THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974)

Directed by John Guillermin.  Written by Stirling Silliphant

Starring Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain, Robert Wagner, Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely, Jennifer Jones, O.J. Simpson
1974, 165 minutes, Color, Rated PG, 2.35:1
20th Century Fox Blu-Ray, released 2009

Background

The disaster film became a prominent genre in the 1970's, but films about disasters have been around almost since the beginning of Hollywood.  This is because the crucial elements of the disaster film naturally align with the tenets of dramatic storytelling.  Need conflict?  Tense situations can certainly bring the worst out in people.  Need spectacle?  How about scenes of mass destruction?  Need romance?  Well, you may be out of luck in a disaster film, but there is still usually the element of a loved one in peril.  They may not satisfy on all levels, but generally, you can find something to like in a typical disaster film.  Even bad disaster films are still watchable on some of the above levels.

Irwin Allen, Man Of Refined Tastes

So why did disaster movies become prominent in the 1970's?  Primarily it was due to the success of two films, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) and THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974).  Both films were produced by Irwin Allen, a producer and director who was perhaps best known prior to the above-mentioned films for the television shows Lost In Space and Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea. He had also produced and directed a number of feature films, notably THE LOST WORLD (1960), VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (1961) and FIVE WEEKS IN A BALLOON (1962). He was able to ride out the 1970's and part of the 1980's on the strength of the success of POSEIDON and INFERNO, but the quality of the films he produced after INFERNO dropped off precipitously.  Almost all of his films post-INFERNO are disaster films--and some are in fact "disasters".

Some of the other films Allen produced after INFERNO include: Adventures of the Queen (1975, TV), Flood! (1976, TV), Fire! (1977, TV), THE SWARM (1978), Hanging By A Thread (1979, TV), BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1979), WHEN TIME RAN OUT (1980), The Night The Bridge Fell Down (1983, TV) and Cave In! (1983, TV).  These titles all range from just okay to downright bad, although I must confess to being  possessing nostalgic feelings for both THE SWARM and BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE.

Hollywood, however, took note of the success of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and INFERNO and brought out their own disaster films.  The first big disaster movie not produced by Allen was Universal's EARTHQUAKE (1974) which followed the Allen formula by including a large cast (Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, and the incomparable Marjoe Gortner) and killing off a fair number of them.  Universal followed EARTHQUAKE up with AIRPORT 1975, AIRPORT 1977, AIRPORT 1979, as well as ROLLERCOASTER (1977), THE HINDENBURG (1975), and GRAY LADY DOWN (1978).  Other entries in the 70's disaster bonanza were METEOR (1979), THE CASSANDRA CROSSING (1977), AVALANCHE (1978), and CITY ON FIRE (1979).

The Cast

Say what you will about Allen and his films, but he was generally able to assemble a good cast. For casting alone it's hard to beat POSEIDON ADVENTURE--Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Stella Stevens, Roddy McDowall and Carol Lynley.  However, INFERNO's cast is even better, impressively including two of the biggest box office stars of the day in Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, as well as Faye Dunaway, William Holden, and a host of lesser names such as Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, Jennifer Jones, O.J. Simpson, Robert Vaughn, and Robert Wagner.  THE SWARM had Michael Caine, Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda and Katharine Ross, as well as a veritable sea of past their prime and B-level actors such as Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, Patty Duke, Bradford Dillman, and Fred MacMurray.  BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE had Michael Caine, Sally Field, Telly Savalas, Peter Boyle, Jack Warden, Shirley Knight, Shirley Jones, Karl Malden, and Slim Pickens.  Even the lowly WHEN TIME RAN OUT had Paul Newman, Jacqueline Bisset, and William Holden, with Edward Albert, Red Buttons, James Franciscus and Ernest Borgnine among the rest of the cast.  Even his television movies boasted better than average casts.  Flood! had Robert Culp, Richard Basehart, and Roddy McDowall.  Fire! had Ernest Borgnine, Vera Miles, and Patty Duke.

