Bridge Too Far, A: Limited Edition (4K UHD Review)

• Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
• Review Date: Jan 07, 2025
• Format: 4K Ultra HD
• 

Director

Richard Attenborough

Release Date(s)

1977 (December 4, 2024)

Studio(s)

Joseph E. Levine Productions/United Artists (Imprint Films/Via Vision Entertainment)

• Film/Program Grade: A-
• Video Grade: A-
• Audio Grade: A-
• Extras Grade: A+
• Overall Grade: A+

https://viavision.com.au/

Review

[Editor’s Note: This is a Region-Free Australian Blu-ray import.]

“Madness!” is James Donald’s legendary final line in The Bridge on the River Kwai, a one-word summation of everything that had led up to that point in the story. It’s also what it takes to mount epic productions on the scale that filmmakers like David Lean did. “They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore” is a common enough mantra these days, but it’s a painfully accurate one now that digital effects have rendered that level of practical excess unnecessary. Yet the era of epic filmmaking actually ended long before digital magic became reality. Just twenty years after Lean’s bridge blew up in decisive fashion, Richard Attenborough stepped behind the cameras to tell the equally mad story of another series of bridges during World War II, and on a scale that was the textbook definition of madness, too. When A Bridge Too Far was released in 1977, it was already an anachronism not just because it was a WWII movie released shortly after the end of the Vietnam War, but also because it represented the kind of expensive all-star epic filmmaking that studios were growing wary of financing. And they didn’t in this case, either. The only reason why A Bridge Too Far was ever greenlit in the first place was thanks to financial backing from another source, but we’ll come back to that later.

A Bridge Too Far is based on the book by Cornelius Ryan that documented the numerous mistakes that were made during the planning and execution of Operation Market Garden in 1944. After the success of the Operation Overlord invasion at Normandy, Allied forces pursued the retreating German army, but supplying the troops and equipment became an increasing challenge. Market Garden was intended to be the solution to that problem. The brainchild of Field General Montgomery, it consisted of two simultaneous phases. “Market” was the aerial component, where the American 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, as well as the British 1st Airborne Division, would drop behind enemy lines in Holland to capture key bridges in Eindhoven, Son, Veghel, Grave, Nijmegen, Oosterbeek, and Arnhem. “Garden” was the ground component, which would consist primarily of elements of the British armored XXX Corps racing along that corridor in order to help secure each of the positions. Unfortunately, they didn’t make it all the way. Thanks to poor planning, mistaken assumptions, bad weather, logistical issues, and just plain bad luck, the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem never received the support that they needed, and they had to abandon the position, losing three-quarters of their men in the process as either casualties or prisoners of war. And they were far from the only casualties, too.

Market Garden was a massive operation that spanned a week of time, and it also involved one of the largest airdrops in military history. Streamlining all of that for a feature film was no mean feat, but fortunately William Goldman was up to the task. His script for A Bridge Too Far condenses many of the specific details and characters, fictionalizing a few minor points along the way, but it remains largely faithful to the historical events. As an international operation involving British, American, and Polish forces, there will always be debate over who to blame for its failure, but Goldman threaded that needle as best he could. Montgomery is completely absent from the film, which may seem odd, but it’s true that he wasn’t directly involved with any of the events that it depicts. Instead, the focus is on Lieutenant-General Browning (Dirk Bogarde), who was the one responsible for executing Montgomery’s ambitious plan. Browning’s portrayal in the film has been a bit controversial, but while Goldman’s process of simplification may have put a little too much of the blame on his shoulders, that was arguably a necessary evil in order to keep the complex events of Market Garden as comprehensible as possible for viewers who may be unfamiliar with the operation.

