Reeling Backward: "A Bridge Too Far" (1977)

Recently this column focused on "Theirs Is the Glory," a fairly unique film in which the actual participants of the failed Allied stratagem to end World War II by Christmas 1944, Operation Market Garden, returned to the site of the battles one year after the fact to recreate the action for a motion picture. The same military operation later became the basis for the 1977 feature film, "A Bridge Too Far."

In my essay on "Theirs Is the Glory," I mostly concentrated on the similarities between it and "Bridge," wondering if screenwriter William Goldman or author Cornelius Ryan, on whose book the latter film is based, were influenced by the earlier picture. That inspired me to go back to "A Bridge Too Far," and see how it has held up to my memory.

It only reinforced my opinion: "A Bridge Too Far" is one of the great WWII epics, and an incredible marriage of narrative structure, inspired direction, gritty performances and technical mastery from the support crew, particularly the musical score by John Addison (who himself served as a soldier in Market Garden).

Market Garden would remain a forgotten bit of history for 30 years until Cornelius Ryan wrote his book about the adventure, in which the Allies dropped 35,000 paratroopers behind enemy lines to capture a series of bridges. The plan was to have XXX Corp, the British armor column, punch up the road to connect the bridges, thus creating a hole directly into Germany.

Except, the Allies ignored evidence of a great deal of German resistance along the route, including an entire Panzer tank division near Arnhem, the last and most important of the bridges, since it spanned the Rhine River and the border into Germany itself. The British paratroopers, who were only supposed to have to hold the bridge for two days, gave up after nine, leaving behind 80% of their men as casualties or prisoners of war.

That's a lot of story to cram into a feature film, even a three-hour one, but Goldman's screenplay is an exercise in elegant structure. The story begins and ends with generals, both Allied and German, as they plan bold stratagems and then later try to pick up the pieces of where things went wrong. The middle section focuses on the lower ranks of soldiers, the dogfaces who actually have to carry out the fight their superiors dreamed up.

You've heard of "all-star casts," but this one is simply jaw-dropping. For the Brits: Anthony Hopkins, Dirk Bogarde, Michael Caine, Edward Fox, Sean Connery. For the Germans: Hardy Krüger, Maximilian Schell, Wolfgang Preiss. For the Americans: Robert Redford, Elliot Gould, Gene Hackman, James Cann, Ryan O'Neal. Not to mention Liv Ullman and Laurience Olivier  as Dutch civilians. And Denholm Elliott and John Ratzenberger turning up in bit roles.

Redford, arguably the biggest movie star in the world at the time, doesn't even show up until after the two-hour mark. 

I found it interesting how the script is laid out into essentially four sections. The first is the planning of Operation Market Garden, in which British heads are swelled and the first seeds of doubt creep in. Frank Grimes has a terrific role as a nervous major who unsuccessfully points out the presence of tanks, and is sent on medical leave as a result. The second section is the actual drop, a beautiful and daunting ballet of parachutes -- more than 1,000 men jumped out of planes for the sequence -- and the Allies' initial success in taking their objectives. The third is what I call the "American vignettes," and the last act is when everything goes to hell.

The vignettes are a quick succession of three stories centered around American characters. Elliott Gould is up first in a semi-comedic bit about his regiment failing to take the first bridge before the Germans blow it up, necessitating the building of a claptrap "Bailey bridge" to get the tanks across -- but not before delaying them 36 hours. Gould is terrific and charismatic, chomping on a cigar and shouting jokes in between the orders. Addison's music goes into a jazzy, bouncy mode.

Then we get James Caan as a nearly monosyllabic sergeant who protects his young captain -- he doesn't put on his coat at first, so we think he's just a punk private or something -- even guaranteeing the officer that he won't die. He appears to fail in his mission, as the captain is left for dead after being shot in the head. But the sergeant carries the body in a jeep through enemy lines to a mobile Army hospital and, at gunpoint, forces the surgeon (a spot-on Arthur Hill) to examine the wounded lad, revealing that he's still alive. 

(This may sound like Hollywood bullshit, but other than the part about being chased in a jeep by German soldiers, it really happened.)

The last and most harrowing of the vignettes is Redford as the major tasked with crossing the Waal River and taking the bridge at Nijmegen. Due to logistical snafus, they had to make a daytime crossing in flimsy portable boats, the wind blew away their smoke cover, and the unit was cut to pieces. Watching Redford with his helmeted head tucked down, pulling his rifle butt through the water like an oar, all the while chanting "Hail Mary, full of grace..." remains one of my seminal cinematic moments. (Again, this really happened.)

