4 days ago
The 6 best D-Day movies to watch
Only a segment of Samuel Fuller's episodic trudge through the European theatre is devoted to Normandy, but it best illustrates the WW2 veteran's unsentimental view of combat. 'A guy is hit. So, he's hit. That's that', he once said, 'I don't cry because that guy over there got hit. I cry because I'm gonna get hit next.' Indeed, as the American infantry unit of the film's title arrives at Omaha Beach, tasked with assembling a cumbersome weapon to blast open an exit point, death comes too fast to process: one by one, each soldier charges over a sand berm, making minimal progress before getting picked off and the next man has his number called. All the while, Fuller's camera returns to a wristwatch on a severed arm, submerged in the ever-reddening surf, denoting the grueling passage of time – an arresting image taken from the director's own experience on the beach.
