History Film / ABridgeTooFar

** A villainous example: the lone SS lieutenant who runs to try and save the burning Captain Grabner [[spoiler:only to get shot by a British sniper halfway to Grabner's halftrack.]]

* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: In the book the response to being told they were going to the Dutch town of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave,_Netherlands Grave]].

'''General Urquhart:''' ''Pleased?''\\

'''General Browning:''' ...well as you know I always thought we tried to go a bridge too far.

** Later, when SS-General Ludwig presents him with captured plans for Operation Market Garden, Model dismisses this as another Allied misinformation attempt, such as the ones that caused their defeats in Sicily and Normandy.

->''"I like to think of this as one of those American western films. The paratroops, lacking substantial equipment, always short of food, these are the besieged homesteaders. The Germans, well naturally, they're the bad guys. And 30 Corps, we, my friends, are the cavalry on the way to the rescue!"''

* DownerEnding: [[ForegoneConclusion Duh]]. Despite capturing and holding most of the bridges, the Operation fails thanks to the failure to capture the all-important Arnhem bridge. In addition, the elite units involved (40k) suffer relatively heavy (17k temporary including 7k permanent) losses, all for nothing with the war continuing for another eight months.

** The opening narration demonstrates how poor logistics made the operation necessary. After D-Day, supplies had to be driven from Normandy to the front. As the supply train became too long, the Allies were halted as they had to wait for their supplies to catch up.

** The Germans captured many of the resupply drop zones, resulting in the paratroopers running out of food, ammunition and medical supplies. The Allies also neglected to provide a way to designate alternate drop zones.
** The advance by 30 Corps to secure the territory taken by the paratroopers was done along a single, very narrow highway, which could and on several occasions did get bottlenecked by traffic problems. This was not helped by the Germans destroying one of the bridges, forcing them to spend half a day building a new one.

-->'''Colonel Frost:''' Well... we'll just wait for 30 Corps then.\\

* MobileShrubbery: Hilariously subverted when a British unit wearing camouflage augmented with actual twigs and leaves marches through a Dutch town being cheered as liberators. A junior officer tells his commander:
-->With all due respect, sir, I don't believe our camouflage is fooling ''anyone''.

** General Urquhart is told shortly after landing that the special jeeps failed to arrive, so his main force is going to have to walk to the bridge.

** The real [[ColonelBadass Lt.-Colonel Frost]] objected to a scene where Creator/AnthonyHopkins runs across a street under fire. ''He'' always walked, as a British officer is ''never'' supposed to run under fire, to inspire his men and show his contempt for the enemy. It was decided to leave the scene as it was, for fear the audience would have a WhatAnIdiot reaction. Hopkins was also unable to force himself walk as the fake explosions and gunfire was too realistic for him to remain calm.

* ItsAllAboutMe: Field Marshal Model abandons his command because he assumes the paratroopers have landed explicitly to capture ''him''. He even outright states that (as far as ''he's'' concerned) there's nothing important in the area except himself.

* FrontlineGeneral: The Americans Maxwell Taylor and James Gavin jump into battle with their respective divisions. The British Roy Urquhart mostly stays at his headquarters, but does venture to the front, while Frederick Browning spends almost the entire battle at his own headquarters.

'''Sosabowski:''' Weather! ''Christus''! General Browning, what of the Germans? Don't you think that if we know Arnhem is so critical to their safety that they might know it too?\\

* SittingDucks: When the Polish paratroopers finally join the battle, there's a squad of SS troops on the ground ready to pick them off during their drop.

-->'''Frost:''' Yes, that's exactly what is wrong.

''A Bridge Too Far'' is a 1977 UsefulNotes/WorldWarII film directed by Creator/RichardAttenborough, adapted by Creator/WilliamGoldman from the best-selling 1974 book of the same name by Cornelius Ryan (''Literature/TheLongestDay''). It boasts an AllStarCast that includes Creator/JamesCaan, Creator/MichaelCaine, Creator/SeanConnery, Creator/EdwardFox, Creator/ElliottGould, Creator/GeneHackman, Creator/AnthonyHopkins, Creator/LaurenceOlivier, Creator/RobertRedford, Creator/MaximilianSchell, Creator/LivUllmann, and the biggest star of all, Creator/JohnRatzenberger.

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: General Browning's portrayal was ''very'' controversial, mostly for making him the de facto BigBad while Montgomery and others who planned the operation went largely un-criticized. Daphne Du Maurier, his widow, publicly attacked the movie and Creator/DirkBogarde himself (who knew Browning slightly during the war) felt his character was overly villainized. Specifically, they objected to the TitleDrop being used as a WhamLine at the end, which makes Browning look like a {{Jerkass}} when he made the comment during a plenary session before Market Garden.

* ChildSoldiers: General Browning tries to reassure everyone that the ''Wehrmacht'' is a spent force, now consisting entirely of Hitler Youth and "old men on bicycles." This causes him to ignore aerial recon showing tanks near Arnhem. Unfortunately, despite their immense losses over the summer, the Germans still have a few elite troops left.
** German soldiers of a conspicuously young age can be seen during the assault on the Nijmegen Bridge.

* PlungerDetonator: A German officer orders the bridge at Nijmegen blown when the first Allied tanks cross, but to his horror, the PlungerDetonator doesn't work, and the Allies take the bridge. This is RuleOfDrama as real German detonators used a clockwork mechanism using a handle that ''turned''--this trope is presumably used to [[TheCoconutEffect make it clear the audience what has happened]].

* DramaticIrony: Both Rundstedt and Model concur that Patton will lead the imminent assault on the Netherlands. Rundstedt says he would prefer to face Montgomery, but knows Eisenhower is not stupid enough to have him lead a major offensive.
* EasyLogistics: Notably averted, logistical screwups play a major part in why the operation failed:

* {{Irony}}: One of the British paratroopers says that the resupply pilots are under orders to ignore signals on the ground, as, for all they know, they could be Germans. And their supplies are going right to the Germans.