Sean Connery also gets a mini-vignette of his own as Major General Roy Urquhart, commander of the British airborne division dropped near Arnhem, who gets cut off from his own command and has to hide out in a little Dutch enclave, dodging from house to house, during which time he is presumed dead.

Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning, played by Dirk Bogarde, more or less acts as the heavy, playing the gung-ho Brit general who will not cancel the operation for any reason. Those who "rock the boat" are encouraged to clam up or suffer the consequences. 

At the end of the film Browning is depicted as duplicitously claiming to always have been skeptical about the operation -- "As you know I've always thought we tried to go a bridge too far" -- rather than an unreserved booster. In reality, Browning raised his doubts prior to the operation, and he and his family -- Bogarde actually served alongside Browning during the war -- were outraged at his villainous portrayal.

It being only three decades and a bit after the events depicted, many of the actors had an opportunity to talk with and even befriend the men they were playing. Edward Fox knew Lt. Gen. Brian Horrocks, commander of XXX Corp, prior to filming and later cited it as his favorite movie role. Michael Caine changed some of his dialogue after asking his counterpart how he would have issued orders, and the real Lt. Col. Johnny Frost had to explain to Anthony Hopkins that he would never have run too quickly between cover, because he had to show his men how contemptuous he was of enemy fire.

The production of "Bridge" is a Homeric story unto itself, and one others have already told better than I could -- notably by Goldman himself, who wrote a making-of book, "Story of a Bridge Too Far," and also included an entire chapter about it in his seminal showbiz tome, "Adventures in the Screenwriting Trade." 

(Extremely short version: Joseph E. Levine, a lifelong maverick producer, personally financed the film's $22 million budget -- about $86 million in today's dollars -- himself, then convinced some of the biggest global movie stars to participate by all accepting the same weekly pay rate. He recruited Richard Attenborough (him again) to direct, undertaking an incredible logistical and artistic challenge. Then as some of the amazing footage of the airdrops and battle scenes started to come back in, Levine showed the rushes to distributors who bid on the international distribution rights to the film. As a result, "Bridge" was already in the black before the first ticket was sold.)

The ultimate result was surprising, and not. Everywhere but the U.S. the film was a smash hit. Here, American and audiences and critics used to rousing pro-Allies depictions of the war collectively shrugged their shoulders at a massive production about a colossal military screw-up. Thus, "A Bridge Too Far" is barely known on these shores.

Their loss; "A Bridge Too Far" was perhaps the last of the great World War II epics.

Reeling Backward: "Zardoz" (1974)

During the late 1960's and early '70s there was a spate of films that became known for being best experienced with pharmacological assistance -- "2001: A Space Odyssey," "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," and so forth.

"Zardoz" has all the aspects of a great stoner picture: loopy story, strange outfits, dream-like sequences with lots of special effects and colors. In terms of getting high while watching it, at first it best fits with a drunken state, but then moves on to doobies and cocaine, and eventually hard LSD.

It's a film that is at once supremely silly -- Sean Connery's ridiculous red-bikini-and-bandolier get-up is one for the ages, particularly when initially paired with thigh-high leather boots -- and yet is one of these rare movies that has Something to Say. We laugh at it, and laugh with it, but also recognize some uncomfortable insights about ourselves in between the goofy science-fiction antics.

This is the sort of movie a filmmaker does after they make it big with a huge critical and commercial success. John Boorman, one of my favorite directors, was just coming off the hit "Deliverance," and after abandoning a project to adapt "The Lord of the Rings" came upon the idea of this dystopic tale set in the year 2293.

The human population has become split between Eternals and Brutals, the masters and their unwitting slaves, respectively. The Eternals have achieved total consciousness, which includes shared telepathy ("the second level") and the ability to launch psychic attacks. They do not sleep or age, they want for nothing, and they're incredibly bored out of their highly evolved skulls. Everything is ordered by a pure democracy, in which the entire population votes instantly on any question put before the group.

Some of the Eternals rebel against their unchanging state, and as punishment are made to age several years at a time. After enough of these they become old folks dubbed Renegades, and are placed into the equivalent of a nursing home to while away eternity in a fog of senility. Others simply become so listless they cease to move or speak; they're fed and kept marginally alive by the active Eternals.

The Eternals live inside a series of green spaces called Vortexes, while everything else is given over to the Brutals. A giant flying head called Zardoz is the latter's god, appearing once a year to dispense firearms out of his mouth and collect the food they've grown. The Exterminators are an elite class of killers and rapists whose job seems to be to keep the population down and docile. Zardoz directs them thusly:

"The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the gun shoots death and purifies the Earth of the filth of Brutals. Go forth and kill."

