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Dirk Bogarde, Sean Connery, Ryan O'Neal and Gene Hackman are among the Generals aiming to go A Bridge Too Far |
Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Dirk Bogarde (Lt-Gen Frederick “Boy” Browning), James
Caan (Staff Sgt Eddie Dohun), Michael Caine (Lt-Col J.O.E. Vandeleur), Sean
Connery (Maj Gen Roy Urguhart), Edward Fox (Lt Gen Brian Horrocks), Elliot
Gould (Col Robert Stout), Gene Hackman (Maj Gen Stanislaw Sosabowski), Anthony
Hopkins (Lt Col John Frost), Hardy Krüger (SS Maj Gen Karl Ludwig), Laurence
Olivier (Dr. Jan Spaander), Ryan O’Neal (Brig Gen James Gavin), Robert Redford
(Major Julian Cook), Maximilian Schell (SS Gen Wilhelm Bittrich), Liv Ullman
(Kate ter Horst), Michael Byrne (Lt Col Giles Vandeleur), Denholm Elliott (RAF
Officer), Jeremy Kemp (Briefing Officer), Wolfgang Preiss (Feldmarchall Gerd
von Rundstedt), Stephen Moore (Maj Robert Steele)
You’ve got to love a good war film. In fact, there are few
things more cinematic than the old-school, star laden Hollywood war film. A Bridge Too Far is for me one of the
finest examples of this genre, and it’s a film I come back to time and time
again. Is it perfect? No of course it isn’t – in fact I probably love this film
more than some of the people actually in it do. But it’s a damn fine piece of
big-screen, big-budget film-making, and it’s got a cast of stars. And more than
perhaps any other film of this genre, it’s a film about how overwhelmingly
awful and gut-wrenching war is. This is a film about a defeat – and not the
sort of triumphant defeat that Dunkirk
feels like. It’s just a gut-punch. The Allies threw the dice big time, and they
lost.
The Battle of Arnhem was one of those “end the war by
Christmas” plans. The brainchild of British war-hero Field Marshall Montgomery
(noticeably absent from the film), Operation
Market Garden was a lightning strike into the heart of the Ruhr to capture
Germany’s industrial capability. This involved a series of paratrooper drops
into towns in the Netherlands, culminating in Arnhem, to cross the Rhine. While
the paratroopers seized key bridges, British Tank Division XXX Corp would power
through, cross the bridges and into Germany. It was bold, daring and radical.
It was a disaster. Arnhem, far from being undefended, was being used as a rest
place for a Waffen-SS Panzer division. The British paratroopers found
themselves not seizing a lightly defended bridge, but fighting a tank division with
machine guns and limited supplies. Meanwhile XXX Corp’s progress became bogged
down in traffic jams and higher than expected German resistance.
It’s quite something to make a war film about possibly the
biggest military disaster on the Western Front during the Second World War. The
entire plan is a misconceived tactical blunder, and the film never shies away
from this, demonstrating time and again the numerous errors that led to it:
from Generals ignoring reconnaissance that suggests this won’t be a cake walk,
to paratroopers failing to seize bridges quickly, to tanks crawling down
crowded roads, fighting every step of the way. Alongside all this, the film
never loses track of the horrifying impact of war on both soldiers and civilians
caught in the crossfire. It’s a huge budget, all-action, anti-war film.
Richard Attenborough is the perfect marshal for this film.
He has the experience and understanding of scope to handle the action scenes.
At the time, this film was possibly the most expensive film ever made. Not only
that, it was independently funded – producer Joseph E. Levine thought the film
was so important he pumped millions of pounds of his own money into it. The
attention to detail is extraordinary – the film consulted nearly every single
surviving commander from the battle on the script – and all the stops were
pulled out creating the military features of the film.
This is of course particularly striking now as we know
everything in the film is real – no special effects in those days. If you see
it in the film, then you know that it was really there. In the sequence showing
the planes taking off to deliver the paratroopers to their destinations, there
were so many planes in the air that Attenborough could literally claim to
command the world’s seventh largest air force. Every military blow of the
battle is carefully reconstructed. The tactics are carefully explained and
followed. Attenborough can shoot compelling action.
But what makes the film so good (for me anyway) is the way
the heart-breaking horror of war never gets lost. In all this action, we are
always shown the cost. Attenborough will frequently cut back to the
after-effects – several times we hear wounded soldiers whimpering on
smoke-filled, body-littered battlefields. Many acts of courage (on both sides)
by individual soldiers result only in pointless, gut-wrenching deaths. Arnhem
isn’t just damaged by the battle, it’s flattened. The impact on the civilian
population is terrible – in a powerful sequence, we see characters we were
introduced to earlier mercilessly caught in the crossfire of the German tanks.
