Review: D-Day: The 6th of June

A ‘Two officers in love with the same swell gal’ picture, as married American officer Robert Taylor is assigned to London to work for a maverick Colonel (Edmond O’Brien), and falls for pretty Brit Red Cross worker Dana Wynter, whose fiancé Richard Todd is a British paratrooper currently fighting elsewhere. Oh, and it’s prior to the D-Day assault during WWII, just so you know. John Williams plays a disgruntled elder statesman of the British military early in the film.

 

The title and romantic/relationship trappings might suggest something along the lines of “From Here to Eternity”, but this Henry Koster (“Harvey”, “My Cousin Rachel”, “The Virgin Queen”) film from 1956 has neither the depth of character nor the epic scale of that timeless film. The screenplay by Ivan Moffat (“Giant”, “The Heroes of Telemark”) and Harry Brown (“Sands of Iwo Jima”, “A Place in the Sun”, “The Virgin Queen”, “El Dorado”) is so poor that the Richard Todd character is barely featured in the film, rendering the central love triangle (which wasn’t much good the following year in “Bitter Victory”, either) completely worthless. Actually, it’s a quadrangle, if you add in Taylor’s wife, but nevermind. For a film that doesn’t even run two hours, it’s unforgiveable to have Todd’s character only appear in what, three or four scenes? Where’s the dramatic/domestic conflict?

 

Worse still, the film is hardly about D-Day (what?), and the whole thing ends on a whimper. It feels like a large chunk has been taken from the middle of the film. Robert Taylor (who served in the Navy during the war, apparently) is also rather bored-looking, though Dana Wynter is excellent (and beautiful, despite a far too glamorous hairdo for her character) as the woman caught between two men. It’s a real shame Richard Todd (a real-life paratrooper who actually took part in the Normandy invasion) makes such fleeting appearances in the film, because he’s a much better actor than Taylor ever was. Edmond O’Brien and Hitchcock regular John Williams are well-cast but not well-used, as the latter has barely a cameo. And yes, O’Brien does have at least one requisite drinking scene. It wouldn’t be an Edmond O’Brien role without one.

 

I must admit that, undernourished or not, the film takes an interestingly light stance on infidelity for most of its length. Hell, the participants aren’t even terribly discreet about it. I think the affair in “From Here to Eternity” had more discretion involved. Meanwhile, why is the American hunk in these sorts of things always called Brad?

The best thing about the film are the well-staged action scenes. They come too late, but are effective nonetheless.

 

I’m sorry, but this feels like half a movie, or at least a half-baked one. It sets up battles on both the romantic and military fronts, and fails to deliver on the former, and is somewhat misleading about the latter. It is not about the Normandy invasion for the most part. What the hell happened here?

 

Rating: C