The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Starring:Lynn Bari, Akim Tamiroff, Francis Lederer, Alla Nazimova, Louis Calhern, Donald Woods, Blanche Yurka, Barton Hepburn, Joan Lorring, Emma Dunn, Abner Biberman, Antonio Triana, Theodore von Eltz, Mimi Forsythe, William H. O'Brien, Minerva Urecal, Lola Montes, Michael Mark, Matthew 'Stymie' Beard, Bess Flowers
Director: Rowland V. Lee
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

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Mary McGuckian (This is the Sea) has produced a handsome, if curiously inert version of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning novella. While the story presents a compelling inquiry into the nature of fate, this fourth adaptation, after a 1944 movie and 1958 tele-film, never quite overcomes some odd casting decisions. Set in Lima, Peru in the early-1700s, the story concerns the inquiry by Brother Juniper (Gabriel Byrne) into the deaths of five travelers who drowned when the bridge they were crossing collapsed. Was it divine intervention or random chance? As Juniper tells the Archbishop (Robert De Niro, making no effort to disguise his New York accent), while on trial for heresy, "Either we live by accident and die by accident or we live by plan and die by plan." Using his trial as a framing device, McGuckian flashes back to the circumstances that led the victims to their date with destiny. The primary players include the Viceroy (F. Murray Abraham), La Marquesa (Kathy Bates), the Abbess (Geraldine Chaplin), Uncle Pio (Harvey Keitel), La Perichole (Pilar López de Ayala), and twins Manuel and Esteban (Mark and Michael Polish of Northfork fame). So who fell? Unlike previous productions, the answer won't be revealed until the end, at which point Juniper will be forced to put his findings into a theological context--or suffer the cost. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Description

Five people are killed in a freak accident when a lofty rope bridge collapses. A priest journeys to discover if there was a divine reason for this bloody disaster. Set in Lima, Peru, during the 18th century and based on the Thornton Wilder novel.

Customer Reviews:

Boring movie, dull questioning... .......2007-07-01

The first boring movie I have ever seen Robert de Niro act in.
This movie has a star cast, but it never gets off the ground. It plods along till is comes to a whimpering end.
Probably because the novella it is based on, is actually (in spite of all the hype surrounding it) forgettable.
It seems the tale is told in order to do a post modernist sort of "unpacking" of events in order to arrive at some insight into either evil or the nature of randomness.
In other words, why did the bridge break and did those particular people fell to death. Did they deserve it, and so.
I was left with the puzzle why is this question only asked when a bridge collapse? I mean, why did the chicken die crossing the road?
The whole dull attempt at unraveling, however, is invalidated by the fact that never is the question asked why did the bridge ACTUALLY collapse - was it well maintained? Did a rope snap? Was it a new rope, etc.
Hell, maybe the man in charge of checking the rope was drunk?
Maybe the Lima people never actually did any maintenance on the bridge! Then it is of course not all that metaphysical...
Don't watch this movie. Rather go to sleep. Or read Dostoevsky.

Be careful with whom you associate! It could cost your life!.......2007-02-11

Five people plummet to their graves crossing a suspension bridge in 18th century Peru.WHY did THESE PARTICULAR PEOPLE die is the question? Father Juniper(Gabriel Byrne) has been commissioned by the Spanish Inquisition to determine just that.One thing is certain and only one thing:the five victims all had association with the actress La Perichole.
Based from the Thornton Wilder novel of the same name,Mary McGuckian's screenplay minutely examines the facts in the lives of these five victims.This film IS an inquest, and McGuckian's thorough retelling of Wilder's book is accurately brought to the screen with an intelligent portrayal by an all-star International ensemble of the most well known A-list actors in the world.Special mention,though,has to go to Kathy Bates as the Marquesa.She is a wonder!It is also great to see F.Murray Abraham playing a Salieri-like role that grabbed him his Oscar in AMADEUS.
For SOUNDTRACK LOVERS,the score written and conducted by Lalo Schifrin and The Philharmonia Orchestra is among the best film scores---very LA MANCHA!
Beautifully filmed in Madrid with gorgeous period costumes to boot,THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY is a masterful adaptation of a brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning novel rendered faithfully and rivetingly.

