Category: Richard Attenborough

Cry Freedom (1987)

Highly earnest, well-meaning, but tragically mis-focused biopic that doesn’t have the impact it wants

Director: Richard Attenborough

Cast: Kevin Kline (Donald Woods), Denzel Washington (Steve Biko), Penelope Wilton (Wendy Woods), Alec McCowen (High Commissioner David Aubrey Scott), Kevin McNally (Ken Robertson), Ian Richardson (State Prosecutor), John Thaw (Jimmy Kruger), Timothy West (Captain De Wet), Josette Simon (Dr Mamphela Ramphele), John Hargreaves (Bruce Haigh), Zakes Mokae (Father Kani), John Matsikiza (Mapetla), Julian Glover (Don Card)

Steve Biko (Denzel Washington) was a leading anti-Apartheid campaigner, driving the Black Consciousness Movement in the repressive racist state of South Africa. Biko called for Black people to organise themselves and rejected the paternalistic concern of hand-wringing white liberals. Biko was ‘banned’ in 1970s by South Africa’s (in)justice department (meaning he could not be in physical proximity with more than one other person at a time) but didn’t let this stop him campaigning – until he was eventually arrested and murdered in custody in August 1977. His story came to international attention with the reporting Donald Woods (Kevin Kline), the white liberal newspaper editor who befriended Biko, later also banned and eventually fled in disguise from South Africa.

All of this makes very ripe ground for Richard Attenborough to make another socially conscious, unreservedly liberal film, very much in the style of Gandhi. Unfortunately, while Gandhi combined epic sweep and drama with its schoolboy history, Cry Freedom is a deathly serious film, straight-jacketed by recreating events as reverentially as possible and focuses itself in all the wrong places. Cry Freedom is the Biko biography in which Biko becomes a supporting character to exactly the sort of white liberal he rejected having African stories filtered through. Admirable as Donald Woods’ efforts to find justice for Biko was, does it feel like he deserved the focus of over half the film? It’s as if Attenborough had decided to frame Gandhi solely from the perspective of Martin Sheen’s journalist rather than the Father of India himself.

Following the trend of many films of the 80s and 90s, Cry Freedom believes that the only way the regular cinemagoer can relate to a minority group is through the filter of a complacent white person having their eyes opened to how unjust everything is. In carefully following this cliché, Cry Freedom does do a decent job. Woods is patronisingly certain of his liberal views, even while he sometimes fails to even acknowledge his live-in Black maid who unquestioningly calls him ‘master’.

Back-slapping himself on writing the odd sympathetic editorial and convinced one of the big problems of South Africa is the danger of anti-white racism, he’s exactly the sort of hero you get in this genre: the guy who assumes, because the system has always worked for him, it will work for everyone. When he resolves to support Biko, he immediately assumes a friendly pow-wow with Justice Minister Jimmy Kruger (a terrifyingly amorally, avuncular John Thaw) will sweep away all the problems (it, of course, makes things immeasurably worse for everyone).

Cry Freedom largely re-creates the oppressive policies of South Africa, through seeing a white character become a victim of the very persecution, bullying and terrorising the Black community has spent its whole life suffering. (With the big exception that Donald Woods never seems to be in danger of being dragged off the streets and beaten to death in a police cell). It feels like a tone-deaf way of exploring these issues. Particularly as Donald Woods’ eventual escape from South Africa is staged and filmed with a singular lack of energy over nearly an hour of screen time, with interest slowly drained out as Attenborough uninventively turns it into an identikit version of any number of bog-standard behind-the-lines Great Escape shenanigans you’ve seen done a million times better before.

Attenborough, to be fair, saves his energy for the re-staging of the brutal repression inflicted on the Black community. Cry Freedom’s opening and closing sequences – a brutal slum clearance in East London and a restaging of the shockingly violent crushing of the 16 June 1976 Soweto uprising (where indiscriminate police automatic weapons fire killed and injured hundreds of children) – are shot with exactly the sort of humanitarian outrage and cold-eyed recognition of the horrors of conflict that Attenborough bought to Gandhi and A Bridge too Far.

