The amount of times I’ve made a mistake, no matter how huge, and I’ve stood there for a second and tried to justify why I made it, the reasons, what went wrong eventually trying to persuade myself it wasn’t actually my fault. Kind of makes you feel better sometimes, but when it involves the lost lives of thousands of allied soldiers, I’m not sure I could forgive myself that easily. A Bridge too far tells the epic story of the largest airborne military operation in history, codenamed operation market garden. The plan was pretty much to end the war early with this huge allied invasion. The beginning of the movie sees Dirk Bogardes’character Lieutenant General Browning briefing his generals (Sean Connery, Ryan O Neal, Gene Hackman), with the plan, apparently conceived by future US president General Eisenhower (the highest ranking officer in the allied forces during WW2) and his two top generals, Patton and Montgomery. Sir Dirk Bogarde shows, on a map exactly what’s going to happen, and he makes it sound so simple. The German armed forces are beginning their decline, at this point of WW2 (1944) they were fighting in the east of Europe, in Russia, in north Africa, the German war machine is spread thin, supplies are low, so is ammunition, and so is morale, which is obviously just as important as food & bullets. So the allies plan to fly 35,000 men and drop them something like 30 miles behind enemy lines in Holland, then capture 3 bridges and hold them, then the advancing land forces, heavy armor (tanks) and infantry can push forward eventually into the “industrial heartland of Germany”. Sounds plausible, if it works the war could be over and everyone gets to come home, happy days! But there were a number of problems that makes this outcome extremely unlikely, as I’m watching a movie I can obviously see what the Germans are currently up to in Holland, the allies couldn’t, they had to rely on reconnaissance and intel. At the beginning you are given pretty detailed exposition regarding the intentions of both sides, the overly ambitious allies, and the weakening Germans.A German field Marshall (Model, played by Walter Kohut) arrives in Holland to find out the current state of play, he’s straight to the point, what have we got? Who have we got? How does everybody feel? And immediately orders an entire division of panzer tanks to pull back and hold/rest somewhere “out of the way” Arnhem. Unfortunately we learn the town of Arnhem is quite pivotal in the Allied intentions. It soon becomes evident that operation market garden is a rushed, poorly planned and conceived operation. A young major in the British forces pleads with Dirk Bogarde to allow him to recon the area once more, he can obviously see this whole thing is a bad idea, he gets his way and sends a plane in to take some pictures. So the pictures come back to the allied HQ in England and they get them developed and he shows his general on a projector a bunch of Panzers hidden in the woods in Arnhem, obviously nothing is stopping the plan now and this make no difference, but we are able to see on Bogardes face, he’s concerned. So not only over ambitiousness, Ignorance also played a huge part in this operation market failure. They plan the whole thing in 7 days! Apparently, as they tell you in the movie, D-day took as many months to plan.
Because of the ‘tight schedule’ there is no time for parties and fond fair wells in this movie, it’s time to go. So the plan is detailed, potential problems are identified, and we’re off to the airfield for the start of the invasion. This whole sequence is absolutely spectacular. I loved seeing so many C-47 Dakota aircraft on the runway at the same time (According to Wikipedia, the allies had a combined force of 1,438 C-47s), some are carrying paratroopers, and some are towing gliders. The force is extraordinary, 34,600men, 1.736 vehicles, 263 Artillery pieces, 3,342 tons or ammunition was either brought in by glider or dropped by parachute (numbers from Wikipedia ;o). This was not only adventurous in terms of the war effort, but this was re-created for this movie an awe-inspring scale. The images of the aircraft flying over English towns and villages are inspirational, seeing so many aircraft flying in formation. Lord Attenborough may not have had 1,438 but he had hundreds of these things flying for this sequence. Once they reach the drop zones over Holland, thousands of paratroopers disembark. I loved watching this too, The parachuting sequence was huge, I was amazed how organised it was, but how virtually impossible it must be to organise so many falling paratroopers in the same area, surely there was some tangling and crashing going on. But it all seemed pretty fluid, at least every bodies Shute opened, I found myself watching out for non-opening Shutes, just in case any were caught on film. This was shot from various locations, from the air the ground and also parachuting camera men putting you right in the middle of the parachuting action. I loved this scene and it gives me goose bumps whenever I watch it.
