Mr. & Mrs. Bridge

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge is a 1990 American drama film based on the novels by Evan S. Connell of the same name. It is directed by James Ivory, with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and produced by Ismail Merchant.

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge
Theatrical poster
Directed byJames Ivory
Written byRuth Prawer Jhabvala
Based onMrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge
by Evan S. Connell
Produced byIsmail Merchant
Starring
CinematographyTony Pierce-Roberts
Edited byHumphrey Dixon
Music byRichard Robbins
Jacques Offenbach ("Barcarolle" & "Can Can")
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release dates
September 1990 (Venice)
  • November 23, 1990 (1990-11-23)
Running time
126 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$7.2 million[2]
Box office$7.7 million[3]

The film stars real-life couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward as Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. The character of Mrs. Bridge is based on Connell's mother, Ruth Connell.[4]

Plot

The story of a traditionally minded family living in the Country Club District of Kansas City, Missouri, during the 1930s and 1940s. The Bridges grapple with changing mores and expectations. Mr. Bridge is a lawyer who resists his children's rebellion against the conservative values he holds dear. Mrs. Bridge labors to maintain a Pollyanna view of the world, against her husband's emotional distance and her children's eagerness to adopt a world view more modern than her own.

Cast

Production

Joanne Woodward read the first of Mr. Connell's two novels when it was published in 1959, and for many years she hoped to adapt it into a television production. Originally, she did not intend to play the character of Mrs. Bridge due to the difference in age, but by the late 1980s, when developing the project proved difficult, that was no longer the case.[5]

After a dinner at which James Ivory met the Newmans for the first time, they decided to adapt the books into a feature-length film. After a script was finished, Paul Newman agreed to play Mr. Bridge, which brought in enough financing to shoot the film.[6]

Estimated at $7.5 million, with $500,000 immediately earmarked on interest payments for loans, it was considered a very modest budget, but it also granted Merchant and Ivory the freedom to make the film as they wished. The entire crew took very low salaries while Newman and Woodward both took much lower salaries than they were accustomed to.[6]

With the exception of a scene in Paris and another which took advantage of a Toronto snowfall, Mr. & Mrs. Bridge was shot entirely in Kansas City, Missouri, on the same streets that Connell would have traveled as a child and teenager.[7] No sound stages were used as real houses, auditoriums and office buildings were all used as sets.[6] The residence used as the Bridge home is just a block west of Loose Park on W. 54th St. There's also a scene set in the vault of the old First National Bank; now the Central Library, the same vault has been repurposed as the Stanley H. Durwood Film Vault.[7] Much of the film was shot out of sequence as a way of saving money. For example, when they filmed the law office of Mr. Bridge over one single morning, they changed the furniture and Newman's makeup and clothes every hour as the scenes jumped through the spring of 1932, the fall of 1938, the winter of 1945, and the summer of 1938.[6]

Budget constraints also prevented the art department from renting their set dressings, forcing them to rely on loans and donations. Brunschwig & Fils donated $100,000 worth of fabrics and wallpaper, Glen Raven Mills of North Carolina donated period awning material, and Benjamin Moore donated 100 gallons of paint. A local law firm loaned a dozen Tiffany lamps and paintings by Kansas City artists of the 1930s. Merchant himself borrowed bridge tables from a local society woman and a desk used by the founder of Hallmark greeting cards from his son, who was then head of the company.[6]

According to production designer David Gropman, the Bridges' home was filled with the personal belongings of the Connell family, with Evan Connell's sister, Barbara Zimmermann, loaning all of her porcelain, her whole collection of silver, her Christmas tree ornaments and her coffee urn. A lamp Evan Connell made as a boy can be seen in the bedroom of Douglas Bridge, while marble bookends that used to belong to Evan Connell's father were used to dress the law office of Mr. Bridge.[6]

The costume designer Carol Ramsey also had to borrow the production's entire wardrobe, including $4,000 worth of sashes, merit badges, handcarved neckerchief slides and Boy Scout pins from 1938 for Douglas Bridge's Eagle Scout ceremony. The London tailors Gieves & Hawkes agreed to make the entire wardrobe for the film's male characters in return for a screen credit.[6]

A native of Klamath Falls, Oregon, Ivory would tell The New York Times: "The world of Mr. and Mrs. Bridge is the world I grew up in...It's the only film I've ever made that was about my own childhood and adolescence. When we talked about it, that seemed true of Paul and Joanne, too. We talked a lot about manners, about the way things used to be done."[6]