It’s not hard to wonder if this is more the sort of film Attenborough wanted to make, but that funding demanded a white lead so as not to panic mainstream cinema audiences. It makes large parts of the film feel like a missed opportunity. A real immersion in the actual day-to-day lives of Black South Africans – not just the beatings, but the unending, casual racism and oppression – would have created a film of even more power. (The fact the film suddenly ends with a flashback to Soweto – an event not central to the plot at all – makes you wonder if Attenborough suddenly realised that, without it, Cry Freedom would have barely shown a Black face for its last twenty minutes).

But too much of the rest of Cry Freedom feels too dry, reserved and lifeless. Even Biko himself falls into this trap. Denzel Washington delivers a very fine performance, full of the sort of effortless charisma and magnetic leadership that makes you believe that so many would follow him and using wit and moral certainty to stand up to the various bullying policeman he encounters. But too much of Biko’s dialogue with Woods is full of the sort of dialogue designed to inform and educate the audience, rather than create good story-telling. Too many scenes in Cry Freedom’s opening hour feel like a South African politics seminar, no matter how much energy Washington gives the dialogue.

It’s part of the feeling the whole film carries: a very serious political ethics class, mixed with an all-too familiar story of a white man learning first hand just how tough his Black friends have had it for years. Attenborough so clearly means well, it feels almost cruel to knock him and his film: but Cry Freedom feels like a film with a lot of blood, sweat and tears invested in it, which then fails to have the emotional heft it really needs and spends a lot of time telling the wrong person’s story.

Gandhi (1982)

Ben Kingsley excels as Gandhi in Richard Attenborough’s Oscar winning epic

Director: Richard Attenborough

Cast: Ben Kingsley (Mahatma Gandhi), Rohini Hattaggadi (Kasturba Gandhi), Roshan Seth (Jawaharlal Nehru), Pradeep Kumar (VK Krishna Menon), Saeed Jaffrey (Vallabhbhai Patel), Alyque Padamsee (Muhammad Ali Jinnah), Virendra Razdan (Maulana Azad), Candice Bergen (Margaret Bourke-White), Edward Fox (Brigadier General Reginald Dyer), John Gielgud (Lord Irwin), Trevor Howard (Judge Broomfield), John Mills (Lord Chelmsford), Martin Sheen (Vince Walker), Ian Charleson (Reverend Charles Andrews), Arthul Fugard (General Jan Smuts), Geraldine James (Mirabehn), Amrish Puri (Khan), Ian Bannan (Senior Officer Fields), Richard Griffiths (Collins), Nigel Hawthorne (Kinnoch), Michael Hordern (Sir George Hodge), Om Puri (Nahari)

In 1962, Richard Attenborough was approached by Motilal Kothari, an Indian civil servant, who believed Attenborough was the man to bring the life of Mahatma Gandhi to film. All this despite Attenborough having never directed a film. But the life of one of history’s greatest men, and passionate advocate of peace and non-violence, spoke deeply to the socially-engaged Attenborough who dedicated 20 years of his life to bringing the film to the screen, immersing himself in Indian culture along the way and winning the support of Nehru (until his death delayed the project again) and Gandhi’s family. The eventual film was a huge success, cementing the public perception of Gandhi and beautifully capturing both the importance of the story, and its emotional heart.

Opening with Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, the film covers in flashback his life from combatting anti-Indian prejudice in South Africa as a young, British-trained, lawyer to his return to India and long involvement in the campaign to win India its independence from the British Empire, stressing non-co-operation, his eventual success but also his failure to hold the Hindu and Muslim parts of the country together and his attempt as “father of the nation” to put an end to religious violence, a failure that will eventually lead to his assassination.

Attenborough’s grand, epic film marshals thousands of extras to bring to life pages of history. At times events fly by with speed, but Attenborough never loses sight of the emotional heart of the story – both Gandhi and the status of Indians as not being masters in their own home. Attenborough directs scenes of real power, most strikingly a heart-rending peaceful march on a salt works (the tax on salt use being a major burden on many poor Indians) that culminates in line after line of peaceful Indian protestors walking calmly forward to be beaten down by soldiers. Despite being the grandest and largest of films, it allows questions of pure morality and decency to lie at its heart and, supported by a parade of British acting greats, keeps the Indians at the heart of their own story and the masters of their own destinies.

