The differences between the two films are shown clearly in the beach landing scenes. Both scenes show the same historic event, the Omaha beach landing in 1944. However, the way the two directors depict this event highlights the way Hollywood’s portrayal of war has changed. The first shot of Robert Mitchum’s character in ‘The Longest Day’ shows him standing above the rest of the soldier, this straight away shows him as in control and a superior officer. Tom Hanks character when we first see him with his men he is much more human and vulnerable for example his hand is shaking and a close up of it is shown, also he is quiet yet looked and respected a lot by his men, for example when he talks to them he encourages them saying ‘I will see you on the beach’, all the men pay attention to this and are positively influenced by him I feel the reason why Steven Spielberg used this opening is to show him and his men as normal people and to introduce the various characters so that we can recognise and become ‘friends’ with the characters seeing them as nice people who do not deserve to die, which of cause some do and when they do Steven Spielberg wants us to feel unhappy and sympathetic to there death.
Both of the main characters have always played well-known heroic characters in their previous films and are recognised actors staring in many movies before.
Both films start virtually the same way showing a long shot of the invasion fleet and then in ‘Saving Private Ryan’ he moves in and shows a close up of the men. This scene immediately shows a distinct contrast between the films, one introduces and zooms in on characters, for example Steven Spielberg does it on a soldier who holds a cross praying all will go well, this shows there fear and vulnerability and makes us hope all will go well for them, the aim of it is to attach us to the characters and make us feel sad if anything happened to them. It also makes us hate war when you see someone you know die, and that if war could ever be avoided it should be, Steven Spielberg is anti-war and it is a great example of how he portrays his views in films. In ‘The Longest Day’ opening although it is much the same the director purposely does not have close ups of any characters, he does this because he knows that some will have to die and to keep the few deaths that there will be in the background, he does this as he doesn’t want to haunt his audiences memories with what maybe terrifying memories of how they may of lost loved ones or comrades.
When they come to the Beach Scene Steven Spielberg uses extraordinary sophisticated special effects such as massive explosions, they also obtain good machine gun sounds and judge its use perfectly especially how they used it when it hit metal. Tom Hanks character brings his men together and tries to encourage them and help in such troubling times, he even says “I will see you on the beach” he knows this will not happen in most cases but he tries to use a positive attitude to influence his men so that they will do everything they can to fight and stay alive opposed to saying that they are going to die anyway and not taking cover fast with bad reactions or sitting in a corner terrified. As the men run to the beach we see a fantastic use of an eye level camera, this makes it seem as though we are the person and hows his comrades being shot at with very confusing un-organised motions. There are also a under-water camera which shows red under-water very distinctly and everything else is greyscale.
In the beach scene in ‘The Longest Day’ there is a very positive attitude especially of that which is radiated off Robert Mitchum’s character where he leads the men in with no fear, he even says “you had better go back and get your gun” to a young soldier even though it would mean going back into the crossfire and risking his life.
The two films depict war differently war differently due to the times when they were made, ‘The Longest Day’ tries to make a film America would love while ‘Saving Private Ryan’ uses modern techniques and camera angles to show a realistic less biased portrayal of what it would have been like.