It's worth repeating that at the time the movie was made Paul Newman and Steve McQueen were perhaps the top two male actors in the world.  If not the world, then at least the United States. McQueen was coming off PAPILLON (1973) and THE GETAWAY (1972), Newman was coming off  THE STING (1973).  The story goes that both Newman and McQueen demanded top billing and the producers accommodated this by arranging the names in a way that gave both top billing based on how you read it.  If you read from left to right then you'd hit McQueen's name, if you read top to bottom you would see Newman's name first.

Faye Dunaway hadn't been in a big hit since BONNIE AND CLYDE but she was in CHINATOWN which opened a couple of months before INFERNO.  She would go on to win an Oscar for CHINATOWN but that didn't really help INFERNO.  From there the cast descends into familiar faces but not necessarily stars.

The Film

Warning Spoilers below!

Synopsis:
The world's tallest building is gearing up for a dedication ceremony that promises to host all of the important people of San Francisco.  During the ceremony, a small fire breaks out and despite efforts to quickly extinguish it the fire grows out of control.  Soon, the guests partying in the ballroom at the top of the building are trapped up there, and the fire department tries desperately to save them.  In the nick of time, the fire department detonates several huge water tanks at the top of the building to douse the fire.

THE TOWERING INFERNO was initially to be based on the book The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson and was to be produced at 20th Century Fox.  Warner Brothers also had a burning high rise movie in production at the same time that was based on The Tower by Richard Martin Stern.  The studios understood that there was room for only one movie about a burning high rise in the market, so in what was billed as a first at the time the two studios teamed up to produce the movie together.  The film had a budget of $15 million and this allowed Allen to gather the impressive cast as well as produce high-quality visual effects.

So is INFERNO a good movie?  As in most things in life, it depends.  In this case, it depends on what you expect to get out of a movie.  If you want realism, realistic character arcs, or meaningful interpersonal relationships...well, you probably will not enjoy INFERNO too much.  However, if you approach it as spectacle only then there is a lot to enjoy.  It LOOKS great, with big expansive sets, great widescreen photography and special effects that consistently keep things interesting.  In fact, all things considered, INFERNO probably should not work as well as it does.  The screenplay by Stirling Silliphant is comprised of one melodramatic set piece after another.  The acting is generally decent but hardly stellar (with one exception perhaps, but more on that later).  The plot overall never escapes the soap opera level, although the high budget does a decent job of disguising it.

The reasons why the film is as enjoyable as it is are not that difficult to understand.  The film is chock full of top-tier Hollywood stars and that keeps things watchable even when it shouldn't be.  The freshness inherent in its early placement in the 70's disaster film cycle also helps, as the formula hadn't quite become as obvious as it would be in, say, THE SWARM.  The film creates an impressive reality with both optical and practical effects¹.   The early shots of the tower amidst the San Francisco skyline are just about perfectly realized--there is shot of the helicopter flying in front of the tower in the opening minutes of the film and you really can't tell that it is an optical effect.  Across the board, the visual effects effectively sell the setting, which makes the human drama easier to follow.  Lastly, the basic premise of a building that tall being on fire is undeniably gripping, perhaps more gripping now than it was then in fact.

Perhaps INFERNO'S greatest success story-wise is the unease created by not knowing who will live or die.  This was the formula that Irwin Allen hit upon with THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and it is repeated here with more subtlety.  As the film progresses and more of the character are killed off, the audience starts to wonder if the film will be audacious enough to knock off Paul Newman or Steve McQueen.²  Of course not, but the possibility remains, and that makes the film all the more gripping.   A large part of why this aspect of the film works so well is the strength of the cast and the time the movie takes to get to know the characters.   When Jennifer Jones falls to her death, it is affecting precisely because we have spent so much time with her.

It goes without saying that while certain aspects of the film are very realistic, other aspects are not.  The nuts and bolts of actually fighting a fire are covered well, the actual putting out of the fire strains credibility almost past the breaking point.  I say "almost" purely because the actual mechanics of the climax appears to have put major cast members in actual danger, and the spectacle of that helps sell what is being sold.