The film’s impact though may be directly connected to the gloriously transcendent performance of Ben Kingsley in the title role. For years it was believed the film could only work with a British actor in the title role – imagine how it would be received today if Gandhi had been played by (as it nearly was) a browned-up Anthony Hopkins or John Hurt (who famously told Attenborough he looked absurd). Instead half-Indian unknown RSC actor Ben Kingsley took the role. Kingsley so completely and utterly immersed himself in Gandhi – everything, the physicality, the morality, the voice, the intellectualism – that not only has he become so completely associated with the role but it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing it.

Ageing almost 50 years over the course of the film, Kingsley’s Gandhi is above-all moral, softly-spoken, observant and considerate – the very spirit of the original man seems to be up on the screen. Far from the sort of histrionics you might expect from a subject of an epic movie, Kingsley is not afraid to be quiet, gentle even underplayed. He completely understands that the charisma and power in Gandhi laid in his moral authority, not his speech-making, but his careful example-setting of even-handedness, patience and desire for peace.

But Kingsley is also willing to show Gandhi as shrewd and stubborn, even while mixing it with both a deep pain at the loss of life. Kingsley is superbly good at the smaller quieter moments – he wrings heart-rending force from the loss of his wife (a similarly impressive and quietly authoritative performance from Rohini Hattaggadi), which partly works because the film quietly centres the truth and faith in their marriage. This is extraordinary work from Ben Kingsley, that seems to carry not just the entire film but the sense of a nation.

Attenborough though was a director who was at his best when working with actors, and his ability to coax truthful and heartfelt moments from quiet scenes are what gives the other sequences the emotional force to make them work. Attenborough seemingly called in every favour to assemble the supporting cast that backs up Kingsley, many of them juggling only a few scenes. Among the stand-outs we have a martially certain Edward Fox as General Dyer, an archly arrogant John Gielgud and a frustrated John Mills as viceroys, Trevor Howard representing decent British rule as an honest Judge and Martin Sheen as a reformist minded journalist. That’s to overlook dozens of others in small roles, all of them clearly committed to the intention of the project.

The film though allows the Indians themselves to take centre stage, even if it is easy to criticise some of the simplifications of many of the issues that would eventually culminate in partition. The film has a clear hostility towards the idea of religion, seeing it as the root of much of the violence that erupted in India in the last years of Gandhi’s life. While Roshan Seth is excellent as Nehru, the character is portrayed more as the faithful follower of Gandhi than the shrewd politician in his own right (it’s a role most of the other leading members of congress are also placed in). Alyque Padamsee carries a high level of charisma as Jinnah, founder of Pakistan – but the film can’t quite resist painting him into the corner as a semi-villain, ignoring Gandhi’s desperation to get Jinnah to invest in a united India.

It’s part of what has been seen since as the film’s more hagiographic stance towards Gandhi. Certainly later historiography has outlined a few shades of grey in Gandhi – although I would argue that seeing him as a man and not a saint only heightens (similar to Mandela) the awe at what he went on to achieve. The film’s whistle stop tour of Indian history – taking in every major event and personality, some in a matter of moments – looks particularly old-fashioned now with our current trend being biographical films that focus only on crucial moments, not the whole life. It adds a slight air of schoolboy history to the project, an unfortunate side-effect of the passionate earnestness with which the story is told.

But then even in 1982 – when it lifted 8 Oscars including Best Picture, Director and Actor and most of the technicals – it was seen as slightly old-fashioned. Attenborough has generously repeatedly said that he believed Steven Spielberg was more deserving of Best Director for ET. And it’s true that Attenborough was in many ways a producer at heart with these epics than an inspired director like Lean. His marshalling of crowds, finances and simply forcing the will together to make the picture – and to allow it to focus on Indians rather than Westerners – is a tribute to his organisational skills. His strengths as a director were more in performances, and as with many of his epic films the most memorable moments are smaller, intimate ones. The larger moments are shot with an assured professionalism rather than inspiration, but Attenborough understands how to wring emotion from moments and how to let character drive action.

