Uma Ponte Longe Demais

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

Plot In A Paragraph: The story of the Battle of Arnhem during World War II.

Connery has one of the more substantial roles in Richard Attenborough's all star cast. (Said to be the most expensive cast in living memory) Thwre were famous actors everywhere. Gene Hackman, Michael Caine, Robert Redford, James Caan, Elliot Gould, Anthony Hopkins, Edward Fox, Laurence Olivier and Dirk Bogarde amongst others. Connery was General Urquhart in his first combat drop, and again he delivers a solid performance.

Like watching Saving Private Ryan, all I think watching this movie is what a waste of human life. The amount of soldiers whose lives were lost in this operation due to bad planning based on poor intelligence and faulty radios leading to a complete breakdown in communication is staggering!! When told his superior was "proud and pleased" Connery growled that he went in when 10,000 men and came out with less than 2,000.

In a year dominated by the first Star Wars ($300 million) and Smokey & The Bandit ($127 million) A Bridge To Far still managed to gross $50,000, despite being in direct competition with them, to become Connery's biggest hit outside of the Bond Franchise. It ended 1977 as the 7th highest grossing movie of the year. Another best for Connery as no movie he started in outside of the Bond moves had broke the Top 10 grossers of the year.

Quite a few bad things have been written about A Bridge Too Far. Richard Attenborough's elephantine recreation of the battle for several strategically valuable Dutch bridges in the winter of 1944 is a star-studded, lengthy and exhausting film (and many critics at the time seemed to be of the opinion that it collapsed beneath its own weight). Almost thirty years on, the film is now viewed somewhat more favourably. It may feel 30 minutes too long, and the need for so many stars in so many tiny parts is questionable, but A Bridge Too Far successfully shows a fierce episode of the Second World War in all its chaotic glory. Incredibly, there's no use of the computer generated effects during the big battle scenes that it is relied upon in modern films like Gladiator and Troy. The scenes in this film were shot pretty much as you see them - so the 35,000 parachutists storming Holland, the river crossing led by Robert Redford under intense enemy fire, and other such staggering combat sequences were filmed with thousands of extras and a good deal of meticulous planning and preparation.

The film is based upon Operation Market Garden, an Allied plot hatched towards the end of 1944 with the intention of ending the war in Europe. The concept behind the plan was to drop 35,000 soldiers into Holland approximately 60 miles beyond the German lines, to seize six vital bridges, and to reinforce the paratroopers by sending in thousands of ground troops. However, various mishaps jeopardised the mission and eventually the Allies were cut off and had to withdraw, suffering severe losses.

As stellar casts go, A Bridge Too Far still takes some rivalling. Among the many famous actors involved, these are just a few: Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Laurence Olivier, Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Ryan O'Neal, Gene Hackman, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins and Elliott Gould. It seems pointless for some of the actors to be cast in these roles - true enough, Connery, Bogarde and Hopkins get decent roles and a fair bit of screen time, but was it really worth paying Redford $2,000,000 for his ten minute heroics? Could a decent actor have not handled the role for a fraction of that amount? Is Gene Hackman really the correct choice for Polish officer Major General Stanislaw Sosabowski? Should a light comic actor like Elliott Gould be doing his cigar-chomping "fun" turn in a movie as serious as this?

Luckily, the film is a big success on other levels. The cinematography is extraordinary; the music is suitably stirring; the potentially confusing story is handled with clarity and true-to-the-facts sensitivity; and amid the chaos a number of very memorable scenes emerge. A Bridge Too Far is a very good war film - maybe the biggest war film ever conceived (The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan included) - and I feel that, although it has a few casting flaws, it is in almost every other department a great, great achievement.

I applaud Attenborough for having made this movie. What a headache its filming must have been. It's accurate in a sense both material and overall.

His P 47s may be mock ups, but he used genuine World-War-II era M-4 "Sherman" tanks. (God knows how he managed to muster them.) I can't vouch for the German tank -- there is only one shown on screen and it could pass for a Panther. I also admire him for having the daring to make a movie about an unmitigated Allied defeat. As a whole, movies in this genre depict a victory on the part of the nations producing the movie in the first place.

"The Enemy Below," "Zulu," "Torpedo Bay," "Die Brucke," just to give American, British, Italian, and German examples. The list goes on. About the only time we're permitted to witness defeats for "our side" is during a heroic last stand against overwhelming odds ("Bataan") or when the defeat is the result of dirty pool ("Pearl Harbor"). But here, with no excuses, Attenborough delivers a different message entirely.

