A Bridge Too Far (film)

Operation Market Garden envisions 35,000 men being flown 300 miles (480 km) from air bases in England and dropped behind enemy lines in the Netherlands. Two divisions of US paratroopers are responsible for securing the road and bridges as far as Nijmegen. A British division, under Major-General Roy Urquhart, is to land near Arnhem and hold both sides of the bridge there, backed by a brigade of Polish paratroopers under General Stanisław Sosabowski. XXX Armoured Corps are to push up the road over the bridges captured by the American paratroopers and reach Arnhem two days after the drop.

The British are to land using gliders near Arnhem. When General Urquhart briefs his officers, some of them are surprised they are going to attempt a landing so far from the bridge. The consensus among the British top brass is that resistance will consist entirely of "Hitler Youth or old men on bicycles". Although reconnaissance photos show German tanks at Arnhem, General Browning dismisses them and also ignores reports from the Dutch underground, not wanting to tell Field Marshal Montgomery since many previous airborne operations had been cancelled. Although British officers note that the portable radios are not likely to work for the long distance from the drop zone to the Arnhem Bridge, they choose not to convey their concerns up a chain of command intent on silencing all doubt.

Speed is the vital factor. Arnhem's is the crucial bridge, the last means of escape for the German forces in the Netherlands and an excellent route to Germany for Allied forces. The road to it, however, is only a single highway linking the various key bridges – trucks and tanks have to squeeze to the shoulder to pass. The road is also elevated, causing anything moving on the road to stand out.

The airborne drops catch the Germans by surprise and there is little resistance. Most of the men come down safely and assemble quickly, but the Son bridge is blown up by the Germans just before it can be secured. Then, soon after landing, troubles beset Urquhart's division. Many of the Jeeps either do not arrive by their gliders or are shot up in an ambush. Their radio sets are also useless.

XXX Corps' progress to relieve them is slowed by German resistance, the narrowness of the highway and the need to construct a Bailey bridge to replace the one destroyed at Son. They are then halted at Nijmegen. There, soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division perform a dangerous daylight river crossing in flimsy canvas-and-wood assault boats and the Nijmegen bridge is captured, but XXX Corps has to wait several hours for infantry to secure the town.

The Germans close in on the isolated British paratroops occupying part of Arnhem at the bridge, although armored attacks are repelled. Urquhart had been separated from his men and the supply drop zones overrun by the Germans. Finally, Sosabowski's troops, held up by fog in England, enter the battle too late to reinforce the British. The Germans allow a brief ceasefire in order for the Allies to evacuate injured from Arnhem. After days of house-to-house fighting, pitted against crack SS infantry and panzers, the outgunned troops are captured or forced to withdraw to Oosterbeek. Urquhart receives orders to retreat, while the other Allied commanders blame the various difficulties encountered for their failure to provide the needed support. Arnhem itself is indiscriminately razed in the fighting.

Urquhart escapes the battle zone with fewer than a fifth of his original ten thousand troops; those who were too badly injured to flee stay behind and cover the withdrawal. On arriving at British headquarters, Urquhart confronts Browning about his personal sentiments regarding the operation: does he think it went as well as was being claimed by Montgomery? Browning's reply contradicts his earlier optimism: "Well, as you know, I've always thought that we tried to go a bridge too far."

In the film's final scene, Kate ter Horst, whose elegant home was used as an overflow hospital by the British, abandons its ruins. Passing through the front yard, now converted to a graveyard for fallen troops, she and her children trek along the high riverbank with an elderly doctor, pulling a few possessions in a cart, while wounded British troops sing Abide with Me as they await capture.