When Ivory was honored by the Houston Cinema Arts Festival in 2014, he presented Mr. & Mrs. Bridge as a personal favorite, adding that it was the one film he would most like to see reappraised. "It had a wonderful story, great script and fabulous acting. So the fact that it was not as well received as some of the others was disappointing. Maybe there is something inherently depressing for Americans to think about, to look carefully at Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. When it was released we had focus groups after the film. And there was a gap of at least a couple of generations between the audiences and the family Connell had written about. People couldn't understand why Mrs. Bridges was acting the way she did, because they didn't know what American life was like in the 1930s and '40s."[8]

Reception

Jonathan Rosenbaum of The Chicago Reader wrote, "I'm not much of a James Ivory fan, but this 1990 adaptation of Evan S. Connell's novels deserves to be seen and cherished for at least a couple of reasons: first for Joanne Woodward's exquisitely multilayered and nuanced performance, and second for screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's retention of much of the episodic, short-chapter form of the books. It's true that she and Ivory have toned down many of the darker aspects, but as [The Village Voice] critic Georgia Brown has suggested, Woodward's humanization of her character actually improves on the original. Connell's imagination and compassion regarding this character have their limits, and Woodward triumphantly exceeds them."[9]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised the film, calling it "a vigorous, witty, satiric attempt to give dramatic shape to two aggressively anti-dramatic prose works." He also commended Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward for "the most adventurous, most stringent performances of their careers," observing that "there is a reserve, humor and desperation in their characterizations that enrich the very self-conscious flatness of the narrative terrain around them."[10]

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 82% from 17 reviews.[11]

Awards and nominations

Award Category Nominee(s) Result
Academy Awards[12] Best Actress Joanne Woodward Nominated
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards[13] Best Actress Nominated
David di Donatello Awards Best Foreign Actress Nominated
Golden Globe Awards[14] Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama Nominated
Independent Spirit Awards[15] Best Female Lead Nominated
Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards[16] Best Actress Won
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards[17] Best Actress Runner-up
National Board of Review Awards[18] Top Ten Films 8th Place
National Society of Film Critics Awards[19] Best Actress Joanne Woodward 2nd Place
New York Film Critics Circle Awards[20] Best Film Runner-up
Best Actress Joanne Woodward Won
Best Screenplay Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Won
Venice Film Festival[21] Golden Lion James Ivory Nominated
Golden Ciak (Best Film) Won
Pasinetti Award (Best Film) Won

References

  1. "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990)". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved June 24, 2023.
  2. "Merchant Ivory Productions Budget vs US Gross 1986-96". Screen International. September 13, 1996. p. 19.
  3. "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved May 12, 2023.
  4. Sieff, Gemma. "A Visit with Evan Connell". The Paris Review. Spring 2014 (208). Retrieved July 30, 2015.
  5. Rohter, Larry (November 18, 1990). "Crossing the Bridges With the Newmans". The New York Times. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  6. Harmetz, Aljean (February 18, 1990). "Partnerships Make a Movie". The New York Times. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  7. "Program Notes: Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990)". kclibrary.org. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  8. Evans, Everett (November 8, 2014). "Festival salutes the literate cinema of James Ivory". houstonchronicle.com. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  9. Rosenbaum, Jonathan. "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge". chicagoreader.com. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  10. Canby, Vincent (November 23, 1990). "A Placid Marriage, And Undercurrents". chicagoreader.com. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
  11. "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved July 19, 2023.
  12. "The 63rd Academy Awards (1991) Nominees and Winners". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on October 20, 2014. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
  13. "1988-2013 Award Winner Archives". Chicago Film Critics Association. Retrieved August 24, 2021.
  14. "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge – Golden Globes". HFPA. Retrieved July 28, 2021.
  15. "36 Years of Nominees and Winners" (PDF). Independent Spirit Awards. Retrieved August 13, 2021.
  16. "KCFCC Award Winners – 1990-99". kcfcc.org. December 14, 2013. Retrieved July 28, 2021.
  17. "The 16th Annual Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards". Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
  18. "1990 Award Winners". National Board of Review. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
  19. "Past Awards". National Society of Film Critics. December 19, 2009. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
  20. "1990 New York Film Critics Circle Awards". New York Film Critics Circle. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
  21. Kennedy, Harlan (1990). "Venice 1990 – The 47th Venice Film Festival". Film Comment. Retrieved May 12, 2023.
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