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Release Date: 2000-01-11
Average Customer Rating: 5.0
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| I'm so glad this is finally on DVDI've loved this movie for YEARS! I'm so excited it is finally on DVD. I'd read a few years back that they were not releasing it for some reason on purpose. If I need a good cry, this is the movie I reach for. Vivien Leigh is so wonderful as Myra - she really brought great charm and wit to the role and kept it from being a mere melodrama. Robert Taylor was terrific too. This movie just breaks my heart each time I watch it, but it's so well done, I watch it over and over anyway. It brings beauty to the fact that life is often unfair, but so worth living anyway. A definite "must have" for anyone who loves classic movies - especially romantic ones.
Waterloo BridgeExcellent movie -- would recommend it to anyone who loves old movies (good ones, that is!).
beautiful moviei have been watching classic films for years, and somehow missed seeing this one. i bought it when it was released recently, just because i was curious to see vivien leigh's performance. it truly is one of the most visually beautiful movies i have ever seen. why isn't this film as well known as some of the others from that period? tragic story, touching musical score throughout, with wonderful performances by everyone involved. watched the early 1930s version recently and like it as well, but this 1940 film moves very nearly to the top of my all time favorites.
Stunning!Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor are the greatest actors of the past. Many actors have come and gone since then, but few have left an impact on cinemagoers than Leigh and Taylor did. The idea of teaming them together in Waterloo Bridge was superb. I am very happy that I purchased this DVD as it brings back to my mind so many memories of the second world war. The script, the acting and the scenery of London are all the right ingredients to make the film credible and delightful.
Cruel KnowledgeWaterloo Bridge. It starts out so simply. It's London 1939. War has just been declared. Roy Cronin (played by Robert Taylor) is a senior British colonel with a car and a driver. On the way to the train station, he says to the driver. "Go by way of Waterloo Bridge". Already we know so much. He tells the driver to go out of his way to the bridge. It must mean something to him. He stops on the bridge, gets out and stands for a few minutes on the sidewalk. He clutches a small carved figure. A good luck charm perhaps?
And then as he stands on the bridge, we look directly at his sad wistful face as he stares off into the void. It is that look, that remembering look tells us all we really need to know. Do we really need to see the rest of the movie - the story behind it? No. That look hangs over the whole story and tears at our hearts. No matter what joys or pleasures come later, it is that visage on the bridge that is this movie.
But we will see the story as it is told in flashback. The scene dissolves to 1914, another war and it starts of course on Waterloo Bridge. The incandescent Myra (played brilliantly by Vivien Leigh) - is a dancer - a ballet dancer no less. She is walking on the bridge with her fellow dancers. An air raid siren scatters the group and she runs into Cronin as a young Captain. They get to know each other for about an hour in an air raid shelter and shortly after he proposes.
But this is not merely a story about a wartime romance. It is - a little - about the crazy optimistic, happy, young captain who falls instantly for Myra and must make her his bride in spite of the war and his chances. But it is much, much more about Myra. She is beautiful, elegant, well bred. She's Vivian Leigh for heavens sakes. But we soon learn Myra is tainted with a cruel affliction. She just can't accept happiness or good fortune and she knows that about herself. She always expects the shadows of life and fortune even when she tries not to.
So we see the polarized courtship. Cronin goofily, optimistically courts Myra. Myra initially pulls back, unable at first to accept the gift of love and happiness. But Myra relents and accepts him. They hurriedly try to marry but are too late at the church. We watch all this hoping and praying for them.
But the director (Mervyn Leroy) has played a cruel trick and the trick is on us - the hapless movie watchers. You see - we have already seen the sad, yearning look on the elder colonels face. We have seen him in 1939 remembering Myra from over 20 years ago. We have seen the future while we watch the past and we carry this cruel knowledge with us as the story unfolds. No matter what happens in the story. No matter if the young lovers achieve moments of happiness and joy we are burdened with our inescapable knowledge. We have seen the elder officer sadly staring off into space and remembering. This what this movie is about. Its just too sad. That's Waterloo Bridge.
Coda. Every movie reviewer owes it to the makers to recognize some special aspect of the movie. In this film that's easy. It is Maria Ouspenskaya. Ms. Ouspenskaya plays the unyielding ballet master. She fires Myra for missing a performance to be with Taylor. Its a privilege to see Ms. Ouspenskaya in this film. Its also gave me a strange feeling. It's the 21st century. The film was made in 1940 and Ms. Ouspenskaya lived and performed in film and theatre beginning well over 100 years ago. To watch her now is to experience a humbling artistic continuity.
DescriptionVivian Leigh stars as a ballerina in war-torn England who turns to prostitution when she believes her fiance has died in the war in this drama based on Robert E. Sherwood's acclaimed play. Robert Taylor co-stars. Year: 1940 Director: Mervyn LeRoy Starring: Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor, Lucile Watson, Virginia Field, Maria Ouspenskaya
Amazon.comMervyn LeRoy's 1940 remake of Waterloo Bridge, based on the play by Robert E. Sherwood, stars Robert Taylor as Scotsman Roy Conin, a middle-aged officer in the British army who reflects--on the eve of Britain's entry into World War II--on lost love during the last Great War. Told in flashback, Roy's ill-fated romance begins in a chance meeting with ballerina Myra Deauville (Vivien Leigh) during a London air raid. In less than two days, Roy's near-obnoxious, aristocratic self-confidence and boyish exuberance sweep Myra off her feet and she agrees to marry him before he ships out for duty in Germany. But there's no time for the wedding, and during what should be a happy first meeting with Roy's mother (Lucile Watson), Myra receives mistaken information that Roy is dead on a battleground. From there, Myra spirals downward into poverty and prostitution, until cruel fortune reveals that Roy is quite alive. While a tearjerker, Waterloo Bridge also says something about wartime conditions where women are caught between pressures of survival (especially where and when women have few options) and social values that condemn them for staying alive by any means. Told as delicately as possible, the film is directed with tasteful straightforwardness by LeRoy (Random Harvest) and the key performances by Taylor and Leigh strike exactly the right melodramatic but not bathetic pitch. Nice work, too, by Virginia Field as Myra's equally luckless friend. --Tom Keogh
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