From a quality standpoint, INFERNO was the pinnacle of Allen's artistic success.  Never before or again would he have as good a cast to work with³, as much money at his disposal, and most importantly as good a good director to handle the non-action scenes.   Allen made no secret of his displeasure at not receiving his due recognition at having directed the action scenes in THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, and for INFERNO he insisted on an opening credit as director of "action sequences".

All that said, for me, there is one reason and one reason only I keep coming back to the movie, and that's Steve McQueen.  He doesn't make an appearance until well after the fire has started, but once he does the movie instantly becomes better.  It's not that he does anything exceptional from an acting standpoint--he doesn't really.  But he possesses such an impressive presence that his role as the fire chief becomes larger than the movie itself.  No-nonsense and hard-working, he can't help but make the audience believe that he can fix this.  For a film that supposedly pitted McQueen and Newman against each other as leading men, McQueen won hands down.  By comparison, Newman's character seems whiny and weak next to McQueen.

The Blu-Ray transfer looks wonderful, looking very much like film.  Indeed, if there is any image manipulation going on it is handled discreetly.  There are several soundtracks on hand, from a new DTS-HD Master 5.1 track to 4.0 and 2.0 lossy tracks.  Extras include 3 commentaries, 44 minutes (roughly) of footage included in the TV version, and numerous documentaries.  It's a great package that can usually be picked up fairly cheaply.

1. Sure, one can gripe that there is no smoke to speak of as the tower burns, but in the midst of the drama, it is easy to overlook.

2. EARTHQUAKE, Universal's big entry into the disaster film sweepstakes, beat INFERNO to theaters by about a month.  It has many of the same components as INFERNO but is clearly the inferior movie.  First off, the cast of EARTHQUAKE can't hold a candle to INFERNO--once you get past Charlton Heston and George Kennedy the talent drops off dramatically and is filled in with stock Universal television actors.  Second, whereas INFERNO is confined to a single area, EARTHQUAKE spreads across all of Los Angeles.  This lends itself to more expansive scenes of destruction but is less involving overall.

3. Perhaps.  On paper, THE SWARM has a good cast: Michael Caine, Katherine Ross, Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Richard Chamberlain, Bradford Dillman, Slim Pickens, Lee Grant, Ben Johnson, Fred MacMurray, Olivia de Havilland, José Ferrer, Patty Duke and Cameron Mitchell.  Likewise, WHEN TIME RAN OUT also has a good cast: Paul Newman, Jacqueline Bisset, William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Burgess Meredith.

THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE (1961)

THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE
Directed by Val Guest.  Written by Wolf Mankowitz & Val Guest
Starring Janet Munro, Leo McKern, Edward Judd, Michael Goodlife, Bernard Braden.
1961, 100 minutes, B&W, Not Rated, 2.35:1

Synopsis:  London is experiencing a heat wave.  As the story opens we are introduced to several characters:  Peter Stenning (Edward Judd), young newspaperman who doesn't want to do anything but drink, Bill Maguire (Leo McKern), crusty old newspaperman with a heart of gold, and Jeannie Craig (Janet Munro), a young office worker at the London office of Meteorological Services. Stenning meets Craig while investigating whether sunspots could be causing the heat wave.  It turns out not to be sunspots but instead a problem with the Earth's orbit.  Both the U.S. and Russia inadvertantly set up huge atomic bombs at the same time at opposite ends of the Earth, and the resulting blasts rocked the Earth out of it's orbit and slowly moving towards the Sun.  Soon the Heatwave produces a heat mist four stories high, then drought.  With the heat rising each day, how long can mankind survive?

Note:  Spoilers are contained herein.  You have been warned.

THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE is one of my very favorite films.  It's a remarkably realistic film with good performances and a adult tone one doesn't usually find in genre films of this time period.  The realism is enhanced with good use of stock footage and visual effects that range from just good enough to excellent.  The story is very much in the H.G. Wells style typified in The War of the Worlds--fanciful events told with an eye towards realism.  We are introduced to the impending disaster in an offhand way, not unlike how it might happen in real life.  The scope of the story encompasses only a few characters, which may have been instigated by the film's low budget but it really does work in this case.