So everything up to here is pretty much plain sailing, the invasion has started and now everything completely goes to shit. The situation in Holland is chaotic. This is a typical ‘I knew this would happen’ scenario. There are 3 main units assigned to taking each of the three bridges, and a force of British tanks led by Michael Caine is planning on a smooth running road trip through Holland and into Germany. This is where the film really gets into the action, but you must pay close attention from here on and for the next two and a half hours. The sheer scale of the operation involves different units in totally different locations with separate orders, they encounter different problems and end up having to both deviate from the plan, and their locations in some instances and things actually get confusing from time to time. I had to keep a check on where I was and who I was with, what had happened to them and what they were planning on doing. There are allot of actors in this film, and each of them seems to have their own separate subplot. I wouldn’t be too far from the truth by saying you’re dealing with at least 10 subplots simultaneously.
Throughout the movie the filmmakers help us with this by putting text up on screen telling us where we are, and who is there. This is kind of vital, but I still found myself still thinking about exactly what was going on and who was where. This uncertainty almost puts you on the frontline as a viewer, I found myself caught up in the confusion. Potential solutions are discussed, details of situations addressed, and them over to the next one. If I sat taking notes about actually what the original plan was, what had happened to prevent the plan running smoothly, accompanied by all of the deviations and separate objectives and various subplots, I believe I would be have a pretty damn comprehensive detailed and complex strategy written out. But this problem doesn’t make the film any less watchable, I thoroughly enjoyed being thrown a different conundrum once every five minutes, and why all our guys are trying to figure this cluster fuck out, they keep running into Germans, and of course, this results in some action. Actually they keep running into Germans throughout the entire film, they seem about as scattered and disorganised as the Allies.
Luckily all of the Allied officers seem to know what’s going on, they either have plans and know where they are going, or admit they’re surrounded and do their best to hold their positions until re-enforcements arrive and so on and so forth. A Major problem surfaces when we are first introduced to Elliot Goulds' (M*A*S*H, Ocean’s Eleven) character US colonel Stout. He is commanding one of the American advancing ground forces (you see it wasn’t just tanks and heavy armor hoping to push into Germany, there was also a significant ground force pushing forward) he arrives at a smaller bridge and into a German ambush which is followed by the demolition of this bridge which delays the advancing ground force in the capture of one of the main bridges further down the road. This also resulted in the advancing land forces not making it to the Arnhem bridge in time resulting in the division that had tried to take and hold the Arnhem bridge (paratroopers dropped in/around Arnhem) being completely overrun by an entire German division. You see this was just one scenario of many.
It is difficult not to find these situations utterly frustrating as careful and thorough planning and actually acting upon intelligence would clearly have made a difference. But this frustration comes from being absorbed into the chaotic mess on the screen. The pace of the movie is relentless; Lord Attenborough had far too much going on to even think about slowing down. We are constantly introduced to new characters as situations and plans evolve (and change). We don’t see Robert Redford until 2 hours into the movie when he is asked outright by his general (Ryan O Neal) to carry out what sounds like, and pretty much ends up as a suicide mission. He says to Mr Redford “So what's the best way to capture a bridge”, to which Mr Redford replies “from both sides”, but obviously one side of the bridge in question is occupied by the Germans, so they bring in boats, small dingy like thingys to cross the river to take out the German force on the other side so the British tanks can cross safely. I’m not sure if this actually happened but there is a German tank general (played by Hardy Kruger, a real life member of the Hitler youth) on the German side watching this, he has been given strict instructions from Field Marshal Model NOT to blow any of the Bridges to stop the Allied advance as they are all required to be intact for the German counter attack. But he fails to follow orders and has the bridge wired with explosives and orders his men to destroy the bridge as the British tanks begin to cross, this is a point where I snapped out of my believing that this movie is historically accurate (not that I actually had strong beliefs with this, I just hadn’t really questioned it up to this point) as the bridge failed to blow when the demolitions guy triggered the explosives. This could’ve actually happened, but I don’t know. Another similar situation to this, where Hollywood kind of gets the better of the movie is a pretty intense scene with James Caan, he’s driving in a jeep having recovered the body of the guys in his unit, he’s driving frantically along a road when he sees a German patrol coming towards him so he turns off the road and into the woods, the patrol stops near to him, he sits an watches, then he sees another German patrol, on foot, coming towards him from within the woods, he’s kind of caught between the two, but I couldn’t help but feel that this was all happening on Caans Right side, what about the left side where the cameras are located? What's going on over there, there’s a whole expanse of area here that could hold escape possibilities, but we never see, it’s like the never seen wall in a sitcom, except this isn’t filmed on a set, so Caan takes his chance and make his escape by driving at and straight through the two German patrols, he has absolutely nothing to protect him from bullets, there are allot of shots fired at him at very close range, but they all manage to miss him. This must have been discussed because the total body count amongst this enormous ensemble cast of screen legends is a total of 0. Allot of people are killed; obviously, this is world war two, but not a single one of our main characters. This could be historically accurate, it probably is, maybe none of them actually died, but still i'm pretty sure the guy Caan was playing didn’t do what Attenborough had Caan do.