Air filming was done in the first weeks of September 1976, culminating in a series of air drops of a total of 1,000 men.[16] Supplies were dropped from a number of Dakota aircraft. The Dakotas were gathered by the film company Joseph E. Levine Presents Incorporated. All aircraft were required to be CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) or FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) registered and licensed to carry passengers. An original deal for the purchase of ten fell through when two airframes were rejected as passenger configured without the necessary jump doors. Eleven Dakotas were procured. Two ex-Portuguese Air Force, 6153 and 6171 (N9984Q and N9983Q), and two from Air Djibouti, operating from Djibouti in French Somaliland, F-OCKU and F-OCKX (N9985Q and N9986Q) were purchased by Joseph E. Levine. Three Danish Air Force K-685, K-687, and K-688, and four Finnish Air Force C-47s, DO-4, DO-7, DO-10 and DO-12, were loaned for the duration of the parachute filming.

Aircraft 6171 doubled as the camera ship on most formations, with a camouflaged Piper Aztec, G-AWDI. A camera was mounted in the astrodome, one on the port upper mainplane surface, with a third camera on the outside of the forward port cabin window and a fourth under the aircraft centre section. In addition, centre escape hatches were removed to make additional camera ports available, provided that no troops were aboard during filming. A second Aztec, G-ASND, was a backup camera ship on some shots, but it was not camouflaged. An Alouette, G-BDWN, was also employed. After a mishap with G-AWDI, two locally hired Cessna 172s, PH-GVP and PH-ADF, were also used. Ten Horsa glider replicas were built, but a windstorm damaged almost all of them. Seven or eight were hastily repaired for the shoot. The replica gliders were tail-heavy and required a support post under the rear fuselage, with camera angles carefully chosen to avoid revealing this. Dakota 6153 was fitted with tow gear and Horsa replicas were towed at high speed, though none went airborne. A two-seat Blaník sailplane, provided by a member of the London Gliding Club, Dunstable, was towed aloft for the interior takeoff shots.

Shooting of a scene in Deventer on May 18, 1976. German vehicles are crossing the bridge.

Four Harvards portrayed American and German fighters. Their original identities were PH-KLU, PH-BKT, B-64 and B-118, the former two aircraft loaned by the Royal Netherlands Air Force. These were flown by members of the Gilze Rijen Aero Club, which also provided an Auster III, PH-NGK, which depicted an Auster V, RT607, in wartime camouflage. Spitfire Mk. IX, MH434, depicting a photo reconnaissance variant, coded AC-S, was lent by the Hon. Patrick Lindsay, and was flown by aerobatic champion Neil Williams.[17]

Sufficient American tanks, jeeps, and trucks of World War II vintage were found because many of the vehicles were being discarded from European military (almost entirely reserve) units, especially from Greece and Turkey.

The scenes around the "Arnhem" bridge were shot in Deventer, where a similar bridge over the IJssel was still available. Although a replica of the original road bridge in Arnhem existed, by the mid-1970s modern urban development surrounded it, making it impossible to use as a setting for a 1940s city. A few scenes were shot in Zutphen, where the old municipality house and the main church can be seen.

In order to keep costs down, all the star-name actors agreed to participate on a "favoured-nation" basis (i.e. they would all receive the same weekly fee), which in this case was $250,000 per week (the 2012 equivalent of $1,008,250 or £642,000).[18]

Shooting of the American-led assault on the Bridge at Nijmegen was dubbed the "Million-Dollar Hour". Because of heavy traffic, the crew had permission to film on the bridge only between eight and nine o'clock on October 3, 1976. Failure to complete the scene would have necessitated rescheduling at a cost—including Redford's overtime—of at least a million dollars. For this reason, Attenborough insisted that all actors playing corpses keep their eyes closed.[5]

After United Artists agreed to pay $6 million for US and Canada distribution rights,[19] the film was a box office disappointment in North America. But it performed well in Europe.[20]

Critics agreed that the film was impressively staged[21] and historically accurate, although many found it too long and too repetitive.[22] Vincent Canby of The New York Times said further, "The movie is massive, shapeless, often unexpectedly moving, confusing, sad, vivid and very, very long."[23]

James Caan and Anthony Hopkins were cited by many critics for the excellence of their performances in a film with hundreds of speaking roles and cameos by many of the period's top actors.[22]

