Kino Lorber
Detailing the execution of “Operation Market Garden”, Richard Attenborough’s 1977 war epic A Bridge Too Far sought to depict the significantly overreaching attempt of the Allied Forces to bring a stop to WWII by taking and holding a number of bridges in the Netherlands, the realization that the operation may fail reportedly leading Lieutenant General Browning (portrayed here by Dirk Bogarde) to utter the infamous phrase “I think we may be going a bridge too far,” and indeed the Allied Forces did, resulting in a catastrophic outcome.
Boasting a heaving roster of iconic actors, such grand ensembles are rarely seen nowadays, with perhaps only the likes of the Dune film series and superhero blockbusters coming even remotely close, and yet, the names on the cast list for A Bridge Too Far remains dizzyingly impressive to this day.
One may worry that securing so may A-listers of the time – many of whom having cemented enduring legacies in the decades that followed – would risk weighing the film down needlessly with their egos, but Attenborough obtains a meaningful balance, playing to the individual actors’ strengths to weave an engaging tapestry of characters that bring the story to life.
Being the most expensive film ever made at the time of its release, not only the roster of actors impresses, as the meticulously and staggeringly grandiose recreation of the battle scenes and other similarly expansive set pieces are breathtaking on the basis of scope alone.
As war films go, A Bridge Too Far arrived at the tail end of the genre’s boom where such features were no longer as popular as they once were, however, Attenborough still manages to make a compelling film, not least due to his willingness to depict a failure with profound detail and accuracy.
This is not to say that the film is comparable to a documentary, as some creative liberties are taken for narrative purposes, but there is an undeniable earnestness about showcasing the failure of the Allied Forces without attempting to warp it into a heroic spectacle of inaccuracies in the name of making the audience feel good about a war effort that, in fact, had no feel-good factor whatsoever.
Similarly earnest is the choice to depict Allied individuals from more backgrounds than usual, with Gene Hackman’s Polish Major General Sosabowski as well as the local Dutch population being featured significantly, giving the demographics a perspective with more nuance than they were often afforded in Hollywood dramatizations at this time.
This expansion of perspectives also stretches to the Nazi Commanders’ response to “Operation Market Garden”; depicting them as cartoonishly evil baddies certainly has its place for such a despicable chapter of history, but portraying the Nazis as incompetent would have undersold the failure of the Allied Forces, and the Nazis being competent and well-informed only cements how dangerous and conniving they were, making them that much more menacing.
War is ugly and despairing at its core, and A Bridge Too Far makes no attempt to pretend any differently.
As such, the film therefore stands out amongst many other films that detailed various events of WWII in the first few decades since the war, making it an interesting watch for those who prefer their war films to depict events more honestly, even when that may not always be the most flattering to the victors.
This 4K restoration features a new and archival audio commentary and a trailer.
Verdict: 8 out of 10.
