Mr. & Mrs. Bridge

Introduction

Welcome to Kansas in the late 1930`s, where family values rule, everyone who is anyone has a job, however lowly, and everyone knows their place, especially women (except for those who dare to be different and have ideas of their own).

Walter Bridge is a lawyer, who, on the surface, appears to care deeply about social injustices, but deeper down is a troubled man.

His family and maid appear to be the cause of most of this trouble, but they are just reacting to changes in society which he is inwardly fighting against. Someone has to crack first...

The original novels `Mrs. Bridge` and `Mr. Bridge` recount the same family stories, but are told mainly from the viewpoint of the eponymous characters. This film, as can be seen by the title, is an amalgamation of both, and there lies the problem...

Video

A very clear picture throughout, and despite not having huge, sweeping landscape shots to play with, catches the usual visual flair we are used to from Merchant-Ivory productions.

Audio

Again, a very clear production, although I would have preferred a less prominent score from Richard Robbins. Actually, I would have preferred a completely different score altogether, as the music sounds more like West-Coast minimalism, jarring horribly with the subject matter and period.

Features

A very exciting `Scene Selection` and choice of English subtitles grabbed my attention with this disc. We don`t see enough like those!

Conclusion

It`s always going to be difficult transcribing a novel into a screenplay, and then creating a film which captures not just the essence of the original source, but adding to it in some way. When you have the task of turning two novels into one screenplay then things become a little more complex, not least because there has to be even more left out as there is included (unless you`re going to attempt a `World According to Garp` or `Lord of the Rings` - when people will still shout and scream about what isn`t there)

This is the problem with Mr. & Mrs. Bridge. I`ve not read the books by Evan S. Connell, but the impression you glean from the film is that although the major events of the family story are included, there is little or no time to dig beneath the surface of each character. Everyone is therefore slightly one-dimensional, and despite the film being (a very watchable) two hours long, still seems to be cut off in its prime at the end, leaving us with a few `catch-up on the plot we didn`t have tim to film` captions.

Newman gives an impressively understated performance as the high-flying lawyer, but we learn little of the reasons for his inability in showing his true feelings towards his wife, while harbouring some not-so-righteous feelings towards his daughter (not to mention the underlying racism that permeated parts of US society at that time).

Joanne Woodward plays India Bridge as a woman who is eager to please everyone, almost to the point of irritation. From the beginning of the film, we sense that she`s heading towards a nervous breakdown of some sort, but perhaps holds back as this would obviously have an effect on the way society would react to their famliy, but her husband in particular. We certainly empathise with her more than anyone else in the family, possibly because the script dwelt more on the `Mrs. Bridge` novel, although this is pure guesswork on my part.

The character of Dr. Alex Sauer (Simon Callow) struck me as superfluous. I`m sure he could have just been mentioned briefly by others, giving us a little more time for some insight into the Bridge family unit, although Callow seems to have fun with his over-the-top German accent when he`s involved.

Overall then, this is a film with a great amount of humour, a large sprinkling of stereotypical moaning about `young people today!` and `Women! Know your place!` and at least one very sad and affecting moment towards the end, towards which the plot is obviously aiming, but is probably a case of too little, too late.

It`s a shame that this release comes with no extras at all, but perhaps an ever greater shame that we could not have had two films, made side-by-side, allowing each novel to be given a more generous treatment. At the very least, it may make you want to read the books.