A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 1999 Rykodisc. Movie poster art (C) 1977 Metro Goldwyn Meyer/United Artists The late film composer John Addison (Tom Jones, Sleuth ) may perhaps be best remembered by millions of TV viewers for his theme for "Murder, She Wrote," but one of his best scores was written for 1977's A Bridge Too Far. Richard Attenborough's epic about Operation Market-Garden isn't a bad movie; it just had the misfortune of having been made in the late 1970s, when most movie-watchers were leery about war movies. As the liner notes to this Rykodisc/MGM Soundtrack explain, " A Bridge Too Far is not a typical war film celebrating a heroic victory." Coming on the heels of America's defeat in Southeast Asia and antipathy for most things military, Attenborough's well-crafted film failed to draw audiences and disappeared from theaters and moviegoers' radar scopes. (The success of a movie set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" d...

Major Cast: Dirk Bogarde .... Lt. Gen. Browning James Caan .... SSgt. Eddie Dohun Michael Caine .... Lt. Col. J.O.E. Vandeleur Sean Connery .... Maj. Gen. Roy Urquhart Edward Fox .... Lt. Gen. Brian Horrocks Elliott Gould .... Col. Robert Stout Gene Hackman .... Maj. Gen. Stanislaw Sosabowski Anthony Hopkins .... Lt. Col. John Frost Hardy Kruger .... Maj. Gen. Ludwig Ryan O'Neal .... Brig. Gen. James Gavin Laurence Olivier .... Dr. Jan Spaander Robert Redford .... Maj. Julian Cook Maximilian Schell .... Lt. Gen. Wilhelm Bittrich Liv Ullmann .... Kate Ter Horst A Bridge Too Far , Richard Attenborough's ( Gandhi, Chaplin ) epic recreation of one of the most controversial battles of World War II, is one of those films that fall under the category of "glorious failure." Like the subject it vividly depicts (Operation Market-Garden), it was a well intentioned and daring endeavor, yet it failed to capture a receptive audience and was quickly forgotten ...