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Rating:  - Calm, Touching Work
Paul Newman brings the wonderful Evan Connell novels to the screen. These could not have been easy novels to turn into cinema, as they are episodic and span thirty years or more in the life of this family. Joanne Woodward steals the show as the repressed housewife of the title, doomed to a country-club life in far-off Kansas City with an emotionally-distant husband. She wants what is best for her children, but cannot see past convention and the style of the day. Her humanity rings through, though, as when she buys a subscription to "Doberman Magazine", just to help out the poor art teacher who appears at her door to solicit her. A movie that shows how fine acting will carry you along, even when very little is happening.
Rating:  - Mr. and Mrs. Newman
The movie follows the story of a couple, Walter and India Bridge (Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward), as they traverse the complexity of their long relationship as husband and wife and as parents to three children. The movie doesn't really have a plot, nothing really happens to move any story along. Instead the movie presents a series of vignettes that depicts different situations and events in their marriage from the mundane and unremarkable things to the more weighty things. All of those scenes were presented with such understated grace and simplicity. The movie doesn't exaggerate the emotions of the characters as well as consciously define the different characters in a black and white manner. There are wonderful and three dimensional characters in this movie that are elusive and flawed and vague, just like real human beings.
I think one of the most obvious differences between Walter and India is that Walter is someone whom emotions do not freely present itself to people. He's reserved and private. India is the exact opposite. The character in the course of the movie acted from being naive and optimist, to being hurt and disappointed, to being vulnerable and yearning, and to depressed and content. She's the most emotional character in the movie. And somehow because of that their love (the three dimensional kind, meaning no bells are ringing and no fireworks are exploding) for each other that made India want once in a while be verbalized just for reassurance.
Walter may not be the most ideal husband, but there's no doubt in my mind that he loves his wife. There's a scene in the movie where the couple had a fight and Walter tried to reassure his love for his wife by asking her to sit in his lap. Another scene is when he tried to console India after being hurt by his son's actions during a school activity by holding her hands without saying anything. I love how those little scenes were shown instead of being told.
The performances were topnotch. Some people say that Paul Newman was miscast and I could not disagree more. He was believable and understated. The role suits him quite well from the way the character looks and dresses, to that intellectual sound of his voice, and to that minimalist acting that he gave. Joanne Woodward provided a gamut of emotions in her performance in the most unaffected and realistic way. She's a knockout in this movie.
In the end we learned that Walter's son and his son became lawyers just like him and formed the firm Bridges and Bridges and Bridges. That pretty much implies how Walter was able to pass on his emotional detachment. How basically his son and his grandson would turn out just like him. But the movie doesn't really have an ending. This is one of those movies that doesn't seem to have any conclusions. The movie ended in the same manner the movie started, a glimpse in the life of an ordinary family doing ordinary things.
Grade: A-
Rating: - Muddling through, getting basically from here to nowhere - but a good movie anyway
Both Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward perform expertly in this adaptation of the Evan S. Connell novels. Newman is Walter Bridge, a stiff, by-the-book, passionless man, and Woodward his reticent, subservient wife, India. Although Woodward is unhappy in this relationship, the movie is not about an oafish, bullying husband and his dominated wife - it's a lot more subtle than that. Set in the 1930s, it's a time when the upper crust was still expected to act this way (although times were a-changing). Intelligent in a way lost to Hollywood in recent times, the movie doesn't take any of the shortcuts one might expect. The characters are not black and white, good and evil; they have interesting shadings about them - and our feelings about them and responses to them are also shaded. It's a very good movie; definitely worth a watch.
Rating: - Generation gap pre-WWII
There is so much good to say about "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge." As usual, the Merchant/Ivory team produce quality work that looks good, sounds good, plays well, and makes the viewer both think and feel. It draws us in and gets us involved with the characters. Although the stories are often slight, the characters involved wouldn't think so because this is their lives we're watching. This production team knows how to thrive in this setting, and this film is no exception. Trying to pin down the relationship between the title characters is as elusive as with any real people, which is a rare and wonderful thing in the entertainment world. Too often writers and directors feel they have to bludgeon us over the head with messages and obvious black/white issue statements that preach.
Mr. & Mrs. Bridge obviously love each other dearly; he is wholly devoted to her, faithful, protective, and tender to a fault so that she is sheltered. Consequently their children have little respect for her, the rich lady with a maid who fusses over them like children as they go off to college, to a career, or to war. Mr. & Mrs. Bridge are not comfortable with the way society around them is changing.
There are a huge number of beautifully understated moments in the screenplay and in its onscreen execution. Every moment feels authentic....except that I can't get over the feeling that Paul Newman is awfully miscast in this role. Mr. Bridge is so uptight he squeaks when he walks, and it's not his shoes. This is not the Paul Newman we know from a long career of playing hustlers, con men, and disreputable scalawags. Although he often manages to pull off the extremely responsible Mr. Bridge, it's often difficult for the audience to get past seeing him race cars, shoot pool, or dig a ditch on a chain gang as we have over the years. Some actors could pull this off; Newman falls just short. Fortunately he is surrounded by others who wear their characters as neatly as he wears his suit. Newman playing the title role really interferes with the story.
Worse than that is the ending, which basically comes out of nowhere. There is no payoff, emotional or otherwise; it simply feels like the film broke during the final reel and the projectionist simply brought up the house lights rather than fix it. This also comes at the end of a scene that begins equally abruptly, as if something important had wound up on the cutting room floor, when the Bridges' son shows up in Air Corps uniform although the audience is never told he had been anywhere but at home, and apparently several months or years have passed. The whole ending act is thus completely out of kilter...and then it's over.
Newman's past history and the final act of the film, however, don't ruin a remarkable character study in repression, rebellion, and self-control to the point of anal retention. "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge" is a most remarkable film that can be greatly enjoyed by any intelligent person over age 25; I doubt many younger folks would have matured enough to appreciate the subtleties of the characters, their situations, and their relationships. And in the end, that's all this film is about.
Rating:  - TWO GREAT ACTORS CAN MAKE INTERESTING A CONVENTIONAL MOVIE.
"Mr. And Mrs. Bridge" stars Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, playing a 1940 marriage. This is a conventional drama with excellent performances, the characters are nothing out of this world, they are a bunch of characters very similar to real life people, the story is not very original, it's just a bunch of rich people living a conventional life, but these two great actors carried on their shoulders the weight of an otherwise uninteresting movie, making "Mr. And Mrs. Bridge" an enjoyable movie.
Basically this is the story of the struggle between two generations, the iron hand discipline of a stiff father and the "rebellion" of his daughter and son who want to escape from the monotony of the life of their parents. And trapped in the middle is Mrs. Bridge, who even though she mostly obeys her husband, once in a while she likes to try new things to inject happiness to her life.
"Mr. And Mrs. Bridge" is an entertaining movie thanks to the performances of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
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