‘The Longest Day’ was released in 1962 and ‘Saving Private Ryan’ was released in 1998. This means that Speilberg had much newer and advanced technology.
The colour used in the two films are different Spielberg uses a lot of gore. He did this by staining the sea red with the effect of it being blood. Also a lot of shooting of men takes place with extreme detail. In ‘The Longest Day’ the only colour used was black and white.
‘The Longest Day’ sets the scene for the audience and is informative showing the different sides of the war. Zanuck did this by writing word title across the action indicating location and the parts played by the “43 international stars”.
There are many differences between the two films including language. Zanuck used different languages with subtitles whereas Speilberg only used English. Speilberg used very loud music to build up the tension to create a nervous atmosphere whereas Zanuck’s sound effects were only loud at the start. This could make the movie dull and not as exciting as ‘Saving Private Ryan’.
Although the two accounts theme are the same they are in different places. In ‘Saving Private Ryan’ the landings happen at the beginning but in ‘The Longest Day’ it happens roughly two-thirds of the way through.
In ‘The Longest Day the hero is Robert Mitchum. In ‘Saving Private Ryan’ the hero is Tom Hanks.
There are far wider camera shots in ‘The Longest Day’. The special effects are not as good and are not as horrific. ‘The Longest Day’ sets the scene and you know what is going on whereas ‘Saving Private Ryan’ is more personal and up close unlike ‘The Longest Day’ which has more distance.
When comparing the two accounts ‘The Longest Day’ has more dialogue. This is because the instructions are told and so we know what is about to happen. In ‘Saving Private Ryan’ the main actor Tom Hanks is in with the other men and there is silence, this equals tension and fear because we don’t know what is going to happen. Speilberg creates this chilling atmosphere deliberately.
Overall when comparing the two exerts we can clearly see that ‘Saving Private Ryan’ has far more action and is more exciting.