Connery, in only his second role after leaving the James Bond franchise (for awhile), plays Zed, the Exterminator protagonist who stows away aboard the Zardoz ship and kills its master, Arthur Frayn, an Eternal who has been charged with overseeing the Brutals and the outlands (mainly because nobody else wanted the job).

After he arrives at Vortex Four, Zed is captured and made the subject of an ongoing series of experiments by two of the Eternal leaders. May (Sara Kestelman) favors understanding and scientific inquiry, while Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) views Zed as a monstrous beast who should be disposed of.

The physical and emotional contrast between Zed and the Eternals is telling. With their loose, flimsy and brightly-colored clothing, long flowing hair and devotion to harmony, the Eternals are clear stand-ins for the hippie youth counter-culture of that era. They live in agriculture communes apart from the rest of the world, which they consider brutish and irredeemable. They prefer to employ their minds for heightened experiences (drugs) rather than concrete physical accomplishments.

Zed, on the other hand, represents a pure id, the throwback man who embraces his taste for violence and sex without illusion. The Eternal males are all effete unbearded man-boys with scrawny, hairless bodies and, we are told, the inability to achieve an erection. Everyone claims this is because they have evolved beyond the need for intercourse, but both the Eternal women and men are fascinated by the virile specimen Zed presents. Consuella is humiliated -- and intrigued -- when her experiment with sexual imagery fails to arouse Zed, but her own presence does.

Connery presents a strapping image as Zed, with his hairy chest, horseshoe mustache and long ponytail swung over one shoulder. Connery first gained notice due to his physique, honed by bodybuilding, though by 1974 things were starting to head south. Reportedly dismissed as Bond for looking too old, Connery's torso and limbs, if not quite properly called flabby, no longer held their youthful trim.

In effect, the Eternals are the young progressives while Zed and his cohorts are representatives of the sclerotic old world and everything wrong with it.


Things get increasingly trippy, and more and more out of whack, as time goes on. We eventually learn Zed is a "mutant" with the potential to become the proverbial Chosen One who alters the fate of the world -- at one point, May even describes Zed as mentally and physically superior to the Eternals.

Things really get loose as the movie moves into its funhouse phase, with Zed fleeing through a maze inside his mind as he attempts to tap into the Tabernacle, the crystal computer network that joins all the Eternals together. The Zardoz head/ship was a fake deity created to fool the Brutals, but the Tabernacle aspires to the real thing: "I am everywhere and nowhere; that has often served as a definition of God."

The story ends in an orgy of killing, as Zed turns the Eternals mortal again just as his band of Exterminators arrive. The Eternals rapturously embrace their own death, especially Frayn and another named Friend (John Alderton), who had acted as Zed's chief tormentor and confidant. "The slave who could free his masters," Frayne describes Zed, right before his own bullet arrives.

I first saw "Zardoz" when I was but a pup, and admit most of the film's deeper meanings went straight over my head. Many of the scenes still come across as so transcendentally silly that it's hard not to laugh out loud at moments when Boorman did not intend.

The part where the other Eternals turn on Friend is a prime example -- they point their upraised hands as they attack him with invisible mind-mojo, while he whines and resists: "Noooo.... I will not go to the second level with youuuuuuuuuuuu!" It's like a seance that went bad, with the evil spirits invading the participants, who were all  high to begin with.

Despite this loony bits, "Zardoz" remains an intriguing cult classic that can be enjoyed on different levels. I prefer to have my laugh at the hokum, but respond to Boorman's trenchant criticism of both a society ruled by the fist or the mind. Or you can just drop some acid and tune out. Nobody's stopping you, man.

Reeling Backward: "Robin and Marian"

Like "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," which was the Reeling Backward feature a few weeks ago, "Robin and Marian" is about growing old. Rather than using an unknown protagonist, the 1976 film boldly chose one of the most familiar cinematic heroes, Robin Hood, for a meditation on death and dying.

In Robin's case, he's not so much afraid of death as dying without a purpose. In the final scene, Robin has defeated the Sheriff of Nottingham in personal combat, but Marian, the love of his life, has fatally poisoned him (and herself, too). At first he is enraged, but then understanding washes over him: "I'll never have another day like this again, will I?"

Sometimes you have to die to allow your legend to live on.

Robin and Marian were played by Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn, who were ages 45 and 46, respectively. Connery had worked steadily, but was in between his glory days as James Bond and his resurgence that began with 1987's "The Untouchables." Hepburn hadn't made a movie in nine years, and would only have three more film roles, all small supporting performances.