Eventually after significant losses on both sides, the Allies order a retreat. Operation market Garden has failed. There is a scene near the end with the Allied generals discussing what when wrong. It seems the road they were meant to use to push through Holland into Germany wasn’t really geared up for this kind of operation. They actually discuss this earlier in the movie. They also blame the fog in England as one of the other reasons as this delayed Gene Hackman (as Polish General Sosobowski) and his Polish brigade from being dropped into to reinforce the allies, who eventually do turn up, but they get picked off by German troops on the ground whilst they are parachuting down, I found this to be one of the more harrowing scenes in the movie. But they don’t ever mention this whole operation was ill conceived, badly planned and overly ambitious, and basically they fucked up big time! Dirk Bogarde actually states he has spoken to Field Marshall Montgomery and he considered the operation a 90% success. I can only assume the guy said this in real life, but I would love to have heard, or more likely read, his reasons for say that. It was more than a 905 failure as far as I could see.
The screen play is written by William Goldman (writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, all the president’s men, the Princess Bride). It was based on a book of the same name, written a few years previous in 1974 by Cornelius Ryan (according to Wikipedia). I thought it was as good as it probably could have been considering how limited the guy must have been from a filmatic standpoint considering he had to constantly explain where they were and what was going on, but I do love that the script was not absent of any humour. I loved watching a scene set on one of the bridges controlled by the Allies on one side and the Germans on the other. A German soldier approaches the Allies with a white flag and suggests they discuss terms of Surrender. Of course they Allies know they’re surrounded, But Anthony Hopkins asks his guy to tell the German to “Go To Hell” so his speaker gives an awesome British response of “I’m terribly sorry but we simply don’t have the room or facilities to take you all prisoner” The German messenger is completely bemused by this, it’s a pretty good comedy moment. I think one of the movies greatest selling points is the all-star cast, Dirk Bogarde, Sean Connery, Ryan O Neal, Gene Hackman, Edward fox, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Robert Redford, James Caan, Hardy Kruger, Elliot Gould, and Laurence Olivier as a doctor patching up the injured allies. The acting is of the calibre you would expect.
The look of the movie is surprisingly modern; it has a very gritty realistic film look to it. I really do love how this is a 1977 film but could quite believably have been made 10 years later, all filmed on location and on sets that seem like (and probably are) real buildings that give the feeling of a genuinely authentic r atmosphere, not that of a set built on a sound stage or a studio back lot like allot of other studio ww2 films made during the 70’s. (the credits do actually say filmed on location in Holland and at Ealing studios in England). Richard Attenborough (The Great Escape) is the Director, known more as an actor than a filmmaker, he certainly made an awesome and financially successful movie here. He went on to direct Robert Downey Jr in an Oscar winning role, Chaplin in 1992. I really thought this movie was awesome and would recommend anybody watch it at least once. A good blend of action and drama, incredible acting and pacing, but like I said before, pay attention and remember where you are!