* PlungerDetonator: A German officer orders the bridge at Nijmegen blown when the first Allied tanks cross, but to his horror, the Plunger Detonator doesn't work, and the Allies take the bridge.

''A Bridge Too Far'' is a 1977 UsefulNotes/WorldWarII film directed by Creator/RichardAttenborough, adapted by Creator/WilliamGoldman from the best-selling 1974 book of the same name by Cornelius Ryan (''Literature/TheLongestDay''). It boasts an AllStarCast that includes Creator/JamesCaan, Creator/MichaelCaine, Creator/SeanConnery, Creator/EdwardFox, Creator/ElliottGould, Creator/GeneHackman, Creator/AnthonyHopkins, Creator/LaurenceOlivier, Creator/RobertRedford, Creator/LivUllmann, and the biggest star of all, Creator/JohnRatzenberger.

* SergeantRock: [=SSgt.=] Eddie Dohun. During the flight to Eindhoven, he calmly explains that the booming sound outside in German flak.

* One British soldier manages to retrieve a parachute container [[spoiler:only to be killed by a sniper. The container is then revealed to be full of red berets instead of food or ammunition.]]

** The explosives planted on the Nijmegen bridge fail to explode, seemingly leaving the road clear to Arnhem. Also the soldier who manages to retrieve a parachute container [[spoiler:only to be killed by a sniper. The container is then revealed to be full of red berets instead of food or ammunition.]]

* TacticalWithdrawal: After assuming commanding, Field Marshal von Rundstedt asks when the Allies are expected to invade the Netherlands. He's told that they've paused in Belgium, likely due to supply problems, and remarks "I think it's because we're retreating faster than they can advance."

It tells the story of Operation Market Garden (Sept. 17-25, 1944), an audacious, but flawed -- and ultimately unsuccessful -- plan to use British, American and Polish paratroops and British armoured divisions to capture four bridges in the Netherlands. UsefulNotes/BernardLawMontgomery hoped that these could be used by the British quarter of the Western Allied force in France to invade northern Germany, forcing the Germans to reinforce that sector with forces pulled from less vital fronts such as Hungary or Italy and perhaps ultimately enabling Germany's defeat within the next six months.

** Similarly, [[spoiler: Major Carlyle is shown dying from his wounds]] near the end of the film. His real life counterpart, Maj. Allison Digby Tatham-Warter, survived both the battle and the war.

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: General Browning's portrayal was ''very'' controversial, mostly for making him the de facto BigBad while Montgomery and others who planned the operation went largely un-criticized. Daphne Du Maurier, his widow, publicly attacked the movie and Dirk Bogarde himself (who knew Browning slightly during the war) felt his character was overly villainized. Specifically, they objected to the TitleDrop being used as a WhamLine at the end, which makes Browning look like a {{Jerkass}}, when he made the comment during a plenary session before Market Garden.

* OnlySaneMan: General Stanislaw Sosabowski is depicted as such, since he's the only one who seems to realize how fatally flawed the plan is ''before'' it starts to go wrong and is completely unconvinced by General Browning's wishful-thinking reassurances.

** Urqhardt's after mission briefing with Browning is a reserved WhamLine in line with how they have been portrayed the whole film. In real life Urqhardt knocked Browning out like some sort of CowboyCop.

* ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated: Urquhart's paratroopers are quite astonished when the General turns up alive, having been holded up in a Dutch house for several days. Unfortunately things have gotten even worse since he was away.

* ShaggyDogStory: The allied paratroopers are dropped into Holland only to discover that their radios are faulty and inoperable, and they spend literally the ''entire movie'' trying to fix them. The lack of radios is a major setback for the invasion force, as situation after situation comes up where they need to have a working radio. At the end of the movie, they finally, ''finally'' get a radio fixed. However, by this point the situation has so deteriorated that the commanders, after asking ''each other'' for reinforcements, have literally nothing to say to each other except:

** After XXX Corps gets ambushed and has to halt to deal with its wounded, captured Germans, and busted vehicles blocking the road, one of the men wonders how the hell they're gonna reach the paratroopers in time. Colonel Vandeleur points its only going to get worse as the highway narrows further down the line.

-->'''General Browning:''' I've just been on to Monty. He's very proud, and pleased.\\

* WeaponsUnderstudies: The German vehicles are usually played by NATO equipment with some plywood mods added on to make it less obvious, (the German "Panther" tanks are played by modified Dutch Army [[PantheraAwesome Leopard 1's]]) and the close air support planes seen when XXX Corps attacks are T-6 Texan trainers kitted out to look like Typhoons. Also a good deal of the half tracks used in the film were real, but had since been almost completely scrapped since the war and were basically shells. It becomes noticeable when many of them only appear behind convenient low walls to disguise the fact that they have no tracks and are being pulled on sleds. There are also several scenes where some of the enemy armor is lacking its steering mechanisms, treadguards, mounted weapons and the other stuff you lose after sitting in a junkyard for thirty years. Some of the vehicles were loaned by private collectors or museums, but this can only account for a very small number of those needed. Of the two German halftracks seen one is a genuine wartime vehicle, the Sd.Kfz.8 troop carrier seen used by Grabner's men in the first bridge assault: Grabner's Sd.Kfz.251 (which looks more like an Sd.Kfz.250) is a replica Frankensteined together from different vehicles. It survived getting set on fire and was reused in ''Film/{{Highlander}}''.

* WorthyOpponent: SS-General Bittrich salutes Frost after taking him and his men prisoner. German medics can also be seen providing aide to wounded British paratroopers.