The Longest Day and Tora Tora Tora -- Great movies that stand up to the test of time. Saw both again recently. History is far above most of today's "war" movies. While quality productions like SPR and the Eastwood Okinawa films do a good job with the "feel" (maybe even a better job) these classics taught the history of the events at a level of detail that will not likely be seen again given focus groups and audience demographic concerns (they's be bored with all that stuff!), etc. Thus, U571 and Pearl Harbor, perhaps the greatest B-Movie of all time for the history buff. Over 100 technical and historical errors and counting.
And the visuals in these earlier films are up to snuff. With Tora the special effects represent the pinnacle of pre-digital technology (look mom -- no strings!) and the background ships were still, in many cases, of the era (with a few upgrades like Alpha mounts on Fletcher destroyers, etc. ). The fiberglass P40s were used to great effect, as were the AT6 Vals and Kates (with dropping ordinance). The explosions etc were well executed.
With The Longest Day, they had enough extras to give the production real scale. I had an old reserve Sgt. Major who was actually an extra in The Longest Day. Apparently, there was a lot of military cooperation in the making of that film, to include active troops stationed in Europe at the time.
Charon
