Free Movie - "THE LONGEST DAY" (1962)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maIOQwPZ7-E ^ | N/A | n/a

[V K Lee]

This is a spectacular account of the events leading
up to and through the Allied Forces'
invasion of Normandy, France
on D-Day (June 6), 1944 to fight the occupying Germans. The film is particularly interesting because it looks at D-Day through the eyes of all of the participants, including the Germans, who are overwhelmed by the forces brought...

[dfwgator]

Rules!

[bort]

Hold until relieved....

[bort]

On the topic of WWII, I have been binge-watching “12 O’Clock High,” a tv series from the mid-60s based on the the movie with the same name (great movie, with Gregory Peck). What a great show.

[simi_ed]

Also Robert Ryan

[poconopundit]

Hey, V K. Seems like they took the Longest Day video off line.

This movie was around 1963 and watching it is burned into memory as a singularly great young boy experience.

I was 11 years old. My parents took me and 5 younger brothers and a sister were packed in like sardines to watch the movie at a drive-in theater.

This was a doubly whammy movie day because the Longest Day was preceded by maybe the best motion picture comedy I ever saw in my life, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Wow, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, and a ton of other comedians teamed up on this one.

It was a long night...

[V K Lee]

Alas! Drive-in theaters are becoming extinct. Property and
taxes are forcing them out of business. Loved the theaters.
Different story, different movie: The film “Alien” was seen
by at a drive-in by then future DH and me. My second view, his first. The big surprise toward the end of the movie; quite unexpected. One could probably hear the screams and shouts (even the sobs) 5 blocks away. Theaters, a soon to be
thing of the past.

[poconopundit]

Alien... oh yeah. That’s a screamer.

Alas, how about Carrie, the 1976 flick?

[rxh4n1]

John Wayne’s worst performance and badly miscast.

[V K Lee]

Yes, “Carrie”, as well; although can't remember when/where that was seen. Do remember seeing “Alien” in an indoor, non
descript theater-plex the first time. Audience felt the movie
was over when Ripley entered the escape pod; they began to leave. Thinking, “that can't be all”, just sat watching, waiting for the unexpected. When the female creature begins to
unfold and show herself, those remaining in the theater immediately found a vacant seat to watch the conclusion of the
film. The scene startled everyone. Very unexpected, it ain't
over yet. Same scene at the drive in; cars began to start, some exiting; others sitting in the long line of traffic with the windows down, waiting. As the scene began, it all stopped ending with a climax of horns, screams and whoops. The audience certainly got their monies' worth.

[poconopundit]

Nice memory jogger. The drive-in movie is a bit of Americana that I wish could come back...

[Mears]

We still have several in MA .

….

[V K Lee]

So very many things we wish would come back. The only negatives drive-ins faced was having to search for a working
speaker, and providing heat during the winter months (LOL)
In the small towns of Texas, one still might find a vacant
building once deemed a theater, but seldom in the same category of downtown Dallas’ art deco styles. Those even sported cry rooms for moms to take their crying child, avoiding glares from other patrons. And time marches on.

[poconopundit]

Sure, time marches on from a drive-in theater's poor speakers to cold cars in winter. But we've nevertheless lost something from that time...

Here's what Emerson had to say:

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun.

A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind.

His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue.

From Essay on Self-Reliance