Mr. & Mrs. Bridge

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, in addition to the storied couple (in real life) playing Mr. and Mrs. Bridge--I thought the story line excellent. I actually grew up in Kansas City not long after the time period in the film and my family lived much as these people. The film's "slowness" represents that time---Paul Newman's close and steady pace, his awareness and lack of awareness of the world around him are intriguing. Joanne Woodward and Blythe Danner represent to very different types of women (of the time) but gives the viewer the sense that they are both trapped, one willingly and the other not so willingly. I weep for the Mother (Joanne Woodward) who wants to be close to her grown children but is too limited in her own world to really know how. The children are at fault in many cases, but it's sad nonetheless. The "wedged" car in the garage door opening sums up the Mother's inability to control her surroundings and the very fact that the husband was angry when he arrived home only underlines this fact. Thank God he seems to have loved her!

Films produced under the Merchant/Ivory banner are, as a general rule, respectable, literate, and often more than a little bit dull. But here's an exception (to the last rule, at least): an intimate, snapshot diary of an ordinary, middle-class, mid-American couple, played by the off-screen couple of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Ruth Jhabvala's sensitive adaptation of the twin novels by Evan Connell is highlighted by her customary wit and attention to detail, with Newman and Woodward improving on the title roles by adding in their performances subtle shades of character which can't be written into any script. The episodic, slice-of-life structure doesn't allow for any dramatic momentum, and there isn't much of a message beyond the observation that native mid-westerners are emotionally repressed, but under James Ivory's typically graceful direction (and with the help of a first-rate supporting cast) it's an uncommonly rich film, full of privileged moments.

My review was written in August 1990 after watching the film at a TriBeCa screening room.

Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward plus the Merchant Ivory Productions team are in top form for "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge", an affecting study of an uppercrust Midwestern family 50 years ago. Obvious contender for Venice Film Festival prizes shapes up as a potent arthouse entry this winter.

Merchant Ivory collaborator Ruth Prawer Jhabvalla has adapted the two Evan S. Connell novels into a taut script. Books "Mrs. Bridge" (1959) and "Mr. Bridge" (1969) painted (from each spouse's point of view) a portrait of stuffy Kansas City lawyer Walter Bridge and his stifled wife India, by a steady accretion of anecdotal detail.

The screenplay presents a series of highly dramatic scenes in their lives, the payoffs among the novels' hundreds of brief chapters. The vignette structure is retained, but pic's two hours breeze by thanks to director James Ivory's concise approach and crisp editing (including careful wipes) by Humphrey Dixon.

Central theme of India Bridge's gradual realization that her life has been crushed in her husband's shadow is strongly conveyed by Woodward in the role.

Physically resembling the late Geraldine Page, she should be in the Oscar running this year for a nuanced, often funny portrayal of a multidimensional woman whose options have gradually been snuffed out.

Casting of hubby Newman as her husband resonates in their intimate scenes, particularly a 1939 vacation to Paris when the Bridges briefly rekindle their romance, only to have it cut short by the onset of World War II.

Newman's controlled perforance as the iron-willed condervative is both a carerr hange of pace and highlight.

While Inid abeocmes inceaingly furstrated with being a housewife and country club member, a change is in the wind. Best friend Grace (Blythe Danner perky in film's showiest role) is a kook and free spirit. Their mutal pal Grace Ong (singer Gale Garnett in an arresting brief turn) boasts of the values of psychoanalysis. All three Bridge offspring are in open rebellion against their parents and conservative society.

Kyra Sedgwick, recently Tom Cruise's girlfriend in "Born on the Fourth of July", is smashing as the Bridges' bohemian daughter who takes off for New York and an arts career. Feisty Margaret Welsh has a show-stopping scene telling her mom off after her defiant marriage to a boy from across the tracks ends up on the rocks. Robert Sean Leonard as the duo's son is solid in key emotional scenes with Woodward and Newman.