By focusing on the few characters we meet rather than the overall global story we get a "you are there" effect that helps sell the story.  This approach was also used to great effect by John Wyndham in The Day of the Triffids (1951) and by J.G. Ballard in his wonderful trilogy of disaster novels, The Wind From Nowhere (1961), The Drowned World (1962) and The Burning World (1963).  The realism is this case largely comes from the newsroom setting.  Set design, dialogue, and direction are all pitch-perfect to create a wholly believable environment where the characters act and react to the more fantastical elements of the story in an utterly non-melodramatic fashion.  Additionally, the characters are presented in an adult, sophisticated manner.  The treatment of sexuality is particularly notable, in that it still feels realistic more than fifty years later.  The two leads are attracted to each other and there is no beating about the bush when then get together.  Janet Munro spends much of the latter half of the movie in skimpier and skimpier outfits, which may not add to the realistic atmosphere, but is nice nonetheless¹.

The film is not packed with visual effects, but the few effects are handled deftly.  They mostly consist of matte paintings but are quite effective in context.  The lack of global overview also affords more time to highlight the impact that such a situation would have on "normal" people.  For instance, as the temperature continues to rise water becomes more scarce so rationing is implemented.  Scenes of people waiting with empty cans for hours are depicted, as well as the inevitable human response to such a situation, namely looting and crime.  These scenes are small scale but effective.  It's only in the final minutes where the film feels a little more opened up.

Edward Judd gets an "and Introducing" credit but I'm not sure why--he was clearly in films before this one, but perhaps not as the lead.  He spent most of his career in television.  Other notable genre films that he appeared in were THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964), ISLAND OF TERROR (1966) and VENGEANCE OF SHE (1968).  He's very good in this film, but merely okay in the others mentioned.  Janet Munro had appeared in a number of Disney films in the late 50's and early 60's including DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE (1959) and THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON (1960).  She also appeared in THE CRAWLING EYE (1958).  I haven't seen her in many films beyond the one's mentioned, but she is very good in this film.  Leo McKern had a long career as a character actor, appearing in such things as The Prisoner (1967-1968) television show (as number two!), RYAN'S DAUGHTER (1970), THE OMEN (1976), THE BLUE LAGOON (1980), and THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN (1981).

It was novelized by Barry Wells.  Clearly working from the final shooting script it matches the action of the film exactly, but the author is able to create backstories for the lead characters that are believable.  He also better explains how things work in a newsroom of this era, which goes a long way to enhancing the setting.  He also can be more explicit in the love scenes, which is always appreciated.  Where the book differs from the film is in the ending.  As discussed above, the movie ends with the fate of the world unresolved.  Nuclear bombs have been set off to try and correct the orbit of the Earth but we don't learn if it has worked or not. The novelization clearly states that the bombs have worked and that things will be going back to normal.  It cannot be overstated how much this "happy" ending does not work for this story.

Arthur Herzog's novel Heat from 1977 also deals with the Earth out of orbital alignment.  In fact, it shares the basic plot of THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE right down to the inconclusive ending, but is ultimately more similar to a traditional disaster film such as THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW.  For instance, there is a single government employee who is given data that he believes signals the beginning of the end.  Of course bureaucracy being what it is he encounters skepticism and roadblocks until it is almost too late.

1. I feel it my duty to mention that there is a brief topless scene by Ms. Munro.  I only mention it because the liner notes go out of their way to claim that the scene doesn't exist in the movie!  There are stills of a more obviously topless Munro floating around the Internet but there is nothing like that in the film.  However, when she is bent over the sink washing her hair her breasts are definitely visible in the mirror.

TWO LANE BLACKTOP (1971)

CRITERION TOP TEN

Just for fun.  I included discs from all formats I've collected over the years and have included sentimental choices even though the quality may have been subsequently surpassed.  I wrote these down as they came to me and did not adjust rankings afterward.

