The Arnhem Bridge (film)

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Movie
German title The Arnhem Bridge
Original title A Bridge Too Far
Country of production United Kingdom ,
United States
original language English
Publishing year 1977
length 168 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Richard Attenborough
script William Goldman
production Joseph E. Levine ,
Richard P. Levine
music John Addison
camera Geoffrey Unsworth
cut Antony Gibbs
occupation

The film Die Brücke von Arnheim (Original title: A Bridge Too Far ) is a war film produced by United Artists in 1977 about Operation Market Garden , a failed airborne operation by the Allies behind the German lines in September 1944 during World War II . The film is based on the book of the same name by Cornelius Ryan and the script by William Goldman. The film has many international stars: Dirk Bogarde , James Caan , Michael Caine , Sean Connery , Elliott Gould , Gene Hackman , Ryan O'Neal and Robert Redford play on the side of the Allies, Hardy Krüger , Maximilian Schell and Fred Williams play German officers and Laurence Olivier and Liv Ullmann Dutch civilians.

action

At the beginning, the situation in 1944 after the landing in Normandy is shown with the help of newsreel images , especially the personal ambition of the top Allied commanders to find a way into the (economic) "heart of the Reich" as quickly as possible To conquer the Ruhr area (and further towards Berlin) in order to ultimately end the war in Europe quickly. To this end, the British Field Marshal Montgomery designed Operation Market Garden , which the British General Browning opened to his commanders in the late summer of 1944: 35,000 Allied paratroopers were to jump behind the enemy lines in the Netherlands and then occupy and hold six important bridges until the ground troops advanced are. The Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces in Europe, US General Dwight D. Eisenhower , had joined this plan, for Montgomery a "victory" over his rival, General George S. Patton .

Because the operation is also a prestige project for Montgomery and its officers, the operation will not be stopped even when the British receive information that German armored troops may have recently been stationed in the target area around Arnhem . In this way General Urquhart and his 10,000 paratroopers got caught in the crossfire of two Panzer divisions of the Waffen SS . The men are separated and are henceforth on their own - the bitter struggle for the Rhine bridge turns into a bloody massacre. When Urquhart has to withdraw, he has lost 8,000 men. Of the six bridges that had to be conquered in the Dutch canal and delta region , the Allied forces ultimately failed at the particularly important bridge at Arnhem , a bridge “too far”, too far away for the military operation, as the original title says. The action begins on September 3, 1944, when Gerd von Rundstedt is again appointed as Commander-in-Chief West and arrives at his headquarters; solemnly welcomed by Günther Blumentritt .

Location

It plays a film role:
the IJssel bridge in Deventer

Although the actual bridge still existed in Arnhem, the surrounding area was built on with modern buildings in the 1970s, making the scenery no longer suitable for filming. A replacement for the Arnhem bridge was found with a bridge over the IJssel , the Wilhelminabrücke in Deventer , so that it was actually filmed here. Some scenes were filmed in Zutphen : the old town hall, a white building that serves as a Wehrmacht base in the film, and the church can be seen.

For the most part, however, the scenes were shot on original locations, for example in Nijmegen (the unsuccessful demolition of the Waal Bridge with Hardy Krüger) as well as on and on the Waal crossing the Waal with the "folding boats" and on the Waal Bridge Nijmegen , which was also heavily contested, the scenes with Robert Redford. The airborne action was also filmed in the heathland around Arnhem, which in 1944 was one of several parachute drop areas.

background

Screenwriter William Goldman ( Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ) writes in his book "The Hollywood Business" that the production of The Bridge at Arnhem took a total of two years and was largely financed by Joseph E. Levine from his private assets. Levine became Hollywood's most successful independent producer by producing and distributing low-cost productions. At the beginning of the 1970s, he increasingly withdrew from the film business, but was so enthusiastic about Ryan's novel that he decided to make a comeback and, with the film adaptation of the novel, set up his largest film project to date.

He invented a method that is still used today to finance a film while it is still being shot: Whenever scenes were completed with the money available, he had them cut together and shown to interested investors and distributors. The money was gradually collected from the sale of licenses and performance rights while filming was still in progress.