Gandhi works above all because even today you can see it is a passionate labour of love, that everyone involved in clearly believed in passionately. It may well be that at times it is workmanlike or simplistic – and covers the sweep of history with an earnest completeness, even while it is unafraid to be critical certainly of the British – but it still invests it crucial moments with humanity, life and deep emotion. You can’t help but be moved by it – and you are instantly stunned by the sheer brilliance of Kingsley as Gandhi, one of those performances like George C Scott as Patton which seems more like the man than the real thing. Gandhi may be old fashioned, but that’s not a crime when the quality is still there.

Young Winston (1972)

Simon Ward as the Young Winston: episodic but fun look at the early life of the Greatest Briton

Director: Richard Attenborough

Cast: Simon Ward (Winston Churchill), Robert Shaw (Lord Randolph Churchill), Anne Bancroft (Lady Jennie Churchill), John Mills (Lord Kitchener), Jack Hawkins (James Welldon), Ian Holm (George Earle Buckle), Anthony Hopkins (David Lloyd George), Patrick Magee (General Sir Bindon Blood), Edward Woodward (Captain Aylmer Haldane), Pat Heywood (Elizabeth Ann Everest), Laurence Naismith (Lord Salisbury), Basil Dignam (Joseph Chamberlain), Robert Hardy (Headmaster)

Any poll of the Greatest Briton is bound to throw up, near the top, Winston Spencer Churchill. So famous is he, that his surname isn’t even required for Attenborough’s biography of the Great Man – just that name Winston gives you a pretty good idea of what you’re going to get. And you’d be right, because this film gives you a pretty straightforward rundown of Winston Churchill’s early years, in an episodic breakdown that gives us some small insight into what shaped the chap who went on to implore us to “fight them on the beaches”.

Simon Ward is the Young Winston, with Robert Shaw and Anne Bancroft as his parents Lord and Lady Churchill. Lord Randolph is the high-flying MP who throws away his career, catches syphilis, loses his mind and dies aged 37 – all the time disappointed with the son desperate for his approval. Lady Jennie is his loving, supportive but slightly distant mother. Winston himself? A bright lad, but a hopeless academic, struggles at school, needs umpteen attempts to scrap into Sandhurst for a career as a cavalry officer (a dunce’s career in the opinion of Randolph), serves in the Sudan under Kitchener (John Mills) and starts writing books and newspaper articles – because hopeless academic he might be, he’s still gifted with words. A career in Parliament is his dream – helped no end by his escaping captivity during the Boer War, making him a popular hero.

You can probably tell from that plot summary that this is a somewhat episodic film. Although initially throwing us into a clash in North-West India between the 35^th Sikhs regiment and Pashtun rebels – an action during which embedded journalist Churchill wins a mention in dispatches – the film quickly settles into a straight narrative run down of Churchill’s early life, filtered through the great man’s own writings. This makes for an episodic, at times rather dry, box ticking exercise of key moments in his life although it gets enlivened with some decent scenes and some good performances.

The one fact that comes out most strongly from the film is the wretchedly unhappy childhood of Winston himself. A borderline dunce, Churchill is a hopeless student from an early age. His school days are miserable, dispatched to some ghastly boarding school where thrashings from the headmaster (ironically played by later regular – and definitive – Churchill performer Robert Hardy) are handed out as regularly as dollops of gruel. There is a certain emotional impact throughout these scenes, with extensive quotations from the pre-teen Churchill’s letters barely concealing pleas for his parents to visit him (save him) under protestations of his happiness at school.

But this emotional connection doesn’t really last once we get into the adventures of the younger Churchill. This is despite an excellent performance from Simon Ward, who perfectly captures the mood and manner of the more famous older man while splicing in plenty of youthful exuberance and naivete. Ward does a terrific job of holding the film together – so well in fact you are left feeling slightly sorry that he never got a part as good as this ever again. His final speech is a perfect capturing of the speech-making prowess of the young statesman.