08.  TWO LANE BLACKTOP (1971) - Blu-Ray (and DVD)

TWO-LANE BLACKTOP
Directed by Monte Hellman.  Written by Rudy Wurlitzer and Will Cory.
Starring Warren Oates, James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird
1971, 102 minutes, Color, Rated R, 2.35:1

I saw this on television back in the 80's, or rather, since this is a widescreen film and it was shown panned and scanned, I only saw about half of it.  This is an elliptical movie that I find endlessly fascinating, for reasons I am usually unable to communicate.  Not much happens in the traditional movie sense — it's about a cross-country race between rival drivers, which sounds reasonably exciting.  However, the film ignores the obvious and ultimately drops the race aspect entirely, instead focusing on the characters.  There are four characters in the film, and no one is named.  James Taylor plays the Driver, Dennis Wilson is the Mechanic, Warren Oates is GTO and Laurie Bird is the Girl.  Are they symbols, or is their anonymity an intentional statement by the writers on the universality of their experiences?   The film ostensibly ends like it begins with Taylor doing what he is best at--the only thing he is good at, perhaps.  Except whereas the race at the start opens up the possibilities of the characters and story, the race at the close ends with a freeze frame that then warps and distorts until the image burns away.  Just what in the hell is that supposed to mean?  For a film I love I am distressingly short on theories.

Monte Hellman made this film largely in order, only giving his non-actors a few pages of the script at a time.  He says he did this to try and preserve spontaneity with the largely untrained cast--Taylor, Wilson and Bird had never made a film before.  I haven't seen all of Hellman's films--and there really are not that many of them.  Aside from RIDE THE WHIRLWIND (1966) and THE SHOOTING (1966) I don't think I've seen any of his other films.  Both RIDE and THE SHOOTING are superior works and BLACKTOP feels like a natural progression.  Oates and Hellman worked together a total of 4 times together--this, THE SHOOTING, COCKFIGHTER (1974), and CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 (1978).

Wilson was in The Beach Boys when he made this film, and Taylor was just about to release the album that would make him a superstar, SWEET BABY JAMES.  Taylor has gone on record saying that he hated Hellman's approach to making the movie and even wrote a song about it.¹  For someone who hated the experience, Taylor ultimately delivers a good performance.  What he may lack in technique he more than makes up for with charisma--he just looks good on screen and has a certain undefinable something that makes him consistently interesting to watch.  Bird was a model before this and subsequently appeared in only two other films.²  She likewise gives a moving and effective performance.   Warren Oates is simply magnificent as GTO.  Truly, his performance is a thing of beauty, alternating between manic machismo and world-wearied self-reflection.  His nuanced, complex performance offers much to study and ponder, just as the film does overall.

I find myself playing the "guess the damage" game with the characters.  They are all reasonably damaged, and none of it is explained, so one is left to their own devices to try and determine motivation and history.  At one point, Oates' character tries to open up to Taylor, but Taylor abruptly cuts him off.  "I don't want to hear about it", he says.  The audience may well be muttering to themselves, "well, I wanted to hear about it."  Oates comes the closest to being someone the audience can fully relate to.  Wilson, Bird, and especially Taylor, not so much.  This isn't to say that there aren't riches to mine in their performances.  Taylor vividly portrays a man not quite in touch with his feelings, desperately trying to express something to Bird's character.  Bird is an enigma--does she care about anyone in the film or was it all simply a way to hitch a ride?

Released on DVD first by Anchor Bay in an edition that featured a 5.1 remix and a commentary by director Monte Hellman and Producer Gary Kurtz.  It also came in a spiffy tin box with an oversized booklet of groovy pictures of an impossibly young and coiffed James Taylor.  That commentary was actually very good.  When Criterion released the film on DVD it featured the same 5.1 remix but dropped the commentary in favor of an all-new commentary by Hellman alone.  I've still never listened to it.  The Criterion DVD release also featured the original shooting script as a DVD-sized book.  (Some of Criterion's more recent releases have also included books like this, namely PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and RED RIVER.) The Blu-Ray release features a noticeably improved image transfer, lossless sound, and new supplements, including a great hour-long conversation between James Taylor and Hellman.  The screenplay was not included with the Blu-Ray, which is a shame because it is fascinating.  Hellman claims in the intro for it that he shot the entire script and that seems accurate, as everything in the film is there in the script.   There is more detail in the script, but it tells the same story, so it doesn't change the story as much as make it somewhat clearer what is happening..