However much that Goldman may have streamlined Ryan’s book at the scripting stage, making it work onscreen still required the right kind of casting in order to keep viewers oriented, so A Bridge Too Far opted for the all-star approach. The lead roles are played by an impressive ensemble that includes Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Krüger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O’Neal, Robert Redford, Maximillian Schell, and Liv Ullmann. Other smaller roles are filled out by recognizable actors like Paul Maxwell, Stephen Moore, Michael Byrne, Alun Armstrong, Denholm Elliott, Arthur Hill, and John Ratzenberger. It would have been easy to get lost with a story that jumps back and forth from location to location, but it helps to have familiar faces to anchor each of them. (The all-star cast also served another important purpose before one frame of the film was ever shot, but we’re still circling our way back to that point.)

While that kind of stunt casting can prove distracting and even ruin the immersion with some kinds of historical films, it serves an invaluable purpose in this case. That’s because it functions as a shorthand method of defining the characters without having to resort to pages of dialogue. The events of A Bridge Too Far are complicated enough without having to keep track of unfamiliar characters. Yet from the first moment that you see actors like James Caan and Elliott Gould onscreen, you already possess the necessary information in order to understand Staff Sergeant Eddie Dohun and Colonel Robert Stout. As a result, everything that they do during the course of the film makes perfect sense. And aside from Gene Hackman’s dodgy Polish accent, all of the actors are perfectly cast for their roles. You don’t really need heavy-handed characterization when you cast the right character actors, and A Bridge Too Far is proof of the efficacy of that approach.

Still, a mess of an operation like Market Garden could have resulted in a mess of a film without the right field marshal to hold all of it together, and A Bridge Too Far found the perfect leader in the form of Richard Attenborough. Attenborough may have seemed like a counterintuitive choice of director back in 1977, but he ended up demonstrating his unparalleled gift for marshalling massive productions like this one. He actually pulled off something that Montgomery couldn’t: he completed the mission successfully, on time and on budget. Attenborough filmed on the real locations as much as was possible, and he made sure that everything looked as authentic as possible, even if it wasn’t always 100% accurate (compromises inevitably have to me made). A Bridge Too far is old-school epic filmmaking of the type that was already out of vogue in 1977, and it will never be seen again, either. That includes his extraordinary recreation of the air drop itself, and while there are a few optical effects sprinkled throughout the sequence, he did as much as possible for real. The production scraped up 11 vintage C-47 Dakotas and dropped hundreds of real paratroopers, with Attenborough setting up approximately 20 cameras in order to capture the event in documentary fashion. There’s never been anything else quite like it in a feature film.

Yet while A Bridge Too Far does indeed demonstrate Attenborough’s skills in handling epic productions, it’s not really a Richard Attenborough film in the same way that his passion project Gandhi would be a few years later—in this case, he was still a director-for-hire. No, the real author of A Bridge Too Far isn’t Attenborough, Goldman, or even Cornelius Ryan, but rather producer Joseph E. Levine. Levine came out of retirement in order to make A Bridge Too Far on Ryan’s behalf, and he financed the entire film out of his own pocket—and at a budget of $25 million, A Bridge Too Far was the one of most expensive films ever made up to that point in time (in terms of actual budget, not counting cost overruns like on Cleopatra). However risky that may seem, he actually managed to make a profit before the film ever reached the theatres thanks to his aggressive presales in various foreign markets (and that’s where the all-star casting played another key role). Making A Bridge Too Far was madness in 1977, so it took a special kind of madman to bring everything to fruition. Levine fit that bill to a T. A Bridge Too Far might have been Ryan’s book, Goldman’s screenplay, and Attenborough’s film, but it was Joseph E. Levine’s baby.

Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth shot A Bridge Too Far on 35mm film using Panavision cameras with anamorphic Panaspeed lenses, framed at 2.35:1 for its theatrical release (with 70mm blowups cropped to match the full-frame 2.20:1). Unsworth told American Cinematographer that the light in Holland tended to be naturally diffuse, with desaturated colors, so he wanted to replicate that look on film. To that end, he used #2 fog filters for most of the production (with #1 filters as needed depending on the weather conditions), plus an abundance of smoke. Attenborough marveled to ASC that Unsworth was able to “shoot varying stops, in varying light, under varying cloud base, in varying degrees of visibility” and somehow manage to make all of that disparate footage match reasonably well. There are still some continuity mismatches throughout the film, but for the most part, it’s all surprisingly seamless.

