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The recorded message for the show times at the theater sounded rather enthusiastic for screening “A Bridge To Far.” The most impressive statement from the theater was: “It is one of the most expensive films ever made… Joseph E. Levine spent more than $26 million on it.” While Joseph E. Levine may have spent that amount, if he did, $26 million was not enough. And for a nice, intelligent little war picture, an additional $4 to $5 million would go a long way and he could junk this one and the $30 million and change would have been well spent.
Because “A Bridge Too Far” is a collage of self-indulgence, mediocrity, monotony, violence, and sadism, one comes to the conclusion that the director put two or even three bridges too far. The overuse of violence in the film makes the audience so desensitized to it that when the movie ends all they can expect is blood and gore. The picture is long, expensive, filled with stars, and quite boring. A simplistic analysis yet at the same time disheartening. It is an epic, and no. It is actually the longest B-grade war film ever made.
The combination of B movies and patton makes an intelligent and well spent war epic. A bridge too far, on the other hand, is full of cliches, and, unlike the B movie explanation, I did not pull the term ‘cliches’ out of the air; it earns its name.
Goldman’s screenplays are very different from the polish images. They are filled with brass aristocrats, charming germans, good natured irish, amusingly stoic englishmen, and the brave golden haired dutch woman who shelters the injured. To add on, there is also the polish general who’s first scene is a polish joke.
This isn’t surprising given that it seems that using up a minute here or there, spending on screen time, has been shredded with yet another explosion. Special effects, mostly in the fake department, are so unbelievably phony (pay thorough attention to the airplanes) that Levine must have really economized in the effects division. We see the stars are decently herded into the frames for their (a) Introductory Scene, (b) Big Scene, and (c) Whatever Did Happen to Him? Scene. We are met with a mix of seasoned veterans and timid children, jaded physicians with a touch of a hero and foolish frontline generals, and yes, even an incident where the heard battle wounded starts to sing Abide With Me for no particular reason.
These are all ancient events. There is no innovation or fresh insight to the topic from Levine and his director Richard Attenborough’s side. The movie “A Bridge Too Far” is set with the background of a historical event which could have occurred three decades back, and most likely would have been better done, only that studio executives in the past would have shot it down.
It’s a 170-minute downer about Operation Market Garden which is a poorly planned attempt to drop 35,000 paratroopers behind German lines. But why would anyone make a film about a failure of that magnitude? (Or, as someone once put it regarding “Funny Lady,” why make a film about suffering through a second divorce?)
I have not yet addressed the acting and I have some space left, so I guess I must. Well, it ought to be recorded first of all that Ryan O’Neal is so awful in this production that he should have been fired and the movie restarted from scratch. O’Neal plays Gen. James M. Gavin during his teenage years. He is missing in not having age, authority, wisdom and to make matters worse, he sounds like he is about to sob.
That’s just awful. In his role as a Polish general, Gene Hackman gives a performance that seems to want to submerge itself. The Germans (Maximilian Schell and Hardy Kruger) take up where previous generations of movie Germans left off – they move as if all their joints are in splints. With regard to the British actors, they aren’t too bad in this regard: Sean Connery and Michael Caine are decent enough while Edward Fox has the, er… I was going to say ‘best’, but it would be more accurate to say, ‘only good’ scene in the movie.
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