1. "Riding On a Railroad", Mud Slide Slim and Blue Horizon, 1971, Warner Records.

There's a man up here who claims to have his hands upon the reins.
There are chains upon his hands and he's riding upon a train.
We are riding on a railroad, singing some else's song

EDIT:  It's since been clarified that Taylor had written this song prior to his experience making the film.  Still, the lyrics closely parallel the filmmaking experience.

2. Bird had a reasonably unhappy life.  She died in 1979 while romantically involved with Art Garfunkel, possibly as a suicide, possibly accidentally.

THE HOSPITAL (1971)

Directed by Arthur Hiller.  Written by Paddy Chayefsky

Starring George C. Scott, Diana Rigg, Barnard Hughes, Richard Dysart, Katherine Helmond, Frances Sternhagen,
1971, 103 minutes, Color, Rated R, 1.85:1

Spoiler Alert!

George C. Scott is great in this, and any movie that features a young(ish) Diana Rigg is good with me.  This movie is about bureaucracy and the dehumanization inherent when hospitals become more concerned with profits than with saving lives.  Although now more than 40 years old it hasn't lost any of its punch.  Actually, it may be more relevant than ever, a testament to the writing and to our dysfunctional United States health care system.   It is a DARK movie, with dark grungy visuals and an even darker sense of humor.

The film is rated PG, but ideally should have been an 'R' as it is too constrained by having to hold back at various points. There's an obvious re-looping of the word 'fuck' at one point by a VERY young Stockard Channing, for instance, and some optical zooming to avoid nudity in another.  Do either of these things cause irreparable harm to the story?  Not at all, but the optical zooming occurs on Diana Rigg so the logical conclusion is that if the movie was rated 'R' we would have seen her or parts of her naked.  Case closed.

The movie ends with Scott's character not running away with Rigg, choosing to stay to try and fix the system. That ending wouldn't happen today.  Today, it simply wouldn't be believable that someone would believe in the system that much so as to deny themselves the pleasure of being with a young Diana Rigg.  For that matter, the film's casting wouldn't happen today--just look at ARTICLE 99 (1992) which aspires to be similar in tone and concept but is populated by actors in their early 30's instead of their 50's.  THE HOSPITAL is staffed realistically and this ultimately dates it more than anything else in the movie.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR (1977)

A BRIDGE TOO FAR
Directed by Richard Attenborough.  Written by William Goldman
Starring Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliot Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Kruger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O'Neal, Robert Redford, Maximillian Schell, Liv Ullmann.
1977, 175 minutes, Color, Rated PG, 2.35:1

A BRIDGE TOO FAR tells the story of operation "Market Garden", an audacious plan devised by Montgomery to end the war with Germany quickly and decisively.  The plan involved parachuting a large number of Allied troops behind enemy lines, securing a number of bridges, and then ramming a large task force over all of the bridges right into Berlin (eventually).  It was 90% successful in that they captured and held all but one of the bridges.  The last bridge—in the city of Arnhem in the Netherlands—was not captured and that negated the entire operation.  The operation was planned in merely seven days and depended on nothing going wrong, but of course things did go wrong.  Some of the things that went wrong were outside of anyone's control--like the weather--but other things were the fault of the short turnaround time and a willingness by the planners to overlook anything that might call into question starting the assault.  A prime example of this is the decision to ignore evidence of a stronger German presence around Arhem that older intelligence didn't show.  Ultimately, not only did it not help end the war more quickly, it has been argued that it may have in fact helped prolong the war. More than 15,000 Allied troops lost their lives in the operation; the exact number varies depending on which source you look at.  However, it still remains the largest airborne assault ever carried out.

