Il ponte di San Luis Rey

The movie has an excellent cast - a cast which precedes any mention of the film - which, I think, actually takes away from the movie. It makes us very difficult critics.

The Bridge over San Luis Rey is not a traditional drama. It is predominantly philosophical; the emotions in the novel and in this film are fleeting. When the characters fall in love, and when they die, we are very quickly drawn away from it. Life is fleeting. This is unlike most dramas where we are given plenty of time to reflect and consider. This movie can leave you behind, both with regard to plot details and these moments of attachment to the characters.

It may feel as though they tried to cram a whole array of interesting characters into a two-hour film. I think that they did, and this is how the story reads - to Brother Jupiter (the story's quasi-narrator) all the characters are "incidental" to him. His investigation (and yours, as a viewer) is to pry into their lives and the intimate details of their biographies. Other reviewers here have complained that the characters "seemed to appear and disappear;" I think this is intentional - Brother Jupiter only gets a vignette into the lives of these people, just as we only have small pieces of the lives of our friends. Have some sympathy, and these characters will truly seem alive.

The point is that this movie requires some effort to be enjoyed; you have to keep up with it. I think, however, that if you are willing to actively try and suspend disbelief and - just as if you were actually reading the novel - try to scry something more from the characters and plot, you will be well-rewarded. The film is remarkable in that it expresses the fact that this was, originally, a novel; I can't expect a novel to simply play itself out before me. This movie is an intellectual adventure.

The movie felt very much like a stage production. There are few attempts to match an accent appropriate to the time and place - which I find most forgivable; they are, after all, speaking English to begin with. The lines are delivered as though the actors were in a play - particularly de Niro's lines. This, too, can take away from one's ability to be easily immersed in the film's experience unless you make the effort.

No one can fault the ability of the director in creating a visually stunning film. The camera, though, was annoying from time to time, particularly in the opening and ending scenes.

The movie did a remarkable job of portraying the relationship between Manuel and Esteban; for having no lines whatsoever, the actors (who I have never seen before) were incredible. Kathy Bates, Harvey Keitel, and F. Murray Abraham are magnificent.

I was not so impressed with Robert de Niro and Gabriel Byrne. Whether this was due to their (difficult) characters, the director's failing to direct, or their own flaws as actors, I don't know. I do think that they were not given enough screen time - which is regrettable. I think that, given the privilege the writer and director had in having these actors, it would have been more than forgivable to take some liberties from the novel just to flesh out these characters and let these actors play for a bit more. Also, Captain Alvarado - though he certainly looks the part, is a bit over the top, in the few scenes he appears.

I don't understand the 1's that reviewers, here, have given this film. The movie is simply not _that_ bad, and I cannot see what possible reasons can bring such a negative conclusion out, other than that people cannot resist the opportunity to make pithy remarks about a movie in which the main characters fall off a bridge. Take such reviews with a grain of salt, and when you watch the movie, try a little.

None of the reviewers at this site or elsewhere have noted that there are four, not three, filmed versions of this unique and haunting novel.The fourth appeared on American television between October,l957,and January,l958. It was probably a Hallmark production ,obviously has never replayed,and is not listed in this data base.

This is all the more disconcerting as it is the only dramatized version(The silent version is unobtainable and exists in only one known copy)which in any way remained faithful to the spirit and much of the text of the original.Wilder's book calls to be read aloud and the three leading actresses in this particular production did everything possible with the essential sound values.

The key role of the Marquesa was taken by Judith Anderson(of "Medea" and "Hamlet" fame) and she literally almost breached the saving boundary between make believe and reality.Unlike the recent version there is nothing funny about this woman.Her daughter certainly does not visit her in Latin America.Like King Lear ,she has been exiled from Spain at her daughter's request.And not without good reason.The Marquesa is a terrifying and vicious old drunk who is positively guaranteed to disrupt any social occasion which she attends. On the other hand,in exile,and smashing bottles in the audience's collective face,she,the most terrifying of mothers,writes epistles on her genuinely frustrated love which will go down in the history of Spanish literature.Finally she meets a teenager who is

emotionally abused,and, as emotionally abusive, as the great lady herself;

and so the pair scream and claw till they eventually reach a truly loving accord.It seems both women now,for the only time in their lives,will have something to live for.But that entails first crossing the Bridge of San Luis Rey.

If we have any present day American actress,aside from Julie Harris,who could have recreated this part it is Kathy Bates.She must have jumped at the chance to do it.Unfortunately the incredibly uncomprehending adaptation defeats her.As it does the wonderfully gifted Polish brothers.They are literally left speechless.