This version is based on a 4K scan of the original camera negative that was performed on a Lasergraphics Director scanner in 2-flash mode. Fidelity in Motion handled the majority of the remastering, including the digital cleanup work and the High Dynamic Range grading in both Dolby Vision and HDR10. (Naturally, FiM also handled the encoding of the film for the UHD release.) The previous Blu-ray master was based on a 2K scan of an interpositive, and the improvements from the new scan are striking regardless of how diffuse the original cinematography may have been. Anyone familiar with Unsworth’s work from the period will know what to expect; A Bridge Too Far will never be as finely detailed as the best that the format can offer. Yet it’s still as sharp now as it’s ever looked, significantly more so than what theatrical prints would have looked like in 1977. There’s still some minor speckling and a few fleeting scratches (most of them of the single-frame variety), but it may not be noticeable from normal viewing distances. Aside from a few hairs at the bottom edge of the frame, all of the remaining damage or other blemishes is negligible.

Unsworth used Eastman 5247 for the majority of the film, and the grain structure in this version looks exactly like it should. Any shots with optical effects (like all of the identifying titles and a handful of traveling mattes) were derived from an IP instead, so they’re naturally softer, with coarser grain, but they do show just how much has been improved for the rest of the film via the negative scans. (Fortunately, the subtitles for this version are generated by the player, so the shots behind them have all the clarity that a negative scan can provide.)

The contrast range has been expanded via the new HDR grade, and that gives the image more depth than it had before, with less crush in the darkest scenes. Fortunately, the colorist resisted the temptation to increase the saturation levels beyond what Unsworth intended. The colors look essentially perfect here, neither oversaturated nor as desaturated as post-Saving Private Ryan WWII films tend to be. All of the color hasn’t been drained out of the image, and yet it captures that hazy look that Unsworth wanted to replicate. The colors may not be bright, but they’re extremely detailed, and all of the subtle variations in the shades have been rendered accurately. (For an example, check out the wide variety of greens in the first shot of James Caan inside his tent). A Bridge Too Far will never be demo material, but it’s never looked better than it does here, and there’s a good chance that it will never look better again, either.

Audio is offered in English 5.1 and 4.0 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English SDH subtitles. A Bridge Too Far was primarily released in optical mono, but there were some 35mm prints with 4-track mag soundtracks and 70mm prints with 6-track mag soundtracks (with the latter in all likelihood utilizing the same basic four channel mix). None of them were Dolby-encoded. The 4.0 version here is presumably the original theatrical mix in its L/C/R plus mono surround format. There don’t appear to be any major differences between it and the 5.1 track, as the latter doesn’t offer split surrounds or any noticeable enhancement to the low end. The 4.0 sounds just a touch more cohesive overall, although the two of them aren’t level-matched so it’s challenging to compare them fairly. You can’t go wrong either way, but I ended up preferring the 4.0. Either way, there are strongly directionalized sound effects across the front channels with limited ambient effects in the rear, which is pretty typical for that era. The dynamics are limited compared to modern digital mixes, but there’s still a bit of punch to the gunfire and explosions. The best news is that John Addison’s iconic score has real depth and heft to it, with plenty of sparkle on the top end (something that’s often lacking from older films).

Via Vision’s Region-Free Limited Edition Blu-ray release of A Bridge Too Far is #367 in their Imprint Films line. It’s a three-disc set that includes one Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film and a second Blu-ray with the majority of the extras. The film discs are housed in one Amaray case with theatrical poster artwork on the insert, and the extras disc is in its own case with alternate theatrical artwork. (Neither of the inserts are reversible, but they both have production photographs from the film on the other side.) There’s also a 56-page booklet with reprints of a Cinema Retro article by Simon Lewis and excerpts from Sebastian Abineri’s book Boys from the Bridge: The Story of Attenborough’s Private Army. Everything comes housed in one of Imprint’s rigid Hardboxes that opens up at the top. The following new and archival extras are included (note that while the new extras are all full 1080p, the standard-definition archival ones have been upscaled to 720p instead):

