Console
best movie i've ever seen.
Afouotos
Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
Brendon Jones
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
richard-1787
I gave this movie 2 stars because I didn't want to be as cruel as the people who released it were on an innocent public. I don't know that I have ever seen so much talent so completely wasted.Fortunately - I guess - for me, I just read a new and very detailed book on the Liberation of Paris last week, Robert Neiberg's The Blood of Free Men: The Liberation of Paris, 1944, which I strongly recommend to anyone who actually wants to know the whole, very complicated story of those days. I can't imagine what I would have gotten out of this movie had I not read that book first. This movie does not do a good job of making clear what is going on, especially the infighting between the FFI, de Gaulle's forces, and the Parisians who were fighting for their freedom.But that's just the start of it. The real culprit in this movie is the script, which tries to cram too much into one movie. There are far too many unexplained little incidents, and not enough explanation of the important issues.There are also a lot of great actors in this movie, but the script gives none of them any chance to act, to develop a character. Orson Welles makes Swedish Ambassador Nordling come off like a loony. He was anything but that. The portrayal of the German commandant in Paris isn't much better.Having Yves Montand pop out of a tank for two minutes and then get shot in the back was perhaps the most ridiculous waste of talent in this movie.The movie lasts almost three hours, but you'd swear it went on much longer than that. There is no sense of drive, pacing, tension, etc.And the music, by Maurice Jarre, does nothing to help a bad situation.In short, this movie was a colossal waste of time and money. It's long and boring and not very informative. Read Neiberg's book if you actually want to know what happened. If you want to be entertained, find some other movie. This one will neither entertain nor enlighten you.
JasparLamarCrabb
Despite it's enormous length, René Clément's telling of the 1944 liberation of Paris is still really just a Cliff's Notes version of that historical moment. Lacking a cohesive narrative as well as one specific person's point of view, this is a very distant film. There's too much going on. While scenes of Allied tanks rolling into Nazi-occupied Paris are extremely moving, much of the film, despite myriad cameos by the likes of Anthony Perkins, Simone Signoret, Charles Boyer and Kirk Douglas, is not particularly involving. Certainly it's exciting and full of action, but it's also far too hectic for its own good. It's as if Clément was afraid to leave ANYTHING tied to the Resistance out. Still, there's much to recommend. Clément is mostly successful at blending documentary footage with his film and some of the performances are terrific. Claude Rich is a standout as the deceptively clever Général Leclerc and Jean Paul Belmondo adds a lot of color as a none too bright freedom fighter. Orson Welles has some moments as the Resistance-friendly Swedish Consul and Gert Fröbe's portrayal of German Général Von Choltitz avoids the one-dimensional crazed Nazi route (unfortunately, Günter Meisner takes that prize as a very ornery SS goon). Maurice Jarre's music score is suitably patriotic and Marcel Grignon's cinematography is excellent. Yves Montand, Alain Delon, Leslie Caron and Robert Stack also appear.
writers_reign
For better or worse War and Art are linked inextricably. The first wave of novels about the second world war emerged in the closing stages and in the immediate post-war years and with the exception of Irwin Shaw's The Young Lions (arguably the finest because it spans the entire war in Europe and North Africa) they tended to cover small theatres and/or the fringes (Mr. Roberts, The Caine Mutiny)with one, From Here To Eternity, set largely in a peace-time Schofield Barracks and climaxing with the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor. Virtually all these novels were filmed in the 1950s, the first full decade of world peace but by the 1960s a new trend appeared, the Blockbuster Second World War Epic consisting of a broad canvas chock-full of blink-and-you'll-miss-them stars from Hollywood and Europe. The Longest Day kicked things off in 1962 and four years later Rene Clement weighed in with this entry on the liberation of Paris. Clement had made one of the first films about the second world war with Bataille du rail and gone on to distinguish himself with tiles likes Jeux Interdit so was an acceptable choice to make a film about ending the darkness in the City Of Light. Yes, it's uneven, yes, it's ponderous, yes, it's turgid in parts but it is a fairly accurate record of how it was and the street fighting skirmishes are highly effective. You may not want to revisit it but you will, or should, want to see it once.
pete36
Big-budgeted multi-story retelling of the liberation of Paris in 1944.Some spoilers aheadMovie starts off with firmly stating who the bad guys are (as if we didn't know) showing the German occupation forces at their most brutal : sending of wagon loads of prisoners to the concentration camps and the cold-blooded killing of dozens of young resistance fighters.Movie structure consists of two main segments, first the Parisian uprising then followed by the actual liberation by Free French and US troops. Due to the many characters and storyplots it all comes over rather incoherent and sometimes muddled as often quite important characters appear and disappear without no particular reason. Every major French star of the sixties is in this. Delon( as the later famous politician Chaban-Delmas), Belmondo (who still can't keep a straight face) but also Michel Piccoli, Claude Rich, JP Cassel, Yves Montand (as a tank driver) and so on. Some US actors get also thrown in but, besides Orson Welles, they have really no more then an extended cameo appearance. The one pivotal character, who also holds together the 2 main segments of the movie is General Von Choltitz, the German governor of Paris,excellently portrayed by Gerd Froebe. Von choltitz is right in their-from the start and keeps being on the screen continuously until the very last minutes, his surrender of course. By the way, the screenplay (based on the bestseller of Collins/Lapierre)was written by none other then Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal.But this is of course mainly a French show, besides the actors it has a French producer and a French director and last but not least Paris itself, so there is quite a lot of French flagwaving going on, giving the impression that 95 % of the Parisians were in the "Resistance'. In reality it was more of the opposite, at least until the liberation. Keep also in mind that a few months prior to these events large numbers of Parisians were cheering Marechal Pétain, the leader of the Vichy collaboration government. But despite all its many plot lines and overall length it is competently directed and features quite some well-staged and realistic battle scenes, from numerous firefights in the Parisian streets, blowing up German vehicles, tanks crashing into each other and culminating in the storming of the German 'Kommandantur'. All in all, this is like "The Longest day" 'à la française', featuring many stars and stories, filmed in black-and-white, in 70 mm (it really needs to be seen on the big screen) and essentially a propaganda piece on one of the few exploits of the French during WWII.(I saw the letterboxed version on French TV with everybody speaking French. The best version is of course with everybody speaking their own language.