Similarly the fifties version ended with a great hymn to love from the Mother Superior(played by Eva LaGallienne) to the broken actress (Vivica Lindfors)who has lost(half-driven) mentor,lover, and child to the abyss.The new version gives us anti-Catholic propaganda with the woefully miscast DeNiro and Byrne struggling with materials they were not born to enunciate.

Our catastrophe ridden neo-Babylonian society could use a good new production of "The Bridge" right now.Too bad that it didn't get it.If the fifties version still exists, may be this letter will be an incentive for someone to dig it from the archives. Lindfors,La Gallienne,Judith Anderson,you should be living at this hour.

Now here is potential for a great, intellectually stimulating movie. Based on the book by Thornton Wilder, a respected American novelist, and exploring the philosophical problem of evil - namely, why did God permit the demise of five people in the collapse of the Bridge of San Luis Rey? The priest investigating the question, the Archbishop accusing his research findings as heresy, the cast of characters with their human strengths and failings; all of this could have made the movie a really rewarding watch. Instead, I fell asleep about two-thirds of the way through, only to wake up just before the end for the credits! I can hardly believe it myself, because I was definitely intrigued by the central question, but for me it was a frustrating, incomprehensible viewing experience with only the scenery, costumes and famous cast as its redeeming features. My disadvantage as a critic is that I haven't read the book, so I can't say if Wilder had done a better job exploring this crucial human issue. Certainly the film was a disappointment. When you want to know the meaning of life, the last thing you wish to be shown is a group of gallivanting fools and hysterics with whom you are unable to engage. At times it really felt like a baroque farce of some sort. Maybe I just didn't get it, but surely much more can be made of the problem of evil on screen. Two out of ten for the costumes, but I'm thinking of reading the book just to avoid nurturing the impression I was left with: that Thornton Wilder lacked substance.

This film, despite the rep of the novel, was in Paris for exactly one week. Not that that is a description of the film.

My verdict is mixed. I did not dislike De Niro. He had a hard part to play. That of the overseas cleric.... far from the fanatical homeland ... trying desperately to stoke up his fervor, which may not have been there really.

I thought Kathy Bates was magnificent, playing the lady of letters exactly as i remembered it from my reading of this novel in the sixties....

The scenery, as magnificent as it was, was from the Malaga region of South Spain, hardly like the Himalayas.

What overwrought critics should remember is that this story is probably the last in a long series of such tales, From Chaucer to the Decameron, even to the recent film about the young Che Guevara finding himself on an epic voyage.

This is one of my all time favourite books. I found it in our attic when I was 17 (some while ago) and devoured it in a sitting, finding it had that rare power to take one completely into it's world and make the real world a shadow around you. I found myself saying the beautiful, polished phrases out loud. They demand to be spoken. I've read periodically ever since. Thus, I was delighted when I heard a modern film was to be made of it with such a magnificent cast.

Oh dear though. The idea of putting the narrator's voice into different characters was a clever one and almost worked but it fell down at the end because of course no one who is actually involved is meant to see the invisible pattern of the lives. The acting is very disappointing from such able stars. The Perichole was far too Dresden shepherdess and not fiery or Latin enough. Robert de Niro was crashingly miscast as the Archbishop. He looked every inch a prelate if you wanted Richielieu or Mazarin but the Archbishop of Lima should be enormously fat, as physically corrupt as he is morally and certainly not an inqusitorial type. Furthermore he is an effete scholar and his lapidary lines should have been delivered that way. When I saw de Niro's name I confidently expected him to play Captain Alvarado where he would have excelled whereas that splendid character was underplayed and underused. the same might be said of Manuel and Esteban (why were they not allowed to speak?. Harvey Keitel was another miscast or at least misdirected. A character who loves the beauty of the Golden Age of Spanish Drama demands a frankly more classical delivery. The marvellous Cathy Bates was another disappointment, she should have looked older and crazier. The performance was very flat and lacking the eccentricities and slovenliness for which she was laughed at and condemned. The only two who approached the spirit of the novel were F Murray Abraham's Viceroy and Gabriel Byrne's sad friar.

The look of it was very pleasant. gorgeous costumes and settings although everything and everyone looked a bit too clean for that time. The music was good too but overall it was very disappointing. The woodeness, the throwing away of beautiful lines and tedium of it all must be laid squarely on bad writing and worse direction. Don't bother, read the book instead.