The budget was very high for the time, with a total of 22 million US dollars. Levine was responsible for this with his private fortune. He summed up the situation to William Goldman with the words "If it had gone wrong, I would not have been rich ..." But the nature of the production was also risky - it was started even before a first draft of the script was finished or the cast was secured .

William Goldman describes the production of the film as "the most pleasant experience I had ever had in the film business." Nevertheless, the structure of the film initially caused him considerable problems. On the one hand, the eventful operation, which lasted several days, had to be shortened to three hours of film action, which is why many interesting episodes had to be deleted without replacement. The biggest problem, however, was the construction of a plot. It was only by chance that Goldman came across a construction that ended his problems: He constructed the script in the manner of a western . He treated the Allied army groups like cavalry rushing to the aid of the enclosed units. This enabled him to build up a rough arc of tension that determined the plot of the film.

Reviews

“A lavish war spectacle; the critical accents are only hinted at, while hero worship and sentimentality dominate in the superficial plot. Technically and dramatically good Hollywood quality. "

“A lack of tension should be compensated for by straining the feeling. Despite the enormous effort ..., despite the abundance of (easily recognizable) dummies, despite the large number of world stars, the film is nothing more than a war film of the usual and long outdated kind, a film that is more about the great pathos than the question of meaning . "

- film service 22/1977

Trivia and mistakes

  • One of the inaccuracies in the film is on purpose. The bridge, which is taken by Robert Redford as US Major Julian Cook in the film, was actually first stormed by British grenadiers. However, in Joseph E. Levine's opinion, it would pay off better at the box office if Redford were to win the fight.
  • With John Frost , James M. Gavin , Sir Brian Horrocks , Robert Urquhart and John Ormsby Evelyn Vandeleur , former key figures of Operation Market Garden also took part as technical advisors on the film.
  • The German main battle tanks used in the film are not contemporary originals, but converted Leopard 1s of the Dutch army.
  • There were also only three originals from a private collection of the American Sherman tank on the set. The remaining Sherman tanks were fiberglass models that were mounted on VW Beetle chassis.
  • The Allied fighter bombers, which the advancing tanks of the XXX. Corps support, these are training planes of the type T-6 with a faired rear cockpit half.
  • There were a total of six airworthy C47 machines that were used to film the take-off scenes and the paratroopers' jumps in the Netherlands. By the British since Airspeed Horsa AS.51 - gliders none existed more, twelve slides each for 35,000 US dollars were rebuilt unit costs.
  • During the filming on the Deventer bridge, a ferry service was set up for the residents.
  • The composer of the film music, John Addison , was himself in command of a Sherman tank of the British XXX during the landing in Normandy. Corps - the unit that was supposed to advance to Arnhem from the south. Addison was not involved in Operation Market Garden itself.
  • The fact that General Horrocks speaks of "Old Westerns Films" in the briefing of the troops should be consistent from the perspective of 1976. In 1944, however, given the young medium, there were still no western films that could be described as old.
  • There was never an SS group leader Ludwig in the Waffen-SS. This person (played by Hardy Krüger) is in reality modeled after the SS-Brigadführer Heinz Harmel . Heinz Harmel was still alive when the film was made and he forbade the producer to use his name in the film. So his name had to be renamed SS-Gruppenführer Ludwig.

literature

  • Cornelius Ryan : The Arnhem Bridge. (Original title: A Bridge Too Far ). German by Emil Bastuk . Unabridged paperback edition, Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-596-21956-6 .
  • William Goldman : The Hollywood Business. Behind the scenes of the American film industry (Original title: Adventures in the Screen Trade ). German by Bernd Müller and Cinescript. Extended new edition. Bastei-Verlag Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1999, ISBN 3-404-94004-0 .
  • Christian Hißnauer: The Arnhem Bridge. In: Film Genres. War Movie. Edited by Thomas Klein, Marcus Stiglegger and Bodo Traber. Reclam, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-15-018411-0 , pp. 241-244.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Arnhem Bridge. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 29, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used