THE BRIDGE

Germany, 1959, 116 minutes, Black and white.
Folker Bohnet, Fritz Wepper, Michael Hinz, Frank Glaubert, Gunther Hoffman.
Directed by Bernhard Wickhi.

The Bridge is one of the most effective and shattering of anti-war films. It takes place over a period of two days only. Schoolboy friends, preoccupied with their own world and their family backgrounds, are called up towards the end of the war, enlist eagerly and within twenty-four hours are at war. What was intended as a holding action on the bridge to the town, becomes a microcosm battlefield of the whole of the war. The slaughter is cruel, painful and meaningless. The Bridge takes some time in establishing the personalities and characters of the boys, their clashes, their adolescent romance, idealism and capacity for being hurt by unwitting parents. Once we know them, we like them and feel with them. Their consequent mad crusade for the fatherland seems all the more terrible and the film has a tremendous impact.

An anti-war must.

1. How would you describe your final impressions of this film; how did it affect your attitudes to the realities of war?

2. Why did the director take his time in leading up to the war sequences? What did he gain by this?

3. How well did you feel you knew the boys before they were called up? Do you think they were a good cross-section of town boys?

4. Which of the boys came across to you as the most interesting personality? Why?

5. What were the boys' relationships to their parents?

6. What was the role of the teacher in the film? Was his role too obvious?

7. How were we continually reminded of the boys' young age - games, clothes, school, "Romeo and Juliet", idealism, shyness, shock at parents' behaviour, etc.?

8. Why were they so eager to enlist? (Are boys like that these days?).

9. Was the sergeant wise in protecting the boys by placing them to guard the bridge?

10. How serious were the boys in their war and defending the bridge - pride of doing their job, idealistic playing of soldiers?

11. How did they react to the battle - killing, horror, death?

12. Did you think the battle scenes effective - the suspense before the American tanks arrived, the old man in the house, the American soldier, the bullets ripping people open?

13. It was an accident that the sergeant was killed and the boys left alone. The action was futile. What comments did the film make on war?

14. How was this story a reflection on the wider issues of war and people's involvement in war, their sense of duty to a cause of which they do not understand the meaning?

15. Was the film completely pessimistic? Why?