"Can be helped by a cup of tea"

Rating: 8/10 (16 August 2010)

As genres go, the war movie went through a fairly slow and awkward evolution. During the 40s and 50s, when all the other genres were busy growing up, all war pictures were produced as propaganda or respectful tribute, simply due to the needs of the era. By the 60s and 70s the genre was making up for lost time with not only anti-war movies but also war comedies and even war musicals. A Bridge Too Far turns away from such frivolity, back to those earlier pictures that recorded events of the past conflict, but this time around it is to tell one of the less successful stories of the Allies in World War Two.
Many war stories have been told through the eyes of one or two characters, with shifting historical episodes taking place as a backdrop. Screenwriter William Goldman's takes the reverse approach. His script is first and foremost a description of events, from which various personal stories are thrown up. And charting as it does a full scale military operation, A Bridge Too Far features numerous characters and numerous tiny stories. With such fleeting glimpses it is difficult to make much empathetic connection to the material. And yet the whole thing is structured to provide a blend of the informative, the exciting and the moving. Some characters exist purely for historical detail, others are heroes of a brief action set-piece, while others still are mouthpieces for a bit of commentary.
Director Richard Attenborough was proving himself to be a specialist in war and historical pictures, and you can see him here perfecting the broader sweep that would soon win him an Oscar for Gandhi. He shows real economic expression, often putting an individual story in the foreground and a bigger happening in the background. His arrangements are clear and meaningful, which also helps in the fast paced action scenes. We get a real impression of the speed at which combat takes place, with enemies popping up and people being shot with barely enough time for us to process them. The editing of Antony Gibbs is instrumental here, never allowing a shot to carry on for an instant longer than it needs to. Still, Attenborough uses far too many close-ups for the needs of the picture, at times making them standard shots when they ought to be played like trump-cards for key moments. He also wastes time with banal bits of metaphorical business, like the train-set spinning round in circles.
As usual with an Attenborough picture we get the full range of Dickie's acting buddies, and this is perhaps his most impressive ensemble yet. Unfortunately what with all the bit playing going on here many of them are simply filling a slot – the cool arrogance of one upper-class general, the gung-ho naiveté another, the nervousness of some junior officer – at least, that goes for the British cast members. The Americans are a more interesting bunch; James Caan and Robert Redford giving believably impassioned but unfortunately brief performances. The standout is Gene Hackman as Polish general Sosabowski, who brilliantly conveys through his suppressed anger at the incompetence of his allies, the fact that, as representative of a conquered nation his perspective on the combat is somewhat more realistic. Ryan O'Neal also stands out but for all the wrong reasons. It suddenly struck me watching his dreadful turn in A Bridge Too Far how much O'Neal resembles George W. Bush – he has the same deadpan delivery and gormless expression.
However A Bridge Too Far is too major an epic to allow these minor gripes to spoil it. This is where the picture's bitty structure and legion of characters comes in useful. Don't like this actor? Never mind, he only has two scenes. And in spite of its lack of a overarching personal story to bind the narrative together, A Bridge Too Far does do a very decent job of telling the big historical story. It's almost as effective as a documentary, and is certainly more entertaining. There are many pictures that ought to have been successful, but somehow failed. A Bridge Too Far ought to have been a failure, but is somehow a success.