Wonderful.......2006-09-12

I read the book years and years ago, so I can't say if this was a faithful adaptation or not. It was wonderfully filmed and acted. Kathy Bates is at her absolute best. For me, one of the saddest parts of the whole movie was the story of the twins who talked to no one except each other (though I don't think they say anything in the movie), and were so dependent on each other. When one dies, the other tries to commit suicide. The story tells the lives of the five people who died when the bridge collapses.

mixed response.......2006-05-19

I loved Thornton Wilder's delicate and moving novel and approached this movie accordingly. By the time I watched it through, I reached a point of exasperation, feeling that so much of it was good or even excellent, yet the pacing suffered and the editing failed to drive the watcher securely along the road to the end. Gabriel Byrne, Harvey Keitel and F. Murray Abraham performed excellently, Byrne in particular. Byrne's ongoing narration does its best to bind the tale together, and his quality of voice enriches this movie, giving it a beauty that persists in my memory. I could only have wished that towards the end he had given us a little more hint of the gathering horror that Brother Juniper must feel at his situation. A horror that will never be allowed a voice.
However, Robert DeNiro was horribly miscast. I am a DeNiro admirer; I have particularly loved his roles in such movies as Awakenings and The Deer Hunter and The Mission. But not here. Whether it is due to the director's reading of the character or his own, he lacked the necessary gravitas to persuade me that he believed in his own identity. He came across as light voiced, dismayingly colloquial, and, perhaps due to the shape of his moustache, perilously close to comical.Even his asking for Brother Juniper's death gave him no depth. John Lynch and Geraldine Chapman fill out their characters amazingly for the shortness of their actual time on screen. Katherine Bates disappointed me a little -- I wanted more heart. Given the nature of the Marquesa, I wanted sloppiness, more piggishness and self-pity from her in the beginning. When Byrne in his overvoice speaks of the tyranny that informs her maternal love, we have only really seen the generosity of that love.Perhaps a little more time to watch her reactions, more time to see her ideas developing on her face, would have aided the realization of the character in full.
Despite that last comment where I am asking for more rather than less, I wonder if more severe cutting might have helped this film. In visual terms it is beautiful and the details are extremely well realized. I must watch this movie again; I feel that it could have been a truly great film and I feel personally disappointed that it is not.

silly.......2006-02-15

this movie was silly, boring and poorly done. The only saving grace was he excellent performance by robert deniro playing himself pretending to be spanish.

Average customer rating:

Worth Watching Even In Truncated Form
A bland movie that loosely follows the book
Competent film version of the Pulitzer Prize winning novella
meaningful film
Possibly the worst adaptation ever made of a great novel!

The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Starring: Lynn Bari , Akim Tamiroff , Francis Lederer , Alla Nazimova , and Louis Calhern
Director: Rowland V. Lee
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 6305339783
Release Date: 1999-04-06

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Five people die when a rope bridge collapses in Peru. A local priest, perplexed why God chose these five to die, goes to town to investigate who the five were. Because the film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Thornton Wilder, it's easy to assume that some very existential questions, and maybe some answers, will be forthcoming. Nope. What the good priest does find is the hothouse Micaela (Lynn Bari), a stage actress and partial bad girl, who is wooed by a sailor, a theater gadfly, and the local viceroy. This leads to court intrigue, some incongruous song and dance numbers, and a trip to that fateful bridge. When the old bridge does snap and we know who is lying at the bottom of that Peruvian ravine, it's fair to wonder if the local priest didn't waste his time asking about the wrong people or whether it's just been a waste of time altogether. --Keith Simanton

Description

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Thornton Wilder, "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" tells the story of a rickety bridge that has spanned a deep gorge for ages. When the bridge suddenly collapses--plunging five people to their deaths--the tragedy causes a wave of superstition to engulf the villagers as they believe they are destined for continued misfortune. Only a priest can find the connections to divine intervention that will quell the townspeople's fears.

Customer Reviews:

Worth Watching Even In Truncated Form.......2005-05-16

Rowland V. Lee screwed up many motion pictures but this isn't one of them. How often do you see the screen legends Akim Tamiroff and Nazimova together in one film? At the very end of her long, illustrious career, Nazimova girded her loins and lent her indelible presence to a final bunch of films (after what amounted to a blacklist on account of her wayward sexuality). THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY is one of her better projects and its decadent sensibility is a good match for the cagaries of her screen image. As he did his later novel, THE EIGHTH DAY, Thornton Wilder used the apparently simple story of five people meeting by accident and dying together to ask some thought-provoking questions about fate and chance. Why do we do the things we do? Are we moved by some higher (or lower) purpose? Is destiny irreversible? If we all meet the same death, what is the sense in leading a good life? Do individual lives have any meaning? Wilder's themes spoke to a wartime audience as few other authors. (His play OUR TOWN was the most performed American play during World War II.)

Lynn Bari is just as lovely here as she was in HELLO, FRISCO, HELLO. I never could understand why she never became a bigger star! Now we remember her only vaguely as the woman who married Sid Luft before Judy Garland did. In THE BRIDGE ON SAN LUIS REY she has what amounts to the leading part, and she acquits herself admirably, her Spanish accent soft but convincing. Watch for Abner Biberman in a small part. Biberman's name doesn't mean much now as an actor, but after the actual, McCarthy inspired blacklist, he rose to the occasion and directed the notorious SALT OF THE EARTH, one of the few independent pictures of the early 1950s worth watching today.

