Directed by John Guillerman
PG, 115 minutes. Trailer
Tagline: "The Germans forged one little bridge. Sixty-one days later they lost the war."
This was a DVD rental from Netflix. I actually can't remember ever having heard of this movie before; I became aware of it I believe through Netflix's recommendation system. Despite not being George Segal's biggest fan, I decided to give it a shot and was pleasantly surprised. It has generally good characters, great action, some moral ambiguity and at just under 2 hours is easy to sit through. Overall I enjoyed it, and it fits in neatly with other mid-to-late 1960s WWII movies, such as "Kelly's Heroes", that have a certain flavor that I have a hard time defining.
Based on the book The Bridge at Remagen: The Amazing Story of March 7, 1945 by Ken Hechler, the movie takes place in Europe during the last months of the war. The Allied forces are desperate to find an intact bridge over the Rhine river into Germany, and the US 9th Armored Division is tasked with capturing the titular bridge (actually named Ludendorff Bridge) leading into the 'heart of Germany'. Segal plays Lieutenant Hartman, and I thought he did a great job at portraying a war-weary, cynical, and disgusted combat officer. Playing the part of the 'grizzled sergeant' is Ben Gazzara who, interestingly, eschews wearing a helmet throughout the movie, in favor of a 'jeep cap' (see photo above; I just learned the name for this type of cap while writing this). This seems a little unlikely to me, as it would be a serious breach of Army regulations in addition to being just plain suicidal, but maybe I'm wrong and it happened more often than I would think. The other star of the movie is Robert Vaughn, who I always liked since the summer I got hooked on watching reruns of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as a kid. I always thought we was an underrated actor and hated to see him have to take so many B-movie roles (though I honestly have never seen it, I can't imagine that C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D. was one of his career highlights). Before watching Bridge, I had a hard time imagining him as a Wehrmacht officer; he doesn't exactly fit the Aryan stereotype, with his dark hair and New York blue-blood looks. However, he does pull it off very well and does a great job drawing sympathy as the honorable, conflicted, doomed Major Paul Krüger.
One very interesting thing about the film itself is that filming in Czechoslovakia was interrupted on the night of August 20-21 1968 when that country was invaded by the Soviet Union, forcing the cast and crew to flee the country in taxis. The one exception was actor Robert Logan, who stayed behind in order to film and photograph the invasion. There's one scene in the movie that amazed me: it appears that the filmmakers actually destroyed one large building as tanks rolled by in the foreground. Apparently the filmmakers were given permission to destroy parts of the town of Most, Czechoslovakia, since the town's center was scheduled to be destroyed anyway to make way for a mine. Speaking of tanks, I was expecting to see Shermans left and right, but the filmmakers instead used the - I don't know how to put this any other way - very cool-looking M24 Chaffee light tank. From what I could dig up, this appears to be historically accurate for the battle, along with M26 Pershing Heavy Tanks.
Other tidbits:
- Known as "Operation Lumberjack".
- The "CROSS THE RHINE WITH DRY FEET COURTESY OF 9TH ARMD DIVISION." banner seen in the movie was real, and the original is displayed in the Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor in Fort Knox, KY.
- The movie states at the end that the bridge collapsed ten days after its capture. This was in fact due to the detonations of 11 V-2 rockets launched by Germany to destroy the bridge. Although the closest rocket strike was 300 yards away, it's thought that the vibrations were enough to bring down the beleaguered bridge, earning the officer of the V-2 launching team a congratulatory telegram from Hitler.
Sources: Wikipedia, IMDB
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