The film takes a mixed attitude to Churchill’s parents. It’s very open about the syphilis that afflicted Lord Randolph, and even before that makes clear his career is one governed by rashness and poor judgement. Robert Shaw is excellent as Churchill’s father – a stern taskmaster, constantly disappointed in his dullard, lazy son, but spicing it with enough small moments of affection to make you understand why Churchill worshipped this man whom he surpassed by every measurable factor. Shaw also makes a pre-illness Churchill, sharp, witty and strikingly intelligent: making his later descent into illness and unpredictability all the more affecting. Randolph’s final speech in the House – raddled by syphilis he looks awful and can barely remember his train of thought for longer than a few seconds – is remarkably moving.

The film takes far more of a conventional view of Lady Sarah, presenting her far more as the idealised mother figure she must have been for Churchill. Anne Bancroft is saddled with a rather dull part that never really comes to life, as the more interesting aspects of her colourful life are largely left on the cutting room floor.

Attenborough’s film does try to drill down into the personalities of these three people with a curious device where each character has a scene speaking (direct to the camera) to an unseen journalist asking them questions about themselves and the events around them. This interrogational style looks like a rather dated 1970s innovation today – look how we put the spotlight on these people! – but it does give a chance to see them from another perspective, and give the all-seeing author of the screenplay (Carl Foreman) a chance to ask questions viewers are probably asking. It’s on the nose, but still kind of works, even if the revelations we get barely seem to give us any shocks.

It’s about the only slight moment of invention anyway in a film that is another example of Attenborough’s excellence at marshalling a huge number of actors and locations into something very reassuringly safe and professional that is going to have a long lifespan on Sunday afternoon TV schedules. Young Winston is a decent, enjoyable mini-epic, but it’s not the film for those really wanting to either understand the times or understand the personalities involved.

Shadowlands (1993)

Debra Winger and Anthony Hopkins sublime in the moving Shadowlands

Director: Richard Attenborough

Cast: Anthony Hopkins (CS “Jack” Lewis), Debra Winger (Joy Davidman), Edward Hardwicke (Warnie Lewis), Joseph Mazzello (Douglas Gresham), John Woods (Dr Christopher Riley), Michael Denison (Harry Harrington), James Frain (Peter Whistler), Julian Fellowes (Desmond Arding), Peter Firth (Dr Craig), Roger Ashton-Griffiths (Dr Eddie Monk)

“We can’t have the happiness of yesterday without the pain of today. That’s the deal”. It’s a sentiment that runs through Shadowlands, a beautifully made, deeply heartfelt, incredibly moving tear-jerker based on the (largely) true story of how the man who invented Narnia, CS Lewis (Anthony Hopkins), fell in love very late in life with an American poet Joy Davidman (Debra Winger) only for her to succumb to cancer early in their marriage.

The story had a been a life-long investment from William Nicholson, who had developed the story first into a radio play, a TV drama (with Joss Ackland and a BAFTA winning Claire Bloom) and then a stage play (which won Nigel Hawthorne several awards in the lead role, including a Tony Award) and finally into this film. A wonderfully tender, profound and genuine exploration of the not only grief but the joy and delight that opening yourself up to love can bring you, Nicholson’s Oscar nominated script was brought to the screen by Richard Attenborough.

Looking back over Attenborough’s CV you immediately notice the vast majority of films he directed were massive, all-star, huge scope epics – A Bridge Too Far, Gandhi – which were as much triumphs of logistics and studio managements as they were displays of directing. Shadowlands is one of the smallest scale, most personal films he ever made – and it’s enough to make you wish that Attenborough had allowed himself to make more intimate chamber pieces like this. It’s a wonderful reminder, not only of how skilled he is at pacing and story-telling, but also what a sublime actor’s director he is. Dealing with material that in lesser hands could have become sentimental, Attenborough turns out a film that is realistic, tender, sad but also laced throughout with a warmth and (figurative and literal) Joy.

And of course the involvement of Attenborough also meant the involvement of his regular collaborator Anthony Hopkins. At the start of the 90s Hopkins was in such a run of form he could plausibly claim to be the best actor in the world. In all of this though, Shadowlands might be one of his finest accomplishments. Superbly detailed, perfectly restrained, gentle, tender, hugely vulnerable and intensily scared (under it all) of connecting with the wider world or allowing himself to feel genuine emotions, Hopkins’ CS Lewis is simply exceptional. With all the discipline of a great actor he never once goes for the easy option, but gently allows emotions to play behind his eyes (the eyes by the way that he can hardly bring himself to settle on other people until half way through the film). And those moments where he weeps – three times in the film, and each increasingly more emotional – are simply beautiful in every way from acting to filming.

