A BRIDGE TOO FAR daybill Movie poster Michael Caine

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

Directed by Richard Attenborough.

With Dirk Bogarde ("Lieutenant-General 'Boy' Browning"), James Caan ("Staff Sergeant Eddie Dohun"), Michael Caine ("Lieutenant-Colonel 'Joe' Vandeleur"), Sean Connery ("Major-General Robert Urquhart"), Edward Fox ("Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks"), Elliott Gould ("Colonel Bobby Stout"), Gene Hackman ("Major-General Stanislaw Sosabowski"), Anthony Hopkins ("Lieutenant-Colonel John Frost"), Hardy Kruger ("General Karl Ludwig"), Laurence Olivier ("Dr. Spaander"), Ryan O'Neal ("Brigadier-General James M. Gavin"), Robert Redford ("Major Julian Cook"), Maximilian Schell ("Lieutenant-General Wilhelm Bittrich"), and Liv Ullmann

The true story of Operation Market Garden, the Allies attempt, in September 1944, to hasten the end of WW2 by driving through Belgium and Holland into Germany. The idea was for US airborne divisions to take the towns of Eindhoven and Nijmegen and a British airborne division, reinforced by a Polish airborne brigade, to take the town of Arnhem. They would be reinforced, in due course and in turn, by the British XXX Corps, land-based and driving up from the British lines in the south. The key to the operation was the bridges, as if the Germans held or blew them, the paratroopers could not be relieved. Faulty intelligence, Allied high command hubris and stubborn German resistance would ensure that Arnhem was a bridge too far.