Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 6-September-09
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Across the Bridge (1957)

Across the Bridge is a charm bracelet of a movie, if I can use an essentially feminine metaphor for a predominantly masculine thriller. As it unspools you see one fascinating moment after another, but it is not until the end that you come full circle and recognize it as a unified whole. Throughout most of the picture I could not guess what would happen next or what the themes were, or even if it had themes or merely a plot. The conclusion is no less powerful for this windup.

The plot itself might have been sufficient, springing as it does from the mind of Graham Greene. It follows a German mogul (Rod Steiger) who comes under investigation for crooked dealings in England while he is on a business trip to New York. Guilty as sin but unrepentant, he hops the first train to Mexico where he plans to tap his hidden millions and enjoy the safe harbor of that country's extradition laws. En route (and who doesn't love a train scene?) he decides forcibly to steal the identity of a fellow passenger who resembles himself, thereby precluding any problems with crossing the border.

This plan backfires in a most interesting way, and after several tense encounters the antihero finds himself a detainee of the Mexican police and the unwilling master of a spaniel named Dolores. The deliciously phlegmatic police chief (Noel Willman) allows him to roam the dusty town but not to continue on his way. Meanwhile, the locals blame him for the death of a folk hero, an aspiring American tries to profit from his predicament, and a Scotland Yard agent arrives to nab him the instant he leaves Mexican soil. But why would he leave knowing this? Why indeed.

Across the Bridge rivals Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D for all-time heart-wrenching dog scene. The movie's last charm is the antihero's transformation from unfeeling, self-serving bastard to outcast desperate for connection to another living thing. This is both his redemption (for what it's worth) and his downfall. His final destination is not what he or the viewer might have expected. Still it is the link that binds his journey together.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.