Lewis is bashful and repressed, so it’s all the moving to see his face start to relax into excitement and joy when he spots Joy in the audience at a lecture he is giving, or him simply enjoying the intelligence and challenge that she brings to her conversation with him. Debra Winger as Joy Davidman matches Hopkins step-for-step, in a sublime performance of prickily New York attitudes at first out of touch in Oxford, but whose humanity shines through. It takes her time perhaps to feel the love Lewis does (but can’t admit too), but when she does start to feel more for Lewis, she has no patience for his repressed unwillingness to acknowledge them. On top of which, Winger is very funny in the role – she has little truck with the sheltered, clubbish snobbiness of some of Lewis’ friends and takes a wicked delight in shocking the stuffy, unchallenged intellectuals.

The chemistry between these two actors is sublime, and the slightly autumnal relationship between the two of them that builds feels wonderfully genuine. Nicholson’s script makes an astute examination of Lewis’ personality and Christianity. Throughout the film, we are brought back again and again to a lecture Lewis gives – with increasingly less and less disconnection – on why God allows suffering and pain in the world. Pleasingly Lewis’ faith in the film isn’t challenged – only his rather pleased-with-itself lack of doubt and his complacent lack of experience. Experiencing love and loss himself, makes him question the views he has held – and leads him to develop a richer, more genuine understanding of the world.

Which all makes the film sound very heavy, and it’s not. It’s a delightfully light done story that never once leans too hard on the tragedy. Instead it punctures several moments with touches of humour (much of it from Joy’s American clashes with high-table Britishness) and moments of sweet affection. The film gains a lot of balance from Edward Hardwicke’s delightful performance as Lewis’ Dr Watson-ish brother Warnie, a bluff ex-army officer turned academic who reveals himself over the course of a film to have a great deal of hidden love, affection and empathy. It also has a delightful performance from Joseph Mazzello as Douglas Gresham, a child performance that brilliantly avoids all cloying sweetness and feels very real as a shy, nervous boy dealing with his mother dying.

But then, Lewis is also a shy nervous boy (both he and Warnie never really got over the death of their mother as boys – a moment that both wordlessly acknowledge while observing Joy with her son at the hospital), and the film follows him becoming something more than that, a man wh has loved and lost and can deal with it. A neat subplot around James Frain’s difficult working-class student demonstrates his growing ability to relate and empathise with others. A large chunk of the film builds towards Lewis’ tearful outpouring of grief (a scene impossible to watch dry eyed), a reaction that seemed impossible in the opening moments.

But then that’s what the film is saying: We have to accept that the joy of loving people, the wonder and warmth that they bring to our life, will inevitably one day lead to us losing them. Allowing us to experience love and joy is counter balanced by the pain we will feel when they go. It’s a deal – and if it is a deal, it’s the price we pay for having our life enriched. Attenborough’s simply beautiful, romantic film covers all this gently and brilliantly: it’s a film to treasure and hold tight.

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

Dirk Bogarde, Sean Connery, Ryan O’Neal and Gene Hackman are among the Generals aiming to go A Bridge Too Far

Director: Richard Attenborough

Cast: Dirk Bogarde (Lt-Gen Frederick “Boy” Browning), James Caan (Staff Sgt Eddie Dohun), Michael Caine (Lt-Col J.O.E. Vandeleur), Sean Connery (Maj Gen Roy Urguhart), Edward Fox (Lt Gen Brian Horrocks), Elliot Gould (Col Robert Stout), Gene Hackman (Maj Gen Stanislaw Sosabowski), Anthony Hopkins (Lt Col John Frost), Hardy Krüger (SS Maj Gen Karl Ludwig), Laurence Olivier (Dr. Jan Spaander), Ryan O’Neal (Brig Gen James Gavin), Robert Redford (Major Julian Cook), Maximilian Schell (SS Gen Wilhelm Bittrich), Liv Ullman (Kate ter Horst), Michael Byrne (Lt Col Giles Vandeleur), Denholm Elliott (RAF Officer), Jeremy Kemp (Briefing Officer), Wolfgang Preiss (Feldmarchall Gerd von Rundstedt), Stephen Moore (Maj Robert Steele)