 

The film is based on the book of the same name by Cornelius Ryan, published in 1974.  Ryan had previously written the definitive story of D-Day called The Longest Day which was released as a film in 1965.   It was produced by Sam Levine and financed out of his own pocket, and it proved to be a safe bet because distribution deals in place before the movie's start covered the cost of the film.   This was done by securing an international cast.  And truly, this movie has an impressive cast.  To be truthful, most of the cast qualify as supporting roles and a couple qualify as cameos. With the possible exception of Olivier and Ulmann, however, I have always felt that the cast is well-used.  For so many people being involved the majority get at least one moment in which to leave their mark.  This is both a testament to the writing, direction and acting, of course.

This movie was made solely because Levine wanted to. He put up his own money to get it started, he hired all of the principal talent, he secured distribution deals, and perhaps most importantly he wanted to make the film in the first place. BRIDGE was Levine's biggest film by far, both from a logistical and budget standpoint.  To direct it he chose Richard Attenborough, a man who had made only two other films, and both of those were small scale in nature.  The book was adapted by William Goldman who was reasonably busy as a screenwriter in this time period--MARATHON MAN and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN were also written and released in the same time period.
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I've always thought highly of A BRIDGE TOO FAR, which is not a popular opinion.  It's reputation is slowly becoming more positive as the years pass, but much of the critical literature out there is still pretty dismissive of it.  Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide¹, for instance, gives it two stars out of four and says it is "lifeless and dull".  Roger Ebert likewise gives it two stars, though this time out of a possible five.  His review refers to the movie as an example of "wretched excess"².  Time Magazine suggested that the filmmakers were in the wrong line of business³. Vincent Canby in the New York Times concedes that it has some powerful scenes, but that it is also shapeless and confusing⁴.  The Economist called it a "costly mistake"⁵.  New York Magazine called it "an all-star martial disaster, and almost an insult to the dead."⁶ As recently as 2009 Goldman was still saying that he was puzzled by the film's failure⁷, though to be clear he is talking more about the critical failure rather than the financial failure--the film grossed $50 million dollars against a budget of $26 million⁸.  Not a runaway hit but not embarrassing either.  In his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, Goldman says that "Until the reviews came out, A Bridge Too Far was probably the best experience I've had in films."  Once the reviews came out he found himself blindsided by criticism that the film was hard to believe.  He was surprised by this because he had worked very hard to present the story as truthfully as was possible in a movie.

It helps, I suppose, that I am not at all disinclined to liking depressing movies, for if BRIDGE is anything it is certainly depressing.  However, the story depicted in the film is based on fact, and just because the real-life events are somewhat depressing I see no reason to hold it against the film.  Aside from some narrative condensation, it is one of the more accurate films ever made about World War Two.  It does a very good job telling a complicated story clearly, although many period reviews claim to have been confused on what was happening.

So, what's to like in the film?  It has the feel of an epic, gorgeously photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth and scored by the reliably British John Addison.  It tells its story clearly and directly.  Attenborough puts the camera everywhere — epic vistas are intercut with "you are there" shots to remind you that these are people.  Every act of war heroics is balanced by scenes showing the true human cost.   It tells a depressing story but does so honestly.  There is no pandering to the audience, and the whole thing reeks of an intellectual approach--rather than playing up the emotional nature of some of the more harrowing scenes the film plays them out matter-of-factly.  Upon repeated viewings the subtlety on display takes deeper hold and the film becomes enormously moving.  This emotional distance is more than likely the reason critics were less than kind to it.  Could a different director have done a better job with the material?  Perhaps, but who?  John Sturgess made THE EAGLE HAS LANDED at roughly the same time and arguably did a worse job than Attenborough.  For my money, I like Attenborough's approach just fine.  It tells the story it means to, and if you can go along with it you will find it a rich and rewarding film that stays with you for quite some time afterwards.

