Production
The film was filmed in Cherbourg with a French cast and was set in the aftermath of the Normandy Landings where a group of Allied soldiers attempt to shelter Frenchmen who faced execution by the Nazis. As the US Department of Defense did not cooperate with the film, the American soldiers were played by French soldiers.
Robert Parrish recalled that Darryl F. Zanuck made the film to use unused footage from The Longest Day with the film then marketed as a sequel. Cliff Robertson said he was given the Messerschmitt Bf 108 used in the film. Robertson claimed Zanuck wanted to make the film to showcase his girlfriend Irina Demick who had appeared in The Longest Day. Robertson called the film "Up From the Bitch" Both Irina Demick and Red Buttons appeared in the original "The Longest Day".
Oskar Werner was the first choice for the German officer eventually played by Marius Goring. Werner, a World War II Wehrmacht veteran refused on the ground that in his opinion no German officer of the time would have held such humane feelings as the officer portrayed in the film.
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Famous quotes containing the word production:
“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)