You’ve got to love a good war film. In fact, there are few things more cinematic than the old-school, star laden Hollywood war film. A Bridge Too Far is for me one of the finest examples of this genre, and it’s a film I come back to time and time again. Is it perfect? No of course it isn’t – in fact I probably love this film more than some of the people actually in it do. But it’s a damn fine piece of big-screen, big-budget film-making, and it’s got a cast of stars. And more than perhaps any other film of this genre, it’s a film about how overwhelmingly awful and gut-wrenching war is. This is a film about a defeat – and not the sort of triumphant defeat that Dunkirk feels like. It’s just a gut-punch. The Allies threw the dice big time, and they lost.

The Battle of Arnhem was one of those “end the war by Christmas” plans. The brainchild of British war-hero Field Marshall Montgomery (noticeably absent from the film), Operation Market Garden was a lightning strike into the heart of the Ruhr to capture Germany’s industrial capability. This involved a series of paratrooper drops into towns in the Netherlands, culminating in Arnhem, to cross the Rhine. While the paratroopers seized key bridges, British Tank Division XXX Corp would power through, cross the bridges and into Germany. It was bold, daring and radical. It was a disaster. Arnhem, far from being undefended, was being used as a rest place for a Waffen-SS Panzer division. The British paratroopers found themselves not seizing a lightly defended bridge, but fighting a tank division with machine guns and limited supplies. Meanwhile XXX Corp’s progress became bogged down in traffic jams and higher than expected German resistance.

It’s quite something to make a war film about possibly the biggest military disaster on the Western Front during the Second World War. The entire plan is a misconceived tactical blunder, and the film never shies away from this, demonstrating time and again the numerous errors that led to it: from Generals ignoring reconnaissance that suggests this won’t be a cake walk, to paratroopers failing to seize bridges quickly, to tanks crawling down crowded roads, fighting every step of the way. Alongside all this, the film never loses track of the horrifying impact of war on both soldiers and civilians caught in the crossfire. It’s a huge budget, all-action, anti-war film.

Richard Attenborough is the perfect marshal for this film. He has the experience and understanding of scope to handle the action scenes. At the time, this film was possibly the most expensive film ever made. Not only that, it was independently funded – producer Joseph E. Levine thought the film was so important he pumped millions of pounds of his own money into it. The attention to detail is extraordinary – the film consulted nearly every single surviving commander from the battle on the script – and all the stops were pulled out creating the military features of the film.

This is of course particularly striking now as we know everything in the film is real – no special effects in those days. If you see it in the film, then you know that it was really there. In the sequence showing the planes taking off to deliver the paratroopers to their destinations, there were so many planes in the air that Attenborough could literally claim to command the world’s seventh largest air force. Every military blow of the battle is carefully reconstructed. The tactics are carefully explained and followed. Attenborough can shoot compelling action.

But what makes the film so good (for me anyway) is the way the heart-breaking horror of war never gets lost. In all this action, we are always shown the cost. Attenborough will frequently cut back to the after-effects – several times we hear wounded soldiers whimpering on smoke-filled, body-littered battlefields. Many acts of courage (on both sides) by individual soldiers result only in pointless, gut-wrenching deaths. Arnhem isn’t just damaged by the battle, it’s flattened. The impact on the civilian population is terrible – in a powerful sequence, we see characters we were introduced to earlier mercilessly caught in the crossfire of the German tanks. We return continually to locations increasingly shredded by weapons fire. More and more soldiers are wounded – some horrifically. Near the end, the remaining British paratroopers, encircled and surrendering, sing a deeply moving quiet rendition of Abide With Me. No one could come out of this wanting to go to war.

