A BRIDGE TOO FAR (1977) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Richard Attenborough
Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins,
Robert Redford, James Caan, Elliott Gould,
Maximilian Schell, Hardy Krüger, Liv Ullmann,
Laurence Olivier, Dirk Bogarde, Ryan O'Neal,
Gene Hackman, Edward Fox, Jeremy Kemp
Richard Attenborough's massive recreation of Operation Market Garden, the failed Allied assault in which 30,000 paratroopers were dropped behind German lines to secure a series of bridges and pave the way for an invasion of Germany from Holland. The movie is sprawling and episodic and tends to get lost in its own bigness, but a few moments stand out. The transport planes releasing the troops with their parachutes as if they were excreting them. A soldier on the ground risking his life to retrieve a canister filled with much-needed supplies and finding out too late that all it contains is berets. An old woman with dementia, shot in a bombed-out street while trying to hail a nonexistent taxicab. And the most bizarre: the inmates of an insane asylum wandering through a forest, lost, while an allied general played by Sean Connery wonders out loud, "Do you think they know something we don't?" It's based on a book by Cornelius Ryan, who wrote "The Longest Day". William Goldman wrote the screenplay. Geoffrey Unsworth did the cinematography, which shouldn't be in color and is maybe too beautiful for its own good. Hopkins and Caan stand out in the all-star cast.