The story opens 20 years after the heyday of Robin and his merry men. He left Marian and Sherwood Forest to follow King Richard the Lionheart on the Crusades. Unlike the usual portrayals of Richard as a good and noble ruler, here he's played by Richard Harris as a power-mad despot.

In the opening sequence, he orders Robin to storm a ruined castle defended only by an old man and some children. When he refuses, Robin is thrown into chains along with his faithful friend Little John (played by Nicol Williamson, who would go on to play Merlin in "Excalibur" a few years later). Unfortunately for Richard, the old man contemptuously throws an arrow at him and, in some kind of freak display of physics, pierces him through the neck. He dies of his wounds shortly thereafter. (This account is actually fairly similar to the actual way Richard the Lionheart died.)

Robin and John make their way back to Sherwood, and chance upon Will Scarlett (Denholm Elliott) and Friar Tuck (Ronnie Barker). From them he learns that Marian joined the nunnery, and is set to be jailed because Prince John (Ian Holm) is in a dispute with the Pope and has ordered the suspension of all religious services.

Robin "rescues" Marian, which is to say he forcibly stops her from turning herself into the Sheriff's men by conking her over the head. From there the film builds toward the big showdown with the Sheriff (Robert Shaw).

Director Richard Lester paints a picture of faded glory, with the explicit lesson that trying to hang onto your youth is bound to end in the disaster. Robin is deluded about his own diminished ability to in combat -- a fight against a handful of soldiers on the Nottingham battlements devolves into a pair of middle-aged men holding their sides and huffing with exhaustion.

There's a great scene where Marian tends to Robin's wounds, and as she removes his shirt she sighs and talks wistfully about how young and sweet his body used to be. Now it's a flabby stretch of years and scars. But Robin is defiant: "You think I'm old? Old and gray?!"

The big fight scene between the Sheriff and Robin is presented not as a triumphant battle royale, but a pathetic attempt by a has-been to hang onto his own myth of greatness. Even the Sheriff pleads with him to give up the pitiful display.

Made after Vietnam and Watergate, when the country was tired of war and deceit, "Robin and Marian" is a sobering document about clutching too desperately on the past. We were ready to look ahead.

3.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "The Hill"

In 1965, audiences didn't want to see Sean Connery in a gritty war prison drama. They hadn't wanted to see him as a scheming nephew in "Woman of Straw" or in an Alfred Hitchcock psycho-thriller, "Marnie," either. Basically, if he wasn't playing James Bond, people in the mid-'60s didn't want to see Sean Connery in anything.

It's a pity, since "The Hill" is one of Connery's finest performances in one of his best films.

Connery plays Joe Roberts, a sergeant-major sent up for striking an officer. He's a regular Army man, a by-the-book type now forced to face the structured insanity of a British war prison during World War II. The place is like some medieval castle of horrors, a dusty facility under a blazing sun, with a large hill in the center composed of loose dirt held together by rocks. This hill is the prisoners' crucible, forced to trudge up and down it by the prison's harsh guards.

The chief guard is Wilson, played by Harry Andrews. By coincidence, Andrews also had a major role in the other classic film reviewed this week, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," in which he played Lord Lucan. Andrews is a marvelous physical specimen, with a wide face and square jaw. Together with an imposing physique, Andrews seems to project the very essence of the old British empire -- lordly manners with a brutal iron fist behind.

Wilson is a hard man, but not cruel. He demands utter subservience of all those around him, bragging to the new guard Williams (Ian Hendry) that the commandant is merely a figurehead who follows Wilson's every suggestion. As Roberts and a group of four other prisoners are being brought in, Wilson takes great pride in mustering out two prisoners who have been deemed worthy of returning to duty. Wilson's creed is to break men down so that he can build them up again as soldiers.

But Williams, the young despot-in-training, relishes the destruction too much to bother with the construction. He takes great delight in singling Roberts out, making him climb the hill while his fellows are allowed to go swimming in a nearby pond. Soon, though, Williams focuses his malevolent attention on Stevens, a weakling who eventually succumbs to heat exhaustion. His death sets off a near-riot in the prison, with Roberts determined to see Williams held to account, and Wilson determined to back one of his guards -- even though he knows Williams is culpable for Stevens' death.

Ossie Davis gives a great performance as Jacko King, a soldier from the West Indies who must contend with the overt racism of the British officers, who openly refer to him as a monkey and the n-word. Jacko is the only prisoner who is willing to stand with Roberts and testify against Williams, which makes him a target. After an especially heinous confrontation with Wilson, Jacko goes off his rocker, tearing off all his clothes and acting like a primitive in front of the commandant.

