War movies can take themselves too seriously. A more recent example is "Gods and Generals" based on the U.S. Civil War. It is very self-consciously an epic. We're supposed to appreciate the weighty subject matter. What could be more weighty than war? No one questions the importance of this stuff. But a movie that elaborately lays out the details of the engagements and skirmishes, as if it all entertains in a movie theater, is depressing.
We know that wars are fought by human beings whose actions result in lives lost and fortunes changed. War is by definition a breakdown in our processes for trying to live in an orderly world. How much more constructive the energies of these people would be, were they chaneled constructively. It has been said that people who have been involved in war don't think about the winning or losing - they just realize all the destruction.
Reflecting the decade when it was made
"A Bridge Too Far" came out in 1977. It was based on a 1974 book. The movie's director was Richard Attenborough. A history-based movie can tell us just as much about the time period in which the movie was made. "A Bridge Too Far" is one of those WWII movies. All the familiar trappings: bombs, tanks, grenades. The movie is distinguished for showing failure by the Allies.
It's understandable that a 1977 movie would be made in such a way: We had reached consensus about our failure in Viet Nam. We were in a funk over that. A movie about the shortcomings of war was understandable. We sure got it in "A Bridge Too Far" and we truly get dragged through it. The length of the movie makes it grate on us. The movie tells the story of "Operation Market Garden." It would be a household name had we succeeded. The operation was intended to allow the Allies to break through German lines and seize several bridges in the occupied Netherlands, such as at Arnhem, with the objective of outflanking German defenses in order to end the war by Christmas of 1944.
The setting is September of 1944. We were supposedly buoyed by our success on D-Day, though I have never accepted that it was a complete success. We were ravaged too much by casualties and we got bogged down quite badly as we sought to advance. Oliver Stone suggests that the Red Army coming from the East was the main source of doom for the Nazis. Germans especially feared being overrun by the Russians who I guess were quite nasty dudes, not like the affable "Hogan" in "Hogan's Heroes."
Field Marshall Montgomery was a primary designer. The plan was to parachute large numbers of troops into occupied Holland. The troops could capture a series of important bridges. Eventually the troops would press on into Germany and destroy the Nazis' munitions plants. Montgomery was supremely confident but things went errant. So we see the unfolding tragedy.
"A Bridge Too Far" has been compared to "The Longest Day" which focused on D-Day. "The Longest Day" came out previously and was rather oddly in black and white. Both movies used subtitles for the bad guys. So many movies gave us a German accent as if that were authentic!
Remember the purpose of movies
"The Longest Day" seems more palatable as a movie, than "Bridge Too Far." I remember a key word in a review of the Civil War movie "Gods and Generals." That word is "turgid." Let's copy and paste that word for "A Bridge Too Far." The moviemakers feel as though the subject material is so epic and important, we need an extremely drawn-out movie to depict it. A movie is not a documentary. It's not a sermon. The movie "Gettysburg" is vastly better than "Gods and Generals" because it seizes the best elements of drama. It depicts a handful of engagements as representing the whole tapestry of a particular chapter of the war. It's not giving a history lesson, rather it uses drama to make us appreciate the Gettysburg campaign. We see a handful of key characters as they behaved over just three days of the war.
A World War II movie can be made in the same way. Guys like me who grew up with the "Combat" TV series (with Vic Morrow) hardly need to see more grenades exploding and tanks getting blown up. We get all that already.
The cynical and defeatist '70s, the Murphy's Law decade, was an apt time for "Bridge Too Far" to come out. It was the decade when Jimmy Carter's attempt to free the hostages failed when our helicopters had mechanical breakdowns. It was the decade of the pet rock and of the Comet Kohoutek which experts said would be so bright, it would make nighttime seem like day. We got disco and the Gong Show, plus Euell Gibbons whose claim to fame was writing about edible plants in the wild.
Attenborough with "Bridge" oversees a WWII movie that seems wrapped in an anti-war subtext. The movie has been praised as being ahead of its time for cinematography. Seeing it today, I see nothing to distinguish it in this regard. Roger Ebert thought the special effects with the planes were laughable. I'll have to watch more carefully next time. I'll also have to watch more carefully in order to spot John Ratzenberger as a lieutenant. So many combat scenes scream "futility" as we see "men die like flies," to borrow a line from Ebert's review of "Gods and Generals."
Sean Connery played a private in "The Longest Day" and he's back in "Bridge" as a general. There is a cynicism in "Bridge" that we do not sense in "the Longest Day," the latter ending as Robert Mitchum smells and admires a cigar. Eddie Albert is machine-gunned to death at the end and he simply falls into a hole - so typical of traditional war movies where we don't see the blood (or internal organs protruding) or hear the screams.
"A Bridge Too Far" has scenes that show the poor U.S. grunts in a no-win situation, for example getting shot as they were descending in parachutes, or crossing a river in small boats against strong German resistance. Why do we need to see this? Aren't we already quite aware of the scope of tragedy?
A need to distill
"Bridge Too Far" has too many characters in too many locations. The plot developments bleed into each other, so to speak. A model more like "Gettysburg" was needed: seizing on two or three pivotal episodes and developing interesting characters around them. We deduce the big picture: all that battlefield hubris.
"Operation Market Garden" was such a complicated scenario that if one element got screwed up, the whole venture would be endangered. Robert Redford leads that charge across a fortified river in broad daylight. Some critics were hard on Ryan O'Neal. I felt he did as well as anyone, and maybe the problem was that he looked too young for his role. Or maybe the problem was that critics were jealous of O'Neal because he played a heartthrob in "Love Story." Seriously, I subscribe to that theory.
About 3/4 of the way through "Bridge" I got genuinely weary and felt it was all becoming quite redundant. Why do we need to be hit over the head with the message that war is horribly tragic and painful? What possessed mankind in the mid-20th Century to engage in such conflict and to cheapen human life by making it so expendable? "Men died like flies."
And we seek entertainment from this morass of bad news on the movie screen. We are so human an animal.
Addendum: I found one of those lists of "notable lines." I couldn't find the one that I thought was best or at least the most poignant. Sean Connery observes some people who got loose from a "lunatic asylum" due to the fighting. These poor souls are giggling and seem clueless, and Connery says "what do they know that we don't?" Not quite sure what he meant but it seemed clever on the surface, but maybe it's politically incorrect by today's standards. It's politically incorrect to make light of the problems of such people.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
