Post by london777 on Apr 7, 2020 21:19:10 GMT
Bridges are a natural subject for movies. Firstly, many of them are beautiful, and make very decorative furniture for the screen. Secondly, the idea of a bridge carries a symbolic meaning, such as "build bridges, not walls" that may be appropriate to the theme of the film, whether reaching out to the "other", reconciliation, or whatever.
More specifically, bridges may have a strategic importance in conflict, so they often feature in war movies. And they can be perilous if misused, so handy for suicides, or for falling from in shootouts. I shall illustrate all these points in my nominated films to kick off this thread. No doubt your encyclopedic knowledge of movies will add many more ways in which bridges become relevant.
Let's start the easy way with war movies.
I guess The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) dir: David Lean will be the first "bridge" movie to come to most people's mind. A US/UK co-production, it was included on the American Film Institute's list of best American films ever made, while the British Film Institute voted it the 11th greatest British film of the 20th century,so (nearly) everyone was (eventually) happy despite a fraught development and some narrowly escaped calamities during and after filming.
An even more expensive project was Battle of Neretva (1969) co-written and directed by Veljko Bulajić, who has directed the four most-watched Yugoslavian movies of all time. A resistance fighter himself, who survived an Italian concentration camp, he was chosen by Tito to direct this "no-expense spared" national epic to rival Bondarchuk's "War and Peace" of the previous year. The story concerns the Axis attempt to surround and annihilate the bulk of Tito's Partizans, and the escape of many of them through a desperate rearguard action. It is odd that they chose what was effectively a defeat as the subject of their national epic, but then the British did (and still are doing) the same with Dunkirk. A raft of international stars, such as Welles, Franco Nero, Yul Brynner, Curt Jürgens, Sergei Bondarchuk, Hardy Krüger and Sylva Koscina, turned up, attracted by generous remuneration. Bernard Herrmann wrote the score for the English-language version, and Pablo Picasso designed a poster (for free). This all sounds like a recipe for a fiasco, but the flick not only turned out well but avoided giving offence to the many different nationalities depicted fighting tooth and nail. The climax comes when the trapped partizans have to cross the River Neretva under heavy fire to attain relative safety. It is fifty years since I watched it so I cannot remember how many bridges were used, but I will quote Wikipedia as an illustration of how money was splurged on this project:
A railway bridge over the Neretva in Jablanica was destroyed. Director Bulajić's justification for demolishing the bridge rather than getting the shots in studio was that it would become a tourist attraction. The bridge was thus blown but because none of the footage was usable due to the billowing smoke that made it impossible to see anything, it was decided that the bridge should be repaired and destroyed again. The problem with the excessive smoke occurred again and the scenes of the bridge being blown up in the film were shot using a table-size replica at a sound stage in Prague.
A more modest war movie I have always liked more than most is The Bridge at Remagen (1969) dir: John Guillermin. Unlike "Kwai" which is total fiction, this is based on a real event, though it does take considerable liberties. Nor was the bridge's capture as significant as it seemed at the time, as it only survived a further ten days before collapsing, by when the Allies had secured better crossing points elsewhere.
In Die Brücke (1959) dir: Bernhard Wicki, a group of schoolboys aged about 16 are conscripted to defend the village bridge. It is the last days of the war and the bridge has nil strategic value, but they defend it to the last man despite the fact that regular soldiers are streaming across, fleeing the approaching US Army.
The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) dir: Mark Robson is a more conventional "gung-ho" flag-waver than the previous movies I have mentioned, complete with (marital) love story featuring Grace Kelly, but does have the decency to feature a downbeat ending.
History in the West has been written with a pro-Christian bias, so our next "bridge battle" has often been described as the most decisive in European history. At the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (on the outskirts of Rome) AD312, the future Constantine the Great defeated a rival emperor, Maxentius, and supposedly converted the Roman Empire to Christianity by way of thanks. The truth is, as usual, more complex, but that did not worry the Italian sword-and-sandal crowd of the 1960s. Costantino il Grande (1961) dir: and Irving Rapper stars Slovakian Jew Cornel Wilde as an unconvincing Constantine, and shows his rise to power, punctuated by squabbles over scantily dressed women (including Brit Belinda Lee), and culminating in the decisive battle at the bridge. Whichever emperor secured the bridge and was first into Rome would surely secure the Senate's approval. For a battle which historically involved around 50,000 troops, they were a bit short on extras. Where's Tito when you need him?
A Bridge Too Far (1977) dir: Richard Attenborough tells the story of the disastrous "Operation Market Garden", an attempt to use airborne troops to seize various key bridges behind the front line to thwart any German retreat and facilitate the Allied advance. As more than one bridge was targeted, I have always assumed that the title was metaphorical rather than literal, meaning a plan that was too ambitious.