Officers Urquhart and Horrocks acted as military advisers to the film, adding to its historical accuracy. However, some reviewers suggested that the film contains historical inaccuracies and needs to be viewed as a ‘Hollywood’ interpretation of events. Robin Neillands commented, "A countless number of veterans have urged me to ignore most of the story in the film A Bridge Too Far".[24]

Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, describing it as

"such an exercise in wretched excess, such a mindless series of routine scenes, such a boringly violent indulgence in all the blood and guts and moans they could find, that by the end we're prepared to speculate that maybe Levine went two or even three bridges too far. The movie's big and expensive and filled with stars, but it's not an epic. It's the longest B-grade war movie ever made."[25]

Gene Siskel gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote,

"More often than not, A Bridge Too Far isn't a story; it's a parade of famous faces. As for the battle footage, it is more often tedious than glamorous. The paratroop landing provides a spectacular five minutes. Other action footage is routine."[26]

John Pym of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that "by the end of this extravagant film, we have a fair idea of the who-did-what logistics of a costly military operation. The root problem with A Bridge Too Far, however, is that the top-heavy complement of stars never allows for any focus of attention."[27]

Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote,

"In strictly cinematic terms, the appeal of A Bridge Too Far is easy to state: it is spectacular in the size and range of its effects, earnestly well-acted by a starry and able cast, well-paced and swift despite its length, and marked by an evident attempt to give the balanced truth of a tragic episode from history."[28]

Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "an unusually conscientious and impressive war epic" that justified its high budget

"in terms of careful period recreation, visual spectacle (the sequences depicting paratroop landings are particularly awesome), the mixture of exciting combat episodes with vivid human interest vignettes, an effort to establish a coherent, many-faceted view of a complicated and ill-fated military adventure, and a generally superior level of filmmaking intelligence and craftsmanship."[29]

The film has a 64% score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 25 reviews, with an average grade of 6.11 out of 10.[30]

A "making-of" documentary included in a special edition DVD of A Bridge Too Far says that, at the time of its release, "the film was shunned by American critics and completely ignored at Oscar time for daring to expose the fatal inadequacies of the Allied campaign."[31]

To promote the film, scriptwriter William Goldman wrote a book titled Story of A Bridge Too Far as a favour to Joseph E. Levine.[32] It was published in December 1977 and divided into three sections:

1. "Reflections on Filmmaking in General and A Bridge Too Far". This section features some essays later reprinted in Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade.[32]
2. "A Bridge Too Far: The Story in Pictures" – 150 sequential photographs from the film with Goldman's captions.
3. "Stars and Heroes" – some of the movie's actors and the men they play tell Goldman their thoughts on the film and the battle.

• Arthur, Max, Forgotten Voices of the Second World War: A new history of world war two in the words of the men and women who were there, Ebury Press, 2004 ISBN 0091897351 OCLC 57691717
• Goldman, William (1977), William Goldman's Story of a Bridge Too Far, Coronet Books, ISBN 978-0-340-22340-6 [NB: Book has no page numbers]
• Ryan, Cornelius (1974), A Bridge Too Far, London: Hamish Hamilton, ISBN 978-0-340-19941-1
• Waddy, Colonel John (1977), "The Making of a Bridge Too Far", After the Battle, London: Plaistow Press (17): 10–34
• Ambrose, Stephen E. & Immerman, Richard H., Ike's spies: Eisenhower and the espionage establishment, University Press of Mississippi, 1999. ISBN 0-385-14493-8 OCLC 6863017

• Theirs Is the Glory (1946 British film about the Battle of Arnhem)

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• A Bridge Too Far at IMDb
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• A Bridge Too Far at the TCM Movie Database
• A Bridge Too Far at the American Film Institute Catalog
• "A Bridge Too Far". at British Cinema Greats. Archived from the original on 2008-03-29. Retrieved 2007-02-28.