SOURCE: Shephard, Ben. “The Doughboy's D-Day.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4981 (18 September 1998): 23.

In the following review, Shephard divides Saving Private Ryan into three separate sections, comparing the realism of the opening invasion scene with Darryl F. Zanuck's The Longest Day.

Escape to Nowhere, Steven Spielberg's first film, was shot on 8mm in 1960, when he was twelve years old. It was a Second World War action adventure; not surprisingly, for Spielberg grew up with the Hollywood war film—with, to be precise, two kinds of war film. The early ones, like William Wellman's Battleground and Henry King's 12 O'Clock High, drew on first-hand experience to explore soldierly brotherhood, group dynamics under pressure, and the strains of command, with some lingering tang of authenticity. But by the later 1950s the genre was changing. The Hollywood war movie simply became a springboard for action adventures, and the Second World War had to compete...