Hacker Cinema
A Bridge Too Far
1977 · Film · 175 min
Directed by Richard Attenborough
The story of Operation Market Garden—a failed attempt by the allies in the latter stages of WWII to end the war quickly by securing three bridges in Holland allowing access over the Rhine into Germany. A combination of poor allied intelligence and the presence of two crack German panzer divisions meant that the final part of this operation (the bridge in Arnhem over the Rhine) was doomed to failure.
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11 comments on Hacker News
I get pretty cranky at WW2 films that dress up modern tanks as WW2 ones. Particularly the tiger in Kellys Heroes that is definitely not a Tiger.
Also A Bridge too Far had this issue too.
I think digital effects still rarely look as good as the peak of Hollywood practical effects (call it… idk, Alien in 1979 through Independence Day in ‘96 or so, roughly, and yes I know ID4 also had computer fx in addition to lots of miniatures and models)
Having to do things for-real also kept things grounded. Modern action movies are often cartoon-like with supposedly human characters stringing together super-human moves that’d leave a real person with dislocated shoulders, broken bones, and brain damage, because they’re actually just CG, no human involved.
[EDIT] OMG, or take Bullitt (1968) versus, say, the later Fast and the Furious sequels (everything past Tokyo Drift). The latter are basically Pixar's Cars with more-realistic textures. They're cartoons with live-action talking segments. Very little actual driving is depicted. Bullitt may have used the movie-magic of editing, but someone did have to actually drive a car, for every shot of a car driving. Or at least they had to set up a car with a dummy to convincingly crash. What you're seeing is heightened, but basically within the realm of reality.
Or take A Bridge Too Far. It's a bit of a mess! Make it CG and it'd be outright bad. But ho-lee-shit do they blow up a lot of stuff, like, you cannot even believe how much. And look at all those tanks and armored vehicles they got! And planes! And extras! Those are all 100% real! AND ALL THE KABOOMS! And it all looks better than CG, to boot. The spectacle of it (plus some solid performances) saves the movie. Make all the FX CG and it'd be crap.
Imagine a Jackie Chan movie with CG stunts. What is even the point. It'd be trash.
There have been other war films with uncannily twinkly star studded cast lists.
The Longest Day (1962) claims Sean Conery, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Henry Fonda, and Robert Mitchum amongst it's cast members.
A Bridge Too Far (1977) Includes Anthony Hopkins, Robert Redford, Sean Connery, James Caan, Gene Hackman, Ryan O'Neil and Lawrence Olivier amongst it's ensemble.
A Thin Red Line is notable for the number of high profile actors whose parts got whittled down to almost nothing in the editing room.
Now I am wondering if there are any deep studies of "World War 2 movie scenes where they talk to a map" from movies. That scene from A Bridge Too Far is a great example of giving the audience some spatial understanding both quickly and using the scene for character building as well.
Hunt for Red October
The Outpost
Master and Commander
The Martian
All four Matrix movies
The Godfather Trilogy, best in a single sitting (Connie’s arc is awesome, the cinematography of the third epic; the only problem is how much more of the outside world each of the sequels needs).
Greyhound
A Bridge Too Far (which has changed dramatically as I have learned over the last almost fifty years; I now see it as so subtlety tongue in cheek and cynical).
Draft Day. Possibly the best constructed movie.
>I especially like “how the customer was billed”.
Good one. A Bridge Too Far ... (1)
I shall sell them a naayysse lil ship in Arizona.
(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bridge_Too_Far_(film)
> a guy basically explaining that tanks may be becoming less of a focus in modern armies, as new weapons and tactics easily counter them.
Tanks will probably reduce in focus given their massive expense vs. the countermeasures but the Russian's tank losses have arisen partly because of their massive tactical incompetence and can't in themselves be taken to mean that tanks are now useless. Tanks work best when used in combined arms ops, with supporting infantry, artillery and air.
Sending columns of tanks in single file down main roads and then getting them blown up is basically the plot of "A Bridge Too Far", a.k.a Operation Market Garden in WW2, when the Allies tried to quickly cross multiple bridges into Germany, and discovered the hard way that only the tanks at the front can actually fight, and that if they get stuck, so do all of the others. Obviously the Russian commanders didn't watch this classic film when it was repeated on Sunday afternoon TV.
[Edit] That said, I wouldn't necessarily choose AFV crew if I was picking a job in an Army.
This is true. A Bridge Too Far both includes incidents that actually happened but were deemed unrealistic by critics, as well as omits certain details specifically because they would be assumed to be unrealistic.
The one movie I would love to see is one about the battle for Castle Itter toward the end of the war, where Americans, German soldiers who had defected to the resistance, a deserting SS officer, and a group of prisoners including two former French prime ministers, two French generals, Charles de Gaulle’s sister, and a pre-war French tennis champion all teamed up against an SS force attempting to recapture the castle and the VIP prisoners within. Which sounds like a completely absurd movie but it actually happened.
I've played a few of these; I think I liked the Battle of the Bulge episode best (pacier than the preceding episodes). The first was really slow-moving. A Bridge Too Far was annoying.
"The epic film “A Bridge Too Far” was about fighting in Nijmegen. [...] a local university that specializes in research. [...] The Waal is Europe’s busiest river, [...]"
Nice article, but hat's not its strongest paragraph. The bridge in Nijmegen was one of the goals of operation Market Garden, but the "bridge too far" was 15 km or so further North, in Arnhem.
Also, a "university that specializes in research"? Don't all universities do that?
Finally, some context for those who wonder why they haven't heard about "Europe’s busiest river": if you gave people a map showing the delta of Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt that doesn't show names of waterways and told them where the Rhine enters the Netherlands, I bet most would guess the Waal is where the Rhine flows because over 70% of the Rhine's water enters the Waal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine%E2%80%93Meuse%E2%80%93Scheldt_delta has a fairly good description.
Thechnkcally, the Rhine flows to the North Sea over the 'Oude Rijn' (Old Rhine). The Wikipedia page doesn't even show what fraction of the Rhine's water flows there because the river Rhine has been dammed of for centuries (since 1122. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaartse_Rijn#History). Effective water flow there is less than 10 cubic meter per second. The Waal normally has 1500 cubic meter per second. This design prepares it for ten times that flow.
Great book! I used to love story format non-fiction books, and "The Killer Angels" was one of my favorites. Also, check out "The Longest Day" by Cornelius Ryan (D-Day) and my favorite one of his, "A Bridge Too Far" (about largest airborne operation in WWII). Just don't watch the movies!