A BRIDGE TOO FAR (1977) | The Parachute Drop | MGM

Operation Market Garden, September 1944: The Allies attempt to capture several strategically important bridges in the Netherlands in the hope of breaking the German lines.

A Bridge Too Far (1977)
Directed by Richard Attenborough
Screenplay by William Goldman
From the book by Cornelius Ryan
Cast: Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Kruger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O'Neal, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell, Liv Ullmann
Rated PG
Available on Blu-Ray, DVD and digital platforms.

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A Bridge Too Far (1977)

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[valhallaproject]

Best airborne operation ever on film. Sound of the jump was perfect.

[TonyLovell]

This is an adacious, expensive and risky shot. I like how they have enough C-47s to make it seem huge.

[Geronimo_Jehoshaphat]

Epic. So glad Attenborough did the sequence without music too.

[fairguy]

dude that pov shot at 2:12 in 1977?? way ahead of its time!

[stevethomas]

My Uncle was a Para at Arnhem. He was machine gunned in the leg as dropped and taken prisoner. He had a blood transfusion in a German field hospital and always maintained he was lucky to have been caught. He said had it been a British field hospital they would have taken his leg off.

[drxym]

The studio got the British army parachute corps to jump for this sequence. There is obviously a lot of different camera angles and superimposing footage on top of itself to make it look like a huge spectacle but it's still impressive. My dad was one of the parachutists in the jump though I can't see his face anywhere.

[garyK.ACP]

Hard to believe this move is 46 years old...and it was only 33 years after the actual event.😲

[mollyfilms]

Just witnessed probably the best directed parachute drop in history.

[CatchDude]

I love how the heath is in bloom where they land, all nice and purple, in this movie. The landing happened in september, when it blooms in real life (half august till halfway through september, roughly). So they even got that detail down, since the landing happened on great fields of heath in september, just west of Arnhem.

[AngloSaxonWheatFarmer]

I love these old movies, I wish they still made them like this with all the practical effects and the equipment

[SaltimusMaximus]

I have a relic british para helmet that came from a house in Oosterbeek, I got it off a guy who was involved in the making of this film, always loved this film and to get it was utterly fantastic

[pikiwiki]

So interesting to watch this knowing there was no CGI back then

[billace]

Even the cameraman jumped.
It doesn’t get any more realistic than that.

[GP-fwhn]

fantastic movie. very realistic and well done

[stevemance]

The most realistic airborne landings recreated for the movies ever.

[Hey_MikeZeroEchoP]

I Just LOVE that 'fox hound ( Rally-around )

[pschroeter]

Wow. I think that was almost more impressive than Band of Brothers because it was real and not CGI.

[davidmurray]

The Drop of the 1st Parachute Brigade was nearly perfect, it was described by some of the men as a "canteen drop", a practice drop with a NAAFI wagon waiting to dish out tea and buns. What got things off to a bad start was Lathbury's insistence on all the battalions waiting on the drop zone until order groups were done, wasting valuable time. Frost had his men assembled and ready to move within a half an hour, and was first off the mark toward the river road. Lathbury's plan had all three battalions marching on divergent routes that made it nearly impossible for the battalions to support on another if problems arose, which they certainly did.

[redgeneral]

1:47 Dude in the middle is having a bad day.

[sixbells]

Incredible footage before the days of CGI where you could just paint in multiple parachutes. Most of the jumpers if not all were British paratroopers, many of which would face real combat in the Falklands a few years later and performed just as well as their counterparts in WWII against a larger enemy and missing kit after most of their equipment and helicopters sat at the bottom of the sea after their cargo ship was sunk. Despite the odds being against them, they still won out!! "They are in fact - men apart - every man an emperor."