The Bridge

While not genre, this silent rendition of "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (Ambrose Bierce), expertly directed by Charles Vidor, trims the edges by focusing on the escape fantasies of a spy about to be hanged from a bridge.

I give this high marks for the artistry of the camera-work, and the interest that builds and maintains over the entirety. Yes, I know it's only 10 minutes but sometimes I get antsier for the end of shorts than features! It's very vivid and passionate.

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In the 1960s, a short film was made about Ambrose Bierce's story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". The film won the Oscar for Live Short Subject. And now here's the odd part. This French film by Paul de Roubaix and Marcel Ichac was then shown as an episode of "The Twilight Zone"--and few probably suspected its pedigree since it was a film without dialog. Apparently, however, 33 years earlier, Charles Vidor directed another version of this story called "The Bridge" (also called "The Spy").

The first thing you'll probably notice about this silent film is the really nice cinematography. It looks like an exquisite piece of art. Second, instead of being set in the US Civil War, it seems to be set in some European locale--though exactly which one is uncertain. A man has been captured by the army and they are about to execute him on a bridge. What happens next you'll just need to see for yourself.

Overall, this is much shorter than the Oscar-winning version. But, it's also more beautifully shot and succinct. I like them both but actually think I prefer this earlier version a bit more. See what you think.

Impossible not to compare this film-version of Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge with the classic French version of 1962 La Rivière du hibou by Robert Enrico, which is one of those eternally famous films that almost everyone will get to see at some time in their life.

I first saw it myself in the cinema sometime in the sixties in Britain where it was occasionally shown as a highly superior B-feature ans was bowled over by it although, as one rarely paid attention to the details of a B-feature, I had no idea for many years who had made it. I had exactly the same experience with The Duel (arguably Steven Spielberg's best film), which I saw in exactly the same way. There is nothing to compare with that cinematic experience of a B-feature that makes you sit up and watch - a bit like Ravi Shankar at Monterey - an experience that, alas, hardly anyone has the opportunity to have any more.

It was however a highly-praised short (winning an award at Cannes as well as the Academy award for best fiction short) and it was twice shown on US television as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and later as one of the last episodes of the Twilight Zone. Unlike myself, those who saw it then would have known that it was French because they are told so in the introduction to it.

It was in fact the second of three adaptations that Enrico made of Bierce's war stories, the other two being Chickamauga and the third being L'oiseau moqueur (The Mockingbird). All three are excellent and represent a quite remarkable feat of empathy of the part of Enrico. La Rivière du hibou is deservedly the best known but not so much better that the other two films deserve their almost complete oblivion. Together entitled Au cœur de la vie, they form a fine homage to Bierce's bitter critique of war (and religious hypocrisy).

So how does this 1929 film stand up to comparison. Well, not at all badly. It is a good deal shorter and the updating to a First World War setting means that it lacks the period feel that is so strong in the Enrico trilogy. Nor does Vidor have Enrico's magical ability with forest-scenes, including a fine use of sound, which he would also display in his best known feature-film, Les Grandes gueules (1965) shot in the Vosges. The "escape" is a good deal less dramatic and, since the fantasy element in the escape is less well concealed, the impact of the ending much reduced but the essentials of the story are all there, the main performance good and the camera-work at times excellent.

This film is never going to join the Enrico as one of the all-time "must-see" films but it s reminder that there is not the yawning gap people often imagine between film-making in the twenties and film-making the sixties.

Ambrose Bierce's Civil War short story "Incident on Owl Creek Bridge" get's a compact telling in this Charles Vidor short that resembles in moments the more famous 1961 Twilight Zone cinema clinic by Robert Enrico. Other than the updating of the uniforms the story unfolds with the same intense sense of desperation, the editing ratcheting the suspense with the emphasis on life and nature.

It's a game effort by Vidor telling his story in half of the "Zone's, " perfectly employing a drummer boy to introduce flashback while his staccato editing works its way towards a brutal climax.

Not the perfect Enrico short but probably an influence of it.

Note: Incident at Owl Creek bridge was the only episode of Twilight Zone that Rod Serling did not write.