The Long Day’s Dying ** (1968, David Hemmings, Tony Beckley, Tom Bell, Alan Dobie) – Classic Movie Review 11,675

Director Peter Collinson’s grim and gloomy 1968 film The Long Day’s Dying is based on a 1962 novel by Alan White, and stars David Hemmings, Tony Beckley, Tom Bell and Alan Dobie.

Despite a screenplay by Charles Wood, this is an undistinguished British war film, though it does at least have the virtue of taking a powerful anti-war stance.

Three British soldiers – middle-class thinker John (Hemmings), eager Cliff (Beckley) and cynical veteran Tom Cooper (Bell) – are in trouble as they try to get back to their unit with a German prisoner, fellow paratrooper Helmut (Dobie).

Peter Collinson.

Collinson’s film is in trouble too, unable to bring much in the way of entertainment, uplift or humour to a dour, unpopular subject. There is no problem with the acting though. It is shot in Techniscope by Ernest Day and Brian Probyn.

It shares views, attitudes and themes with Charles Wood’s screenplay for the much more successful The Charge of the Light Brigade.

Producer Michael Deeley said that he and Peter Yates worked on the first draft of the script.

Films directed by Peter Collinson: The Penthouse (1967), Up the Junction (1968), The Long Day’s Dying (1968), The Italian Job (1969), You Can’t Win ‘Em All (1970), Fright (1971), Straight On till Morning (1972), Innocent Bystanders (1972), The Man Called Noon (1973), Open Season (1974), And Then There Were None (1974), The Spiral Staircase (1975), Target of an Assassin (1976), The Sell Out (1976), Tomorrow Never Comes (1978), The House on Garibaldi Street (1979), and The Earthling (1980).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,675

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