The cinematic representation of June 6, 1944, was long dominated by the eponymous blockbuster film based on Cornelius Ryan's book The Longest Day (1962). In black and white, and filmed by five directors (including Darryl Zanuck), the film was presented at the time of its release as the most expensive film ever made alongside Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Cleopatra (1963). The winner of two Academy Awards – for best cinematography (black and white) and best special effects – it brought together stars including Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Sean Connery, Richard Burton, Arletty and Bourvil, surrounded by 2,000 extras, and displayed a cascade of factual errors and material anachronisms despite its 20-strong team of historical advisers.
Steven Spielberg's more spectacular Saving Private Ryan (1998), which won five Oscars (for best director, best cinematography, best film editing, best sound and best sound effects editing) is still riddled with errors that historians are quick to point out, but the story is inspired by the real-life fate of several siblings decimated that day (the Nilands and the Sullivans): As part of the D-Day Landings, seven men are tasked with finding and repatriating, alive, a soldier whose three brothers have just perished. The film's strong point is its realistic reconstruction of the deployment of troops on Omaha Beach, where more than 3,000 soldiers were mowed down. The raw brutality of the carnage underscores the men's solidarity, their suffering and their sacrifice. Spielberg sees himself as the heir to Robert Capa's D-Day photographs.
In the wake of this landmark film, and embodying the same qualities and emotions, Spielberg and his actor Tom Hanks created a 10-episode TV series in 2001, Band of Brothers, which tells the real story of the soldiers of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (nicknamed the "Screaming Eagles"), from the time of their airborne landing on the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy, with the assault on the town of Carentan, to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest, via the liberation of a concentration camp. The episodes are preceded by speeches from the company's survivors, all more or less sprightly veterans. The term "band of brothers" is borrowed from Shakespeare: In his play Henry V, this is how the king exalts his troops before the battle of Azincourt.
"There's no way you can portray war realistically, not in a movie nor in a book. You can only capture a very, very small aspect of it. If you really want to make readers understand a battle, a few pages of your book would be booby-trapped. For moviegoers to get the idea of real combat, you'd have to shoot at them every so often from either side of the screen." wrote American filmmaker Samuel Fuller. He added: "What I try to do is make audiences feel the emotional strife of total war." In other words, how you get to kill another person, when you are overcome by the desire to survive.
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