The war movie has never been quite the same since Spielberg
steamrollered the genre in 1999 with Saving Private Ryan. I don't know
whether that's a good thing or a bad thing: For every blindingly
successful critical and box-office bonanza like Spielberg's D-Day
prefaced masterpiece, the five years following inevitably lead to more
films peppered with u similarities or downright rip-offs. I've seen it
many times in my tenure as a movie lover. From early 1995 until just
recently, every crime movie mad suffered from some kind of hip
nod towards the sassy ultra-violence of Pulp Fiction, a film so
critically praised and loved by the cineastes that perhaps filmmakers
felt they had to rip it off or suffer the box office consequences.
With Private Ryan still fresh in the mind, D-Day: The Sixth of June
made for an interesting viewing experience. I hadn't seen the film
before nor was I that familiar with the war pictures of the ear; it
would be interesting to see the popular style of the time and how
effective the film would be in portraying the often horrific realities
of war. The story is fairly standard, and it does precede The Longest
Day, the war movie that like Ryan, changed the face of war movies
completely. The Longest Day was all about scope and sheer size. D-Day
has its fair share of expansive scenes – it is a Cinema Scope
picture, after all – but it's significantly more of an intimate
melodrama. The entire film is essentially a love triangle
between Robert Taylor and Richard Todd, both officers in an army
perched to attack, and Dana Wynter. So as the impending doom of the
titular battle approaches, its emotional repercussions are illustrated
through the lovers' struggles rather than with big battle scenes on
the sandy beaches of doomed France.
Unfortunately, this conceit
bogs this film down in a staggering display of hokey and leaden
cinematic cliches. While the focus on male/female interactions in the
face of war is interesting (not unlike, say, Pearl Harbor), its
novelty is also its undoing. Sure, it's cool to have a romance with
war as a backdrop, but this particular courtship is just plain
boring.
The film does pick up in its final reel. The actual
storming of the beach on D-Day is chock-full of cool explosions and
seas of infantrymen, so dwarfed by their enormous surroundings that
they look like ants nearing an anthill. Sure, it's not as jaw-
droppingly immense as Longest Day's invasion (or, for that matter,
Private Ryan's, still the most astonishing representation of the D-Day
invasion I've ever seen), but it makes for a good war scene. 
As
a relic and one of the last of its kind, D-Day the Sixth of June is an
interesting cinematic document, the last gasp of mid-1950s melodrama
before the grandeur and giant expanses of post-Vietnam filmmaking
would render it obsolete. For diehard war fans only.
Video: How Does The Disc Look?
It's great to see the
grand CinemaScope vistas brought to life on this DVD, presented in
2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. Alas, the years have not been kind to D-
Day the Sixth of June, as this looks dated and worn. The print is
pretty rough - there are scratches and blemishes aplenty, and colors
look very washed out. Blacks are dull and often faded with weak
contrast; the images just never pop off the screen and detail is poor.
Unavoidably, a film of this vintage just needs to be restored to at
least some degree to come across effectively on DVD, but that kind of
effort obviously wasn't put into this one. At least there is little in
the way of edge enhancement or compression artifacts to mar the
presentation, but all in all this is still pretty weak.
Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
This new Dolby
Digital 4.0 surround remix is better than the transfer; it still can't
surmount the limitations of the source material, but at least it
tries. Dynamic range is still limited but good for the era. There's
some complicated use of effects during the battle scenes that comes
off pretty sharp; however, like many other modern remixes, stereo
separation among the front soundstage is blotchy. For example,
dialogue spoken by a character towards the left side of the screen is
then directed way too far in that direction, which sounds
gimmicky - hearing dialogue specified to corner speakers with a lack
of inherent centrality is very distracting. At least surround use is
aggressive and the low end quite supple. So aside from the tricks,
this is a relatively good remix.
Also included are French and
Spanish mono dubs and English subtitles and English Closed Captions.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
A nice if
dated theatrical trailer is included, along with some more
promos for other Fox Flix.
DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you
get when you pop the disc in your PC?
Unusual for a New
Line title, there is nothing here at all, not even a zippy custom
interface or any weblinks.
Parting Thoughts
If
you enjoy this film or are merely a war movie buff, here's a DVD
that's at least worth checking out. The audio and video quality is
rather substandard, but with a list price of only $14.98, you can't
really go wrong.
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