There must be dozens of other "bridges in war" movies, or sequences. What have you got?
More specifically, bridges may have a strategic importance in conflict, so they often feature in war movies. And they can be perilous if misused, so handy for suicides, or for falling from in shootouts. I shall illustrate all these points in my nominated films to kick off this thread. No doubt your encyclopedic knowledge of movies will add many more ways in which bridges become relevant.
Let's start the easy way with war movies.
I guess The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) dir: David Lean will be the first "bridge" movie to come to most people's mind. A US/UK co-production, it was included on the American Film Institute's list of best American films ever made, while the British Film Institute voted it the 11th greatest British film of the 20th century,so (nearly) everyone was (eventually) happy despite a fraught development and some narrowly escaped calamities during and after filming.
An even more expensive project was Battle of Neretva (1969) co-written and directed by Veljko Bulajić, who has directed the four most-watched Yugoslavian movies of all time. A resistance fighter himself, who survived an Italian concentration camp, he was chosen by Tito to direct this "no-expense spared" national epic to rival Bondarchuk's "War and Peace" of the previous year. The story concerns the Axis attempt to surround and annihilate the bulk of Tito's Partizans, and the escape of many of them through a desperate rearguard action. It is odd that they chose what was effectively a defeat as the subject of their national epic, but then the British did (and still are doing) the same with Dunkirk. A raft of international stars, such as Welles, Franco Nero, Yul Brynner, Curt Jürgens, Sergei Bondarchuk, Hardy Krüger and Sylva Koscina, turned up, attracted by generous remuneration. Bernard Herrmann wrote the score for the English-language version, and Pablo Picasso designed a poster (for free). This all sounds like a recipe for a fiasco, but the flick not only turned out well but avoided giving offence to the many different nationalities depicted fighting tooth and nail. The climax comes when the trapped partizans have to cross the River Neretva under heavy fire to attain relative safety. It is fifty years since I watched it so I cannot remember how many bridges were used, but I will quote Wikipedia as an illustration of how money was splurged on this project:
A railway bridge over the Neretva in Jablanica was destroyed. Director Bulajić's justification for demolishing the bridge rather than getting the shots in studio was that it would become a tourist attraction. The bridge was thus blown but because none of the footage was usable due to the billowing smoke that made it impossible to see anything, it was decided that the bridge should be repaired and destroyed again. The problem with the excessive smoke occurred again and the scenes of the bridge being blown up in the film were shot using a table-size replica at a sound stage in Prague.
A more modest war movie I have always liked more than most is The Bridge at Remagen (1969) dir: John Guillermin. Unlike "Kwai" which is total fiction, this is based on a real event, though it does take considerable liberties. Nor was the bridge's capture as significant as it seemed at the time, as it only survived a further ten days before collapsing, by when the Allies had secured better crossing points elsewhere.
In Die Brücke (1959) dir: Bernhard Wicki, a group of schoolboys aged about 16 are conscripted to defend the village bridge. It is the last days of the war and the bridge has nil strategic value, but they defend it to the last man despite the fact that regular soldiers are streaming across, fleeing the approaching US Army.
The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) dir: Mark Robson is a more conventional "gung-ho" flag-waver than the previous movies I have mentioned, complete with (marital) love story featuring Grace Kelly, but does have the decency to feature a downbeat ending.
History in the West has been written with a pro-Christian bias, so our next "bridge battle" has often been described as the most decisive in European history. At the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (on the outskirts of Rome) AD312, the future Constantine the Great defeated a rival emperor, Maxentius, and supposedly converted the Roman Empire to Christianity by way of thanks. The truth is, as usual, more complex, but that did not worry the Italian sword-and-sandal crowd of the 1960s. Costantino il Grande (1961) dir: and Irving Rapper stars Slovakian Jew Cornel Wilde as an unconvincing Constantine, and shows his rise to power, punctuated by squabbles over scantily dressed women (including Brit Belinda Lee), and culminating in the decisive battle at the bridge. Whichever emperor secured the bridge and was first into Rome would surely secure the Senate's approval. For a battle which historically involved around 50,000 troops, they were a bit short on extras. Where's Tito when you need him?
A Bridge Too Far (1977) dir: Richard Attenborough tells the story of the disastrous "Operation Market Garden", an attempt to use airborne troops to seize various key bridges behind the front line to thwart any German retreat and facilitate the Allied advance. As more than one bridge was targeted, I have always assumed that the title was metaphorical rather than literal, meaning a plan that was too ambitious.
There must be dozens of other "bridges in war" movies, or sequences. What have you got?