DISC ONE: UHD (FEATURE FILM)

• Audio Commentary by William Goldman and the Crew
• Alternate Historical Subtitle Track
• Theatrical Trailer (HD – 3:17)

DISC TWO: BD (FEATURE FILM)

• Audio Commentary by William Goldman and the Crew
• Alternate Historical Subtitle Track
• Theatrical Trailer (HD – 3:17)

The commentary track was originally recorded for the 2005 Collector’s Edition DVD release from MGM/Sony. It’s a curated track with contributions from multiple participants. William Goldman takes the lead, with additions from various crew members and experts on the film including author John Burlingame, camera operator Peter MacDonald, assistant art director Stuart Craig, assistant director Roy Button, and more. Anyone who has read the 1977 book William Goldman’s Story of A Bridge Too Far will recognize some of the tales that he tells about the production, but he delves into much more detail here, and the other contributors add both hands-on and analytical perspectives on the making of the film. The Alternate Historical Subtitle Track offers screen-specific information that illuminates the real-world historical events and the people who participated in them. Anyone who wants to learn more about Operation Market Garden will find a wealth of data here. Given the fact that A Bridge Too Far is a three-hour film, it’s worth noting that the commentary and the subtitle track can be played together simultaneously, but there’s so much information here that it would be difficult to absorb all of it in one sitting anyway.

DISC THREE: BD (EXTRAS)

• Special Features:
  • Attenborough at War (HD – 24:07)
  • Joseph E. Levine: Becoming the Showman (HD – 9:10)
  • More Than Another War Movie: Elliott Gould Builds A Bridge Too Far (HD – 16:34)
  • We are the Cavalry: Filming A Bridge Too Far (HD – 9:49)
  • Behind the Lens: Remembering Geoffrey Unsworth (HD – 14:11)
  • A Futile Mission: Scoring A Bridge Too Far (HD – 10:56)
  • Making A Bridge Too Far (HD – 60:52)
• Archival Features:
  • The Arnhem Report (Upscaled SD – 60:48)
  • Theirs Is the Glory (Upscaled SD – 78:56)
  • A Bridge Too Far: Heroes from the Sky (Upscaled SD – 43:35)
  • A Distant Battle: Memories of Operation Market Garden (Upscaled SD – 17:01)
  • Richard Attenborough: A Filmmaker Remembers (Upscaled SD – 18:01)
  • Interview with Richard Attenborough (Upscaled SD – 5:14)
  • Interview with Anthony Hopkins (Upscaled SD – 4:58)
  • Photo Gallery (HD – 9:11)

Most of the new extras were produced by Daniel Griffith’s Ballyhoo Motion Pictures. Attenborough at War is an interview with C. Courtney Joyner, who explores Richard Attenborough’s career as an actor in war movies prior to making A Bridge Too Far and how those experiences shaped his work on his own film. Joseph E. Levine: Becoming the Showman is a biography of the maverick producer/distributor, narrated by Gerard Griesbaum and featuring interviews with Chris Poggiali and Frank Conniff. We Are the Cavalry is an interview with camera operator Peter MacDonald, who explains some of the challenges in mounting such a massive production. Behind the Lens brings back MacDonald along with clapper loader Tony Jackson, and they provide more details about the challenges of shooting everything for Unsworth under such difficult circumstances. A Futile Mission is an interview with John Burlingame, who discusses John Addison’s work on the film and how it fit into his life and career (Addison was a tank commander during WWII, and he participated in Operation Market Garden).

The odd man out with the new interviews is More Than Another War Movie, which was produced by Daniel Kremer instead. It features Elliott Gould, who reminisces about his arguments with Levine over being cast in the film, and he offers a few choice opinions about the results (while taking a dig at A Chorus Line as well). Time may change everything, but not Elliott Gould.

