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The movie also shows the incredible bravery of the many ordinary French people who risked their lives to secure vital information on the Germans. The Longest Day also shows how French saboteurs helped to disrupt the Nazis preparations in the run-up to D-Day. The movie also accurately shows the role of Free French forces in the landings. On the beach head known as Sword Beach, a French commando unit are shown in the movie attacking a former casino that had been turned into a German fortress and capturing it and this is a historical fact. However, the movie does exaggerate the scale and size of the former casino but not the ferocity of the battle. It also shows how the timely arrival of an American tank helped the Free French forces to seize the casino when it seemed that they were on the brink of defeat.<ref> Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy, 1944 (London: Cassel, 1999), p. 113</ref>

The Longest Day movie was a hit and it received several Academy Award nominations, mostly in technical categories. The movie, which is really a series of stories neatly manages to show the main events of the war and evokes the atmosphere of that historic day. The motion picture does give a comprehensive overview of D-Day. It is particularly good at showing the concerns of the Allied and the German high commands. The film can show what happened at the landing points and the events that happened there such as the storming of the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc.

Zanuck’s motion picture also shows the horror of war and how chance played a crucial part in the outcome of D-Day. The most glaring inaccuracy in the entire movie is that it does not show the bloodbath that was the first assault, this is shown much more accurately in the 1996 motion picture ''Saving Private Ryan''. However, the movie is overall quite accurate and for once Hollywood got it (mostly) right. Therefore, the film has generally been viewed favorably by historians and many teachers even believe it is suitable for teaching children about the history of D-Day.

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