Pic's climax retains the shattering finale of "Mrs. Bridge", but presents it in a different context. Careful selection of supporting players pays off: stage thesp Diane Kagana is a powerhouse as Newman's secretary, expressing her pain at having been equally neglected by him for 20 years. Sanudra McClain is a tower of strength as the family's maid, and Austin Pendleton and Simon Callow provide comic relief.

Producer Ismail Merchant has arranged for impressive period detail including set pieces such as a tornado while Newman calmly dines with his wife at the country club and an evocative trip to Pari. Tech credits by MIP regulars are of a high standard, notably Tony Pierce-Roberts' sharp focus photography and Richard Robbins' spare, threatening musical score.

An amusing end credit reads: "Shakespearean tutor to Mr. Newman: Sen. Bob Dole", referring to the Kansas politician's reading of "Romeo and Juliet" to help the star develop his flinty characterization.

This is definitely a nitch film that will not appeal to a mass audience. It's a rather uneventful story of a mid-western upper class WASP family, and the cultural milieu of their times. Set in the time frame of pre-World War II America, it is a series of vignettes of various characters' lives. Everything about the production is first class; from the acting to the lush settings. This is a film for those who prefer subtlety over action. This ain't a popcorn film, it is a movie for a quiet time where you can sit back and watch a serious character study. Too, a knowledge of the history of the time would be nice -- but not essential. I'll give it a solid *8*.

"Mr. and Mrs. Bridge," directed by James Ivory, from 1990, is the story of one American family that represents many of that era, showing them in the period of 1937 until just after the war.

The Bridge family is upper middle class. Walter and India (Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward) have three children: the aspiring actress Ruth (Kyra Sedgwick, so young you can't believe it); Carolyn (Margaret Welsh), and Douglas (Robert Sean Leonard, another baby face). Walter Bridge is a conservative man, one who can't and doesn't show his feelings, an excellent businessman, by the book, and seen today, very old-fashioned, almost Victorian in his attitudes. He loves and respects his wife. India is a sweet, naive woman who doesn't know much of the world, but is exposed to it through her high-strung, independent-thinking friend (Blythe Danner) and her art classes. India takes her husband's opinions and does what he wants. The few times she puts forth other ideas, she is shot down and accepts what he says.

When it comes to their children, both of them are out of it. Walter is a fair man, and when Ruth wants to go to New York, he allows it under certain conditions; when Carolyn wants to marry someone beneath their class, he hears the young man out and gives his blessing; and when Douglas wants to join the Air Force, he counsels his son to stick with his education until he's drafted.

This doesn't mean that Walter and India know anything about their children's' private lives or the sex they're having. Walter is far too rigid to consider such a thing, and India is too naive.

This is certainly a picture of a different time, where the older generation didn't give their emotions much play, when women went to lunch, took art classes, and everything they did revolved around their husbands, and when the man's word was law. Yet we can see the beginnings of change around the edges in their children's' lives of what's coming.

The acting is marvelous, particularly from Paul Newman, who at 65 was still gloriously handsome; and from Blythe Danner, who belonged, perhaps, in a bigger city than Kansas City and among a more liberal crowd. I see where Joanne Woodward's performance has been criticized here; some of it, I gather, was because of her age and also because the character says some things considered out of character as compared to the books on which the film is based. Still, she has the sweetness, the caring, and displays the narrow thought of the character.

If the film is slow, it's because of the time period in which the film is set. You sat in the living room in the evening and listened to Nelson Eddy on the radio; you went to see A Star is Born with Janet Gaynor and Frederic March; it was a more leisurely life and a quieter one. Interestingly, it was a time period in which great self-analysis and deep thought could have emerged, but it wouldn't be until after the war that psychiatry (compared to astrology by Walter), women in the workplace, and changes in morality came into vogue.

Today we live so differently - it wasn't all it was cracked up to be back then, and life today sure isn't all it's cracked up to be now. A film like this does make one long for just a few of the old ways in terms of lifestyle perhaps - the simplicity, the sense of family, but in its repression and views of women, no way.