Ossie Davis was one of those actors who was around for so long, he always seemed younger than he actually was. In "The Hill" I took him to be in his late 20s, but in actuality he was nearly 50.

Ian Bannen, the great Scottish character actor, has a central role as Harris, a senior guard who uses his friendship with Wilson to try to make him see that Williams is a disaster waiting to happen. In one neat bit, Harris tries to whisper some friendly advice in the ear of a prisoner in between screaming orders at him, in order to keep up appearances.

"The Hill" was directed by Sidney Lumet, one of the great American directors of the late 20th century -- and the 21st. Lumet, now in his 80s, is still making films, and damn fine ones like "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," which made my Top 10 List for 2007.

Lumet uses some amazing camera work that was very cutting-edge for 1965, such as moving cranes and hand-held cameras. He uses very long takes as his camera circles around his actors, or catches them at extreme angles. The effect never draws attention to itself, though, but lends a sense of immediacy, like the audience is really on that hill with Connery, trudging through the sucking earth under a boiling sun.

If I have one complaint about the movie, it's the dialogue. Most of the actors use fast-paced cockney accents that would be hard to understand even under the best of circumstances. But the filmmakers seem to have eschewed looping -- the process of re-recording dialogue in a sound studio -- in favor of using the live stuff captured on set. As a result, there are times when I could barely hear or comprehend what was being said.

Too bad audiences gave up on "The Hill" before giving it a chance. Sean Connery proves that James Bond was just his warm-up act.

3.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "From Russia with Love"

Nobody expected "Dr. No" to be anything more than a pleasant little spy flick, so when it became an overnight sensation, launching the James Bond franchise, the studio was eager to cash in. So the follow-up, "From Russia with Love," was pushed out exactly one year after the 1962 release of "Dr. No" -- an incredibly short turnaround, even by the generally quicker standards of that era.

In fact, the first four Bond films came out in 1962, '63, '64 and '65. They finally decided to give Sean Connery a year off before coming back with "You Only Live Twice" in 1967. Then they gave Connery the boot, reportedly because he was too old, even though the actor was still in his 30s. He came back for 1971's "Diamonds Are Forever," and again in 1983 for "Never Say Never Again."

Connery was an unknown Scottish actor when he achieved stardom, but in "Russia" you can start to see him making the Bond role his own. There's a streak of cruelty and misogyny to the character, even more starkly than in "Dr. No." Bond's assignment here is to romance a Russian agent to get his hands on a Lektor, a decoding machine and classic cinematic red herring (i.e., no one knows exactly what it is or what it does, except that it's important and everyone wants it).

What Bond doesn't know is that the agent, Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi), has been co-opted by the evil crime syndicate SPECTRE into believing she's working for Mother Russia. In fact, their plan is to help Bond steal the Lektor, then have their own agent kill Bond to claim it and sell back to the Soviets at great profit.

So there are scenes where Bond goes from wooing the girl to slapping her around in the blink of an eye. There's little attempt to mollify audiences into thinking Bond is doing anything other than using her. Sex becomes just another weapon in his vast arsenal.

A few interesting additions for the second Bond film. We have the first appearance of a "Q" figure who outfits the superspy with some new gadgets. In this case, he gets a nifty briefcase that emits a stun gas if you don't open a certain way, a hidden stash of gold coins and a pop-out knife. Pretty crude stuff compared to what would come later. But then, the movie only cost $2.5 million to make -- more than doubling the budget of "Dr. No."

We also have the first appearance of what would become a spy film archetype -- the older female villain with a lesbian overtone. Here it's the Russian colonel Rosa Klebb, who would seem to be the basis for her spoof version in the "Austin Powers" films, Frau Farbissina.

There's a boat chase with lots of explosions that's pretty impressive for 1963, and a side visit to a camp of gypsies that becomes high camp itself. All the gypsy women are barefoot and ready to knife one another over possession of a man, which must make for a pretty generous dating pool for gypsy guys. Knowing how competitive men are, they probably count how many chicks have been killed over them as a measure of their manliness.

There's also a top-notch villain for Bond to contend with, with the incomparable Robert Shaw as Red Grant, a psychotic criminal turned assassin by SPECTRE. It's hard to believe with his blinding blonde hair and rock-hard physique that this is the same actor who would portray the crusty, creased Captain Quint in "Jaws" a dozen years later.

Red has several chances to kill Bond and hesitates, and even saves his life during a melee at the gypsy camp, just so they can have their mano e mano showdown. And it's quite a doozy, taking place in the constrained quarters of a train sleeping car.

"From Russia with Love" is hardly one of the better James Bond movies, but it marked the evolution of the character from vanilla spy agent to iconic rogue.

3 stars