Attenborough’s humanity is key to the film’s success. It helps as well that he is a brilliant actor’s director. Want to dispel any doubt on the horrors of Arnhem –then train the camera on the Laurence Olivier’s tear-stained face as he drives through the destroyed streets. Want to understand the sacrifices and the courage? Well just let Anthony Hopkins – simply excellent as the commander of the only forces to reach the bridge at Arnhem – with calm, restrained Britishness request support and supplies late in the film as his men are butchered around him. It’s a film full of brilliant moments of acting like that, where Attenborough points the camera at them and lets them act.

The sequences around Arnhem and the British paratroopers there are the heart of the film. Sean Connery is terrific as Major General Roy Urquhart, commander of the British paratroopers. His growing frustration as events spiral far out of his control is a great contrast with his initial professional confidence. Gene Hackman, as commander of the Polish forces (slightly odd casting but good once you tune up to it), gets the role of the “one man talking sense” who can smell disaster early on, but works harder than anyone to get the plan to work. A number of the regular soldiers in Arnhem are faces the film returns to again and again – giving us people to relate to as their numbers are increasingly decimated by the savage, desperate combat. John Addison’s score also helps a huge amount with building the emotion in these scenes.

The Arnhem sequences are so good that the other sequences around the American paratroopers feel like they come from a slightly different movie. It doesn’t help that the likes of Elliot Gould are playing slightly clichéd “Brooklyn Yankee” types, chomping cigars and ribbing the stiff-upper-lip Brits. Ryan O’Neal as General Gavin is slightly dull. The XXX Corp material is a little dry (essentially driving up a road or waiting), although Edward Fox is superb (and BAFTA-winning) as their charismatic commander Lt Gen Brian Horrocks. Attenborough puts together at least one terrific set-piece tank battle on the road – but it’s not quite enough.

The two biggest American stars are also given the feel-good, up-beat material. James Caan gets the best part in what is effectively a stand-alone story of a Staff Sergeant going to impossible lengths to save the life of his Captain (Caan had his choice of part and chose well). Robert Redford is a little too starry (bizarrely in a film full of stars!) as a Major tasked to seize the vital bridge at Nijmagen via a daylight river-crossing. This sequence feels like it’s been put in the film to (a) give us something to cheer and (b) to allow an American victory for the box office. Of course, we need the biggest star in the world at the time to play the most straight-forward heroic part!

The film does have a tendency to shuffle its characters into “good” and “bad”. So after Redford seizes the bridge, the character sent to tell him that XXX Corp won’t be rushing across to Arnhem after all isn’t Caine’s Vandeleur, but a nameless Colonel played by Polanski’s villainous Ross from Macbeth himself, John Stride. The most sympathetic generals and commanders are all (coincidentally) the people who served as military advisors on the film.

On the other hand, the film ends up laying most of the “blame” on Dirk Bogarde’s Lt Gen Browning. Browning’s widow, Daphne du Maurier, threatened to sue the film-makers for the portrayal of Browning here (she got an apology). Browning is portrayed as the ultimate “non-boat rocker” – over-confident and arrogant, he disregards intelligence suggesting the Arnhem plan is dangerous, seems shocked and clueless once the scale of the disaster is revealed, and by the end of the film seems to be most interested in positioning himself as always opposed to the plan in the first place. Bogarde (the only actor in the film who actually served in Market Garden) was similarly angry when he saw the film – and he has a point. It’s grossly unfair.

It’s a problem with this film and it does annoy me. The parts not set in Arnhem are not as memorable or compelling as the rest. But huge chunks of the film are brilliant, and never fail to move or (sometimes) excite me. Its anti-war stance is striking. The acting from the cast is very good across the board – say what you like, cast every part with a star and you never get confused about who is who. Attenborough also draws great performances from the non-stars – Stephen Moore is a particular stand-out as a signals man unwilling to voice his doubts about the equipment (and who pays a heavy price).

I can watch A Bridge Too Far at any time. I always love it. It’s a film of great moments and performances. It carries real emotional weight. Attenborough is a very good director of actors, but also a skilled commander of scale. It’s a film that gets emotion in there. It’s a film that isn’t afraid to present a military disaster. It doesn’t demonise the Germans. Sure it plays goodies and baddies with the Allies, and parts of it to drag on a bit too much or deal with cliché. But at its best is the core of a great film. I love it. It’s a favourite. And always will be.