in other people's times.
But I guess I am slipping away from the point — which is that "The Longest Day" was a good history lesson, whether in print or on the big screen.
"The Longest Day" had an all–star cast — so many stars I can't name 'em all.
In that sense it reminded me of "Tora! Tora! Tora!" the definitive dramatization of Pearl Harbor.
There were actors everyone should be able to recognize — Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Sean Connery and John Wayne, for example — and others whose faces are familiar but you've really got to be past a certain age (or of a certain time, to return to my earlier theme) to know their names — I suppose Eddie Albert, Peter Lawford and Robert Mitchum fall in that category.
It also reminded me of "Tora! Tora! Tora!" in the sense that it was faithful to the facts of the story, which were dramatic enough.
It was filmed in black and white in a documentary style at a cost of $10 million. For nearly 30 years it was the most expensive black–and–white film ever made — until "Schindler's List."
The movie brought to life the story in a way the book couldn't do for me when I was 14.
I don't know how much of that story young people are taught in school today, but the parts I found the most compelling were the accounts of the tricks the Allies used in the battle with the Germans.
Like dropping mannequins with parachutes to deceive the Nazis into thinking an expected invasion was happening in an unanticipated area.
Or using an attractive young female bicyclist as a diversion to slip a wagonload of resistance operatives past Nazi soldiers.
The last time I watched it I couldn't help thinking that the invasion of Normandy as presented in "The Longest Day" was probably the most realistic depiction of modern warfare committed to film until "Saving Private Ryan."
"The Longest Day" received five Academy Award nominations and took home two Oscars — for Black–and–White Cinematography and Visual Effects.