The performances are as good as can be expected from actors who have so little time to develop their characters. The battle scenes are realistic enough, without their shoving our noses into spilled intestines.

Attenborough is not a splashy director but he has a couple of things go on that are worth noticing. The Dutch citizens who first greet the Allied troops joyfully as liberators wind up being slaughtered and their cities destroyed by the war that is thrust on them. Civilian suffering tends to get short shrift unless one of them is Sofia Loren or somebody. Another worthwhile touch, a small one. The British politely take over one of those large super-scrubbed middle-class Dutch homes as a hospital -- "just for the slightly wounded, Ma'am." And as the first soldiers enter they step over two kids playing with a toy train on a thick creamy rug -- and a few drops of blood sprinkle the carpet.

Two other observations. "The Longest Day" is sometimes compared unfavorably to this film for a number of reasons, many of them justified. But "The Longest Day" was made under restrictions that had been lifted by the time this movie was produced. Zanuck wanted to show more of the slaughter at Omaha Beach but was prevented from doing so. He was similarly prevented by prevailing folkways from showing Allied troops as more brutal. And he originally filmed the closing scene of the movie not with a triumphant parade of victorious infantrymen marching up the slopes to a peppy military tune but with an forlorn, exhausted, empty grunt, sitting at the water's edge and listlessly tossing pebbles into the waves. The scene had to be deleted. A bothersome thing about "A Bridge Too Far" is that, at least as I've seen it on TV, I can't easily tell who is where. In Ryan's book it's easy enough to follow events and characters but, as edited, this movie is pretty confusing. When five of the major actors all show up together on a balcony, it came as a big surprise. I thought Connery and one or two of the others were still trapped behind German lines! I don't know whether this confusion is due to poor editing or a ministroke.

In the autumn of 1944 Field Marshall Montgomery conceived a plan called Operation Market Garden that would open a corridor across the Rhine river and allow Allied troops to attack the heartland of Germany. When he and his staff devised the plan the Allied forces were being held in their positions by both German resistance and lack of supplies. At the time it appeared the war would evolve into the same static-front contest of attrition which occured in the first world war and led to horrible loss of life on all sides.

A Bridge Too Far is such an accurate portrayal of the events which occurred during Operation Market Garden that much of the criticism for the film is veiled criticism of the plan itself and of the actions of the participants. The criticism of Montgomery is undeserved, as he was a capable, if seemingly over cautious general. The plan was the boldest of any that were made during the war and the reasons Eisenhower approved it instead of one by Montgomery's rival Patton are valid. The results of the operation have been incorrectly regarded by some as a failure, but in fact it made the defense of Germany untenable and facilitated the final push into Germany during the spring of 1945.

The film itself is well written and contains imagery of battles and troop movements of a scale that has not been equaled, at least in any realistic manner. Earlier comments have been made that Attenborough's attention to detail has resulted in an overly lengthy film but I disagree with that assessment. Any film which depicts a part of the war which directly effected the second half of the 20th century should be given as much time as necessary to tell it's story. There is only one part of the film that has no direct bearing on the narrative of events and that is the sub plot involving James Caan's character, which does add 20 minutes to the running time of 3 hours.

The scenes showing the drop of the British and American airborne forces are visually stunning and worth the price of a DVD for their own sake. Anthony Hopkins is at his best as the unenviable forward commander at the final bridge at Arnhem. My only regret is that the actual glider landings were not depicted, presumably because of the risk involved.

The film should be considered required viewing by anyone who claims to be a war film fan, or anyone interested in the events which occurred during the second world war.

I'm not a fan of hyperbole but this may be one of the greatest war movies ever made. It works on a number of levels. While being historically accurate it shows individual and group heroism without glorifying war. The players, German and Allied, are presented as human beings caught up in something bigger than themselves. No attempt is made at "jingoism" or gratuitous flag waving. It seemed to me to be refreshing free of moralistic or political statements. It simply let what happened speak for itself. For a history buff like myself it spoke volumes.

The movie is flawless. As mentioned above, it is surprisingly accurate. As one would expect from the cast, acting is first rate. Not a single scene is wasted.

This is a "must see" movie for anyone who appreciates movie making.