OVP: The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)

Film: The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)

Stars: William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March, Mickey Rooney, Earl Holliman

Director: Mark Robson

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Film Editing, Best Special Effects*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Grace Kelly-click here to learn more about Ms. Kelly (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we mentioned earlier this month in our introduction about Grace Kelly, the actress-turned-princess didn't make a lot of movies (a total of 11 narrative films in her career), and almost half of those movies were made in 1954, so it makes sense that we would get a second film in the span of Kelly's career from that year.  Last week we talked about Kelly's relationship with Alfred Hitchcock, which frequently bordered on (or, let's be real, crossed into) the abusive, and an indication of the problematic troubles the director would get into with many of his upcoming leading ladies during what is considered his peak creative period (ranging from the early 1950's to the early 1960's).  This week, we're going to talk about The Bridges of Toko-Ri, but we're also going to talk about the other major moment in Grace Kelly's 1954-the Oscar win that still strikes passion in the hearts of filmgoers everywhere considering whom she beat to get that trophy.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Bridges at Toko-Ri is about Harry Brubaker (Holden), a reluctant naval officer in the middle of the Korean War.  Brubaker is not exactly a pacifist, but he also cannot relate to his fellow man, and feels like he's in a war that the American public doesn't entirely understand nor do they care about in the same way they did World War II.  He is mentored by Rear Admiral Tarrant (March), who sees a lot in Brubaker that reminds him of his late son, who was killed in World War II (and Tarrant has not been able to emotionally reckon with the death of his child).  Brubaker's wife Nancy (Kelly) shows up unexpectedly for Brubaker's leave, though their romantic rendezvous is interrupted when Brubaker's hotheaded friend Mike (Rooney) gets into a fight with a guy who has run off with Mike's "girl" (it's clear as the film goes on that she was using him for money & had no romantic inclinations to him).  While away, Tarrant tells Nancy about the horrors of war, and that her husband (whom she is angry about helping Mike rather than staying with her) might not come back.  In fact, this is the case as (I told you there was a spoiler alert here), both Holden's & Rooney's characters do die during a reconnaissance mission, making all of the prophecy about Brubaker's potential death come to pass.

Bridges at Toko-Ri could be a great movie.  The special effects are impressive (that Oscar win feels legitimate considering the combination of real-world and scale model effects during the battle sequence, which feel pretty seamless onscreen & probably why it was also cited for editing), and the story of the film is quite fascinating, and somewhat ahead-of-its-time.  World War II was the last war (to date) that was fought to any degree on American soil, and as a result all of the American wars since have been in another country's backyard, making patriotism more symbolic than something that is part of day-to-day fear.  That conversation, which runs heavily through the movie, is a conversation worth having, and it's particularly striking in 1954, when a war movie of this nature wouldn't usually be so introspective.

But the movie doesn't rely upon that narration, and the effects are secondary to the plot.  Holden doesn't give us much beyond the surface-level as Brubaker, and Kelly is bland as his wife, in a limited role considering her billing where she has little to say other than to try & be an audience surrogate (she is gone during long stretches of the movie-this is a supporting part).  March, the best actor in the cast, is also the best in show but he's not really central to the plot, and lord help me, Mickey Rooney is actively bad in this movie.  Rooney is one of my least favorite actors of the Classical Hollywood (he might honestly be the least amongst the major stars of the era), and he plays hotheaded, entitled Mike with the grace of a bulldog, totally clomping over the more delicate aspects of the story.

As I mentioned above, Kelly didn't win an Oscar for this, but she would win for The Country Girl, a movie I have seen before which is why we aren't featuring it this month for Saturdays with the Stars.  Kelly is okay in The Country Girl (I generally rag on this performance, but looking back on my notes about it at the time, I'm more middling than actively against it), but it's the sort of performance that makes sense for a win.  She'd made five films that year, was a beautiful young woman making her mark in Hollywood, and for the most part her competition was not the kind that would win: you had two recent winners in Jane Wyman & Audrey Hepburn, and Dorothy Dandridge was making history as the first Black actress to be nominated for Lead Actress, but 1954 Hollywood wasn't progressive enough to give her the trophy.  But the fifth nominee was Judy Garland in A Star is Born, generally considered to be one of the best performances in Hollywood history.  Garland is spectacular in the part, and was not only enjoying the kind of comeback only a true legend could pull off (years of drug & alcohol abuse had made the early parts of the 1950's a question mark if she could do a role like this again, or honestly if she'd even live to make it to 1954), but she had just given birth to her son Joey two days before the ceremony, which would have added a great bit of heartwarming drama to the ceremony.  Kelly's win was rough on Garland, who clearly expected the win, and perhaps knew on some level she'd never get another chance like this (despite a future nomination in 1961, she'd have been right-Judy Garland would never win a competitive Oscar).  Next week, we're going to talk about one of the last films that Grace Kelly would ever make, and how, less than two years after she was crowned the toast of Hollywood, she would leave it forever.