A Bridge Too Far Poster

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

Drama | War 
Rayting:   7.4/10 52.5K votes
Country: USA | UK
Language: English | German
Release date: 23 June 1977

Operation Market Garden, September 1944: The Allies attempt to capture several strategically important bridges in the Netherlands in the hope of breaking the German lines. However, mismanagement and poor planning result in its failure.

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rmax304823 28 November 2001

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.

stryker-5 14 February 1999

Fmovies: "Quite frankly," observes 'Boy' Browning, "this kind of thing's never been attempted before." But it has. In 1962, "The Longest Day" gave the epic star-studded treatment to the D-Day landings, and here we are, 15 years on, doing the same for the Arnhem debacle. It has to be said, the film looks great. From the gently-tinkling light fittings in the Dutch resistors' home to the beauty of the tank tracks in perspective, this is a gorgeously-photographed movie.

In 1944, the German armies were being pushed back across the Low Countries. The Allies' great strategic problem was the Rhine, the wide river which formed Germany's western border. A daring plan was conceived which would overcome the Rhine obstacle and open the road to Berlin. 'Market Garden', as the plan was codenamed, involved parachuting spearhead units onto the great bridges over the Rhine and securing them for the critical few hours it would take for an armoured column to drive up and relieve them.

It is easy now to point to the flaws in 'Market Garden', but at the time it looked like a daring and viable alternative to slogging it out against the Siegfried Line. No-one had anticipated that the Dutch people would pour out onto the streets in throngs, thinking that they had been liberated, and thus bog down the armour. The intelligence indications of heavily-equipped German units in the zone were ignored because they were inconvenient. Critically, the plan allowed for only one solitary road to be available to the Irish Guards for the all-important northward thrust. The film illustrates very effectively the way in which a plan can develop its own momentum, regardless of the shortcomings which riddle it.

The sequence of the boarding and dropping of the paratroops is a thrilling spectacle, shot on a colossal scale. The German ambush which delays the rolling of the armoured column is another terrific action sequence. Attenborough keeps tight control of a big, complex story, and interlards the large-scale stuff with 'human scale' passages, like James Caan's rescue of his buddy (incidentally, the tracking shot which follows his jeep through the forest is quite remarkable).

The fighting at Nijmegen is brilliantly-filmed. Note how the street on the British side grows increasingly littered with war debris as the battle rages. Robert Redford's assault across the river is a symphony in olive drab, leading to a wonderful moment of exhilaration.

Whether the viewer finds the singing of "Abide With Me" moving or grossly sentimental will depend on personal taste, but the subdued ending is very satisfying. 'Market Garden' may have helped shorten the war and may have achieved most of its immediate objectives, but it has to be seen as a tragic mistake.

The film is slick, professional and very pleasing on the eye. One can't help wondering, however, if this kind of 'tank opera' was worth the effort, given that "The Longest Day" had done it all so splendidly a generation earlier.

ryls 7 November 2004

A Bridge Too Far was the last of a long line of the "General's" war-films that came out of Hollywood since WWII. Afterwards, the production for these films wavered, probably because of the fact that A Bridge Too Far did not fare so well in the box office.

One of the main reasons A Bridge Too Far did not succeed as it might have was because of the American audience. The film was a) targeted towards a British audience and b) made very soon after the end of America's involvement in Vietnam. The combination of time and subject killed the film. But anyone can tell you that every time this film is shown on a TV broadcast, the ratings are quite high.

The film itself, contrary to what many would claim, IS NOT another glorification of American heroism. While there is a certain American involvement which is rightly due, the film is very much centered on the Brits at Arnhem. Afterall, they were the ones that got massacred, right? Adding to that, the initial setup of the operation (which the film took surprisingly long to cover, and probably killed off the interest of the average movie-goer/critic) was almost solely concerned with the British planning, with one or two references to the American G.I. (I guess they had to put in those mini-episodes of American servicemen to attract the American viewing public).

But enough about the bad side of the film, now onto the amazing part:

This is the first film I have seen from that generation to create a realistic picture of what the setting was like (down to the very streets and houses of Holland, which, for comparison, The Battle of the Bulge managed to get ALL wrong --- as a sidenote: if you have seen the aforementioned film, have you noticed how during the climatic battle, tanks drove across a DESERT? The battle took place in January during the WORST winter storm of Europe in Belgium... and how they managed to convince the public that if a tank is painted with an iron cross, even though it's an American M48 main battle tank built in the late 50's, that it must be a German Tiger tank... sorry for the rambling). I am most impressed by the Arnhem bridge itself (sadly, they dedicated much too short a sequence of cheering soldiers to the bridge at Grave, which is probably one of the greatest Allied success EVER for a bridge assault, up there with Remagen and Pegasus), which is shot on location with probably the most accurate feel of just how desperate the situation was (and none of Private Ryan's heroism/John Wayne-invincibility either).

