MovieChat Forums > The Longest Day (1962) Discussion > why no THE LAST BATTLE film?

why no THE LAST BATTLE film?


People might know that the film THE LONGEST DAY was based on a book by a man called Ryan.
He also wrote A BRIDGE TOO FAR which was of course made into a film.

But his final book was called THE LAST BATTLE and was about the battle of Berlin.

I assume that they never made a film of the Berlin book because the battle between the Soviets and Germans would have had limited appeal in western countries?

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To answer my own question,wikipedia says MGM were going to make a film but had financial problems (2001?)and it was cancelled.

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Yes, The Last Battle was the only book of Cornelius Ryan that was not filmed. I think you had answered your own question. Few people in the West would have been interested in that story, and I guess many in the US don't even know the Soviets entered Berlin first.

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Simple, not even Hollywood could have made a film where the Americans captured Berlin before the Red Army. Although I'm sure it was considered.

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I would still like a LAST BATTLE film.
It is the forgotten book of the 3 Ryan wrote.

The book and the World At War tv series both covered the mass rape by Soviet troops but every few years there are headlines when someone writes about these events.

I think a Last Battle film would be of interest to european and US viewers but it would have to be balanced,a film that would cover the Soviet atrocities as well as the previous nazi actions.

I sometimes think the cliche that Americans think they won the war on their own has been replaced by a new cliche that the contribution of the western allies to final victory was unimportant and the western battles were not hard fought.

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The Downfall is about the Hitler and his nazis last days and it is a wonderful movie, only it's German. Russians appear only in the end. I loved it and I am neither German nor Russian.

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