Mr. & Mrs. Bridge

Mr.&Mrs. Bridge is an interesting character study of a pair of a typical married couple during the years before our entry into World War II. The film does provide a good insight into the American mindset of a Republican oriented couple of the period, hardly the political orientation of its two stars.

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward are the Bridges with two daughters and a son who are all reaching adulthood. Kyra Sedgwick is the rebellious Bohemian type who just wants to shake the dust of her conservative roots and fly. Maureen Collins wants to get married and she makes a disastrous choice of a husband. But that is partly to get away from her father's ideas. And son Robert Sean Leonard is an Eagle Scout and apparently a chip of dad's old block. But he thinks there is more to life than his father's ideas. He's looking to join the army.

The film netted Joanne Woodward an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and she is the most interesting character in the film. She longs to recapture her youth when Newman was apparently a far more passionate individual than the stuffed shirt lawyer. She tries to shake Newman out of his smug complacency, but ultimately fails.

The Bridges are an interesting pair, but ultimately not very satisfying. I have to applaud the characterizations which are first rate, but this story which seemed really not to have a point just left me cold.

However fans of Newman and Woodward will like Mr.&Mrs. Bridge.

"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.

the two books this movie was based on are some of my favorites. they perfectly, poignantly, and sometimes humorously capture the lives of an upper middle class couple of their time. the movie did a good job getting some parts right, but of course it pales in comparison to the two books. for those who live in or know kansas city well, its an interesting film. i live in the neighborhood in which it was set and go to the same places the characters did. otherwise, its still an interesting study of the lives of its time period.

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.

Sadder than this very moving film are the reactions of those who found this movie boring or too "slow." What a comment on the need for car chases and explosions that seem so pervasive in American flicks!! One of the reason I prefer foreign films.

"Mr and Mrs Bridge" is an amazingly accurate depiction of upper middle class lives, caught in the trap of repression and respectability. To watch the fate of Mrs Bridge (exquisitely portrayed by Joanne Woodward) as a woman trapped in a marriage to an inexpressive, career-focused man is to understand how women, even today, can lead limited, unfulfilled lives, bound up with a decisive husband and children who grow into self-absorbed adults, leaving their mother with a longing they won't or can't assuage.

Seeing the character of Mr. Bridge (another outstanding performance by Paul Newman), himself caught in the routine of his life, his sexual yearnings repressed, convinced of his correctness and respectability is a picture of the rigidity of ideas, values and prejudices rampant in our society, even in our own time.

An amazing and insight movie!!