Characters are excellently portrayed, although how they really acted historically might be somewhat different. Camera-work was phenomenal, given the difficulty of shooting on scene (they couldn't close down the Arnhem Bridge for extended periods of time, one must realize). The most dramatic sequence was probably the launch of the planes and the subsequent breakout by XXX Corps, which to this day remains my favourite battle sequence in any movie (yes, even when compared with the Omaha scene from Saving Private Ryan).

Like the movie, my review has become unnecessarily long. But to conclude, this film deserves a good watch, or maybe even a couple of viewings, for any serious history/war-film lover or those who just want to learn more about those who have sacraficed so much for us. 9/10.

bkoganbing 28 February 2008

A Bridge Too Far fmovies. Although A Bridge Too Far, the story of the Allied failed offensive operation in the Netherlands known as Market Garden is based on a book by Cornelius Ryan who also wrote The Longest Day, it doesn't quite reach the classic heights of that film. Maybe because the Allies don't quite reach their objective and pay a terrible price.

I'm not quite sure that Dwight D. Eisenhower did not leave World War II with the biggest migraine headache of all time, having to contend with all the egos he did there. You can read the various memoirs and books about his subordinates, both British and American and the common thread that runs through all of them is how if Ike only listened to me, the war would have been over six to nine months earlier in Europe. And the sad thing is he had to balance military with domestic political considerations for both countries.

The events of September 17-25 of 1944 are what A Bridge Too Far depict. The idea was for Allied Airbourne Divisions both American and British to take a series of bridges in the Netherlands to facilitate the Rhine crossing into the Ruhr Valley of Germany. This was and is Germany's industrial heartland. Imagine if you will an operation to take bridges across the Ohio River to invade the industrial mid-west in the USA and you have some idea. Then the ground troops would invade and link the various isolated airborne troops and everybody go across the Rhine and into Germany.

In his memoirs one the best British commanders of World War II, Sir Brian Horrocks said that if the Allies had known that the Germans had mined the Schelde estuary leading to the port of Antwerp, Market Garden might have been feasible. If they had the use of Antwerp, because they had taken it at considerable cost, a steady supply line might have been available and half of what you see in A Bridge Too Far wouldn't have happened. The other big failure of Market Garden was the lack of usable roads to get the Allied tanks over. Horrocks is played by Edward Fox in the film and he's in command of ground troops. The Airborne Commander is Frederick 'Boy' Browning played by Dirk Bogarde.

The best role in the film is that of Sean Connery as the Commander of the most forward of the Allied Airborne armies playing General Roy Urquhart. It's quite true as depicted in the film that Urquhart was prone to airsickness. Urquhart spent nine days at the bridge too far as it turned out at Arnhem. He very nearly became a prisoner of war as his very graphically shown. Had the Germans captured Urquhart he would have been the highest ranking Allied General taken prisoner since General Richard O'Connor in the African desert in 1940.

Lots of American and British name players populate director Richard Attenborough's cast. Ryan O'Neal is General James M. Gavin a hero at D-Day whose 82nd Airborne was put under British command and did their job. Robert Redford is a major who makes a heroic attempt to rescue Connery's forces. James Caan has a nice part as an Army sergeant who forces a tired army doctor played by Arthur Hill at gunpoint to operate and save his lieutenant's life.

One of the best scenes in the film is Laurence Olivier as a Dutch doctor who is treating Allied wounded at Liv Ullman's house who goes and asks for a truce to get his wounded into the tender care of the Nazis. S.S. General Hardy Kruger would just as soon kill them all, but Maximilian Schell as German commander Bittner allows the truce.

One thing I loved about A Bridge

arnold2ice 4 July 2004

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.

dr_foreman 23 January 2004

"Private Ryan" may have served up more blood and guts, but it had a fanciful plot and it didn't really tell audiences anything about D-Day. By contrast, "A Bridge Too Far" is like something the History Channel would produce; it's full of maps and narration and endless tactical discussions that, amazingly enough, really held my attention - and really enlightened me about the battle of Market Garden.

It helps that the ensemble cast is great - perhaps the best ever assembled - and the characterization, though a bit thin (as in most war movies), is certainly good enough considering how heavily the plot dominates. The film's one major weakness is that it telegraphs the battle's result from too early on; all the smart characters think that the operation will be a disaster, and lo and behold, it's a disaster.

I love this movie anyway, maybe because of the production style, which is more realistic than the cornball war films of previous decades but not quite so over-the-top as "Private Ryan." The battles are both thrilling and terrifying, a nicely struck balance. When the end credits roll, I always feel tired - like the characters - which is a testament to how involving (and effective) the movie is.

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