The last new extra is Making A Bridge Too Far, a documentary produced by Simon Lewis, author of the 2024 book of the same name. Narrated by Dickon Hooper, it includes new interviews that Lewis conducted for his book, including Peter MacDonald, stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong, assistant director Steve Lanning, practical effects supervisor John Richardson, and production assistant Reineke Kramer, plus actors Christopher Good and Jack McKenzie Edward Seckerson. Archival interview subjects include Richard Attenborough, William Goldman, Stuart Craig, Hardy Krüger, Sebastian Abineri, and many more. It’s a comprehensive look at the making of the film, with plenty of vintage behind-the-scenes footage (more on that in a moment).

The archival extras include ones that were originally offered on the 2005 DVD, plus a few taken from elsewhere. The centerpiece of the collection is The Arnhem Report, which is 1977 promotional feature about the making of A Bridge Too Far (it’s the source of most of the aforementioned footage that’s used elsewhere in the set). As a promotional film produced on the set as a way of marketing the film, it includes interviews with most of the cast and crew, including people who wouldn’t have been represented otherwise like Dirk Bogarde, Sean Connery, Ryan O’Neal, Robert Redford, Joseph E. Levine, Laurence Olivier, and Liv Ullmann. It also includes interviews with some of the actual historical figures who served as advisors, like Brigadier General James Gavin, Major-General Roy Urquhart, Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, and Kate ter Horst. Written and directed by Iain Johnstone (who also authored the 1977 book of the same name), it’s an invaluable historical document. While it was shot on film, it’s presented here via the best available master from the BFI, which looks like it was recorded on analogue 1” videotape, so it’s filled with tracking errors and other artifacts. It’s still fantastic to have it included.

Theirs Is the Glory (aka Men of Arnhem) is a 1946 British docudrama about Operation Market Garden, focusing (naturally) on the British perspective only. The hook is that it was shot on the real locations shortly after the operation ended, using many veterans and civilians who actually participated, like Lieutenant-Colonel John Frost and Kate ter Horst. It also mixes recreations with documentary footage that was shot during the operation (including some impressive newsreel footage of the actual air drop, which is interesting to compare to Attenborough’s staging). Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst for Gaumont British News, the Rank Organisation, and the Army Film and Photographic Unit, this tribute to the participant ended up being a major success at the time. Theirs Is the Glory is presented here at 1.37:1, with English 2.0 LPCM mono audio.

A Bridge Too Far: Heroes from the Sky is a 2001 episode of the History Channel series History vs. Hollywood. Narrated by Burt Reynolds, it takes a step back to examine the Cornelius Ryan book first, and then compares the real historical events that he described to how they are depicted in the film. It’s a little cursory, like History Channel material tends to be, but it still offers a few different perspectives on how the film represents reality.

The rest of the extras are a collection of brief featurettes, interviews, and a photo gallery. A Distant Battle includes interviews with veterans of Operation Market Garden that were filmed at a reunion for the 101st Airborne Division, narrated by James Coburn. Richard Attenborough: A Filmmaker remembers is with the director himself, who discusses the enormous complexities of the production. Attenborough also reappears via vintage interviews from 1977, as does Anthony Hopkins (they look like they may have been filmed at some sort of a press junket).

Whew! While not necessarily all-inclusive, that’s an extraordinary collection of extras. It’s everything that was included on previous releases of the film, plus a raft of newly-produced and newly-released extras as well. Even if you play the commentary and the historical subtitle track together, that’s still over 9 ½ hours of material (12 ½ if you play them separately). The only other thing that I would have liked to have seen included here is the 2019 History Buffs episode on A Bridge Too Far (Nick Hodges is a huge fan of the film), but that’s still freely available on YouTube. For anyone who still wants to learn more, I highly recommend that episode, plus the various books on the film by William Goldman, Simon Lewis, Iaian Johnstone, and Sebastian Abineri. Yet regarding this Collector’s Edition release of A Bridge Too Far, it gets the highest possible recommendation. In fact, I can’t recommend it strongly enough. It’s not cheap, and importing it probably won’t be cheap either, but it’s worth every single penny.

- Stephen Bjork

(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).