What else is there to like?  Edward Fox has a rousing speech right before the attack commences that really gets the blood pumping--it's really perhaps the best "rally the troops" kind of speech ever committed to film--outside of STRIPES, of course.  It's such a great dramatic moment that it doesn't really matter that it's one of the film's few pure inventions.  Gene Hackman, for the most part, pulls off a Polish accent, Sean Connery is charming and commanding as always, but it is his acting in the penultimate scene, where Browing tells him that "Monty" is proud that Market Garden was 90% successful, that is his best moment.  In real life the character he plays was haunted by the operation for the rest of his life, and Connery sells that perfectly.  Schell invests his German officer with a humanity not typically seen in war films, and Redford is solid as an American Major ordered to cross a river in the daytime in manually rowed boats (it goes about as well as expected).  If the movie is "stolen" you could make an argument that it's stolen by James Caan.  He plays an American sergeant who goes back to a battlefield to get his Captain who was left for dead.  This is complicated by the fact that the Germans have re-taken the battlefield.   In a film full of effective vignettes, this 10-minute sequence is superior filmmaking and culminates in Caan ordering a surgeon at gunpoint to examine the Captain.  A close second might be Eliot Gould who plays a profane engineer.  Dirk Bogarde and Michael Caine also register strongly.

The idea of a large cast of stars in a war film was not new, of course, as THE LONGEST DAY famously did the same thing.  THE LONGEST DAY is a more “Hollywood” war film than A BRIDGE TOO FAR and doesn't feel quite so realistic as a result.  BRIDGE strives for realism and showing the horrors of war, and tries to do this not through gore but by concentrating on the emotions of the people involved.  Given the cast and scope of the film, it's commendable how "small" it feels at times.  Of course, at other times it is as huge as a David Lean picture.  The parachute drop sequence is very impressive with a seemingly impossible number of people being dropped at the same time.   As the operation was comprised of multiple small, strategic battles there is not really an opportunity for huge scenes of battle, but we do get some large explosions.  The only sequence that feels like a "war" movie is the assault on the second to last bridge, where we get Robert Redford running around and shooting Germans with aplomb.  Shortly after this, we treated to a somber scene where we find out just how much of a failure the operation was.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR was photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth and the film bears his trademark filtered look that usually looked horrible in NTSC.  It was released on laserdisc in the early 1990's in a widescreen edition that preserved the film's scope, but largely missed the subtleties inherent in the soft photography.  It subsequently appeared on a special-edition DVD that featured improved image transfer and loads of historical features, such as interviews with actual participants in Operation Market Garden, a commentary by William Goldman, and a trivia track that provides further detail on the events in the film.  The special features really enhance the movie--of course, when the film was released on Blu-Ray it included none of them.  The Blu-Ray was released in the early days of Blu-Ray and as was the case for most of the early MGM/UA Blu-Rays uses the MPEG2 codec.  Now, technically MPEG2 can handle 1080P but from a compression standpoint other codecs (AVC, VC-1) usually produce better results.  That said, the Blu-Ray is clearly the best the film has ever looked on home video and one can't really complain about any aspect of the image.   The laserdisc referenced above was missing the on-screen text that established settings, which was disconcerting.  The special edition DVD added the text back, and I am happy to report that they are likewise back on the Blu-Ray.   The sound is a rousing 5.1 mix that presents John Addison's rousing score to great effect. Battle scenes likewise have plenty of surround activity.

Notes:
1. Leonard Maltin, Leonard Maltin's 2015 Movie Guide (New York, Signet, 2014)
2.http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-bridge-too-far-1977 (originally published June 17, 1977)
3. Time Magazine, Monday, Nov. 27, 1978
4. New York Times, June 16, 1977
5. A Budget Too Big, The Economist, 29 May 1976, 96.
6. Movies Around Town, New York Magazine, July 18, 1977, 12
7. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/apr/25/william-goldman-screenwriter-interview
8. A. T. McKenna (2011): Joseph E. Levine and A Bridge Too Far (1977): A Producer's Labour of Love, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 31:2, 211-227