We return continually to locations increasingly shredded by weapons fire. More
and more soldiers are wounded – some horrifically. Near the end, the remaining British
paratroopers, encircled and surrendering, sing a deeply moving quiet rendition
of Abide With Me. No one could come
out of this wanting to go to war.
Attenborough’s humanity is key to the film’s success. It
helps as well that he is a brilliant actor’s director. Want to dispel any doubt
on the horrors of Arnhem –then train the camera on the Laurence Olivier’s tear-stained
face as he drives through the destroyed streets. Want to understand the
sacrifices and the courage? Well just let Anthony Hopkins – simply excellent as
the commander of the only forces to reach the bridge at Arnhem – with calm, restrained
Britishness request support and supplies late in the film as his men are
butchered around him. It’s a film full of brilliant moments of acting like
that, where Attenborough points the camera at them and lets them act.
The sequences around Arnhem and the British paratroopers
there are the heart of the film. Sean Connery is terrific as Major General Roy
Urquhart, commander of the British paratroopers. His growing frustration as
events spiral far out of his control is a great contrast with his initial
professional confidence. Gene Hackman, as commander of the Polish forces
(slightly odd casting but good once you tune up to it), gets the role of the
“one man talking sense” who can smell disaster early on, but works harder than
anyone to get the plan to work. A number of the regular soldiers in Arnhem are faces
the film returns to again and again – giving us people to relate to as their
numbers are increasingly decimated by the savage, desperate combat. John
Addison’s score also helps a huge amount with building the emotion in these
scenes.
The Arnhem sequences are so good that the other sequences
around the American paratroopers feel like they come from a slightly different
movie. It doesn’t help that the likes of Elliot Gould are playing slightly
clichéd “Brooklyn Yankee” types, chomping cigars and ribbing the stiff-upper-lip
Brits. Ryan O’Neal as General Gavin is slightly dull. The XXX Corp material is
a little dry (essentially driving up a road or waiting), although Edward Fox is
superb (and BAFTA-winning) as their charismatic commander Lt Gen Brian
Horrocks. Attenborough puts together at least one terrific set-piece tank
battle on the road – but it’s not quite enough.
The two biggest American stars are also given the feel-good,
up-beat material. James Caan gets the best part in what is effectively a stand-alone
story of a Staff Sergeant going to impossible lengths to save the life of his
Captain (Caan had his choice of part and chose well). Robert Redford is a
little too starry (bizarrely in a film full of stars!) as a Major tasked to
seize the vital bridge at Nijmagen via a daylight river-crossing. This sequence
feels like it’s been put in the film to (a) give us something to cheer and (b)
to allow an American victory for the box office. Of course, we need the biggest
star in the world at the time to play the most straight-forward heroic part!
The film does have a tendency to shuffle its characters into
“good” and “bad”. So after Redford seizes the bridge, the character sent to
tell him that XXX Corp won’t be rushing across to Arnhem after all isn’t
Caine’s Vandeleur, but a nameless Colonel played by Polanski’s villainous Ross
from Macbeth himself, John Stride.
The most sympathetic generals and commanders are all (coincidentally) the
people who served as military advisors on the film.
On the other hand, the film ends up laying most of the
“blame” on Dirk Bogarde’s Lt Gen Browning. Browning’s widow, Daphne du Maurier,
threatened to sue the film-makers for the portrayal of Browning here (she got
an apology). Browning is portrayed as the ultimate “non-boat rocker” – over-confident
and arrogant, he disregards intelligence suggesting the Arnhem plan is dangerous,
seems shocked and clueless once the scale of the disaster is revealed, and by
the end of the film seems to be most interested in positioning himself as
always opposed to the plan in the first place. Bogarde (the only actor in the
film who actually served in Market Garden) was similarly angry when he saw the
film – and he has a point. It’s grossly unfair.
It’s a problem with this film and it does annoy me. The
parts not set in Arnhem are not as memorable or compelling as the rest. But
huge chunks of the film are brilliant, and never fail to move or (sometimes)
excite me. Its anti-war stance is striking. The acting from the cast is very
good across the board – say what you like, cast every part with a star and you
never get confused about who is who. Attenborough also draws great performances
from the non-stars – Stephen Moore is a particular stand-out as a signals man
unwilling to voice his doubts about the equipment (and who pays a heavy price).
I can watch A Bridge
Too Far at any time. I always love it. It’s a film of great moments and
performances. It carries real emotional weight. Attenborough is a very good
director of actors, but also a skilled commander of scale. It’s a film that
gets emotion in there. It’s a film that isn’t afraid to present a military
disaster. It doesn’t demonise the Germans. Sure it plays goodies and baddies
with the Allies, and parts of it to drag on a bit too much or deal with cliché.
But at its best is the core of a great film. I love it. It’s a favourite. And
always will be.
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