This DVD edition is nothing to write home about; it has long been rumored that more of Wilder's novel was actually filmed, then cut to keep the movie under a trim 90 minutes. But lovers of the novel have never felt Lee's film version to be an adequate representation of the rich character development of the book.

A bland movie that loosely follows the book.......2004-03-15

In 1774 Peru, five people are crossing the hundred-year-old bridge of San Luis Rey when it suddenly collapses, plunging the five to their deaths. Witness to this startling event is Brother Juniper who decides to find out why God has chosen those particular five people to bring into His realm. He travels to Lima to meet with Uncle Pio, a local character who knows everyone and everything surrounding Lima. From Pio, Brother Juniper learns how the lives of the five were connected to one another.

Sort of. The movie focuses on only four of the characters, and three of them in a very secondary sort of way. The fifth character, an old man who was transporting grain, is mentioned only in passing. To me that was disappointing, after having read the book, because each of the characters has his or her own unique story which connects with the others. The acting is very wooden, with too many varying accents and some with no accents at all, so it's difficult to believe the film takes place in Peru. (The Spanish viceroy looks and talks decidedly British, whereas Micaela has an American accent, and Uncle Pio sounds Russian when he speaks.)

The one good aspect from this film is the score by Dimitri Tiomkin, which was nominated for an Academy Award. However, even that gets marred by the poor sound quality of this DVD transfer. It fades in and out too much, and at times, I could not hear what was being said.

See this movie if you must, but the book is better.

Competent film version of the Pulitzer Prize winning novella.......2003-10-21

This is the second of three film versions of the Pulitzer Prize winning novella (134 pages do not a novel make!). The third version is in post-production as we write. Neither of the first two were anything beyond potboiler status, and took liberties with the narrative. I am writing here to correct the negative review on this page from a person in Medford, Oregon. He or she is entitled to his or her opinion, but is not entitled to erroneous information. The 1929 film was nominated for only one Oscar (Art Direction) and won. There was no second nomination involved, let alone a second win.

meaningful film.......2003-06-02

When I was growing up, this was the first movie other than superficial entertainment that I ever saw. I was so impressed with all the moral implications and human emotions, that I never forgot it ! Seeing it again, after all these years, I found itevery bit as gripping, and the D V D made it even more enjoyable. Of special note is the acting of a great actor, Francis Lederer.

Possibly the worst adaptation ever made of a great novel!.......2000-09-01

This truly awful movie uses Thornton Wilder's name over the title so you will believe the story that unfolds is Wilder's. Not so! The film bears virtually no resemblance to the novel. Characters are changed beyond recognition, and the story line of the movie might as well have come from some potboiler written by a hack writer (and I'm certain some hack screenwriter wrote the film!). All the great ideas Wilder brilliantly dramatized in the novel have been jettisoned for lurid melodrama badly acted by an almost totally forgettable cast. That this travesty of a film should be released in any format when far more deserving films are left begging shows that someone isn't using their noodle. The first film of this great book was done in 1929 and won two of the first technical Oscars. That film (from MGM) is now unfortunately obsolete. This DVD version not only deserves no awards whatsoever, but should be made instantly obsolete. Don't even bother to rent this movie. Read the book instead.

Average customer rating:

The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Starring: F. Murray Abraham , Kathy Bates , Gabriel Byrne , Geraldine Chaplin , and Robert De Niro
Director: Mary McGuckian
Manufacturer: Columbia
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Product Description

Spain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. Languages: o English (subtitles) o Spanish (subtitles) o English (Dolby Digital 2.0) Synopsis: Five people are killed in a freak accident when a lofty rope bridge collapses. The film details a priest's journey to discover if there was a divine reason for the bloody disaster. Set in Lima, Peru, during the 18th century. Based on the Thornton Wilder novel, and first made in 1929. - Thornton Wilder's award-winning novel is given a lavish screen adaptation in this historical drama from writer and director Mary McGuckian. In Peru in 1714, a rickety bridge collapsed as five people were attempting to cross, forcing them to plunge to their deaths. Brother Fray Juniper (Gabriel Byrne) is a Franciscan monk who has been given the duty of looking into the tragedy by the archbishop of Lima (Robert De Niro), and to learn what he can about the victims. It is Juniper's belief that these particular people died for some reason, and that it is his duty to determine why God chose these five people to perish, while others in the vicinity survived. After five years, Juniper delivers his findings to the archbishop as well as the viceroy of Peru (F. Murray Abraham), as Juniper tells them of the lives of the troubled Dona Maria (Kathy Bates), the nun Pepita (Adriana Dominguez), warm-hearted Uncle Pio (Harvey Keitel), street kid-turned-actress La Perichola (Pilar Lopez de Ayala), and others involved in the tragedy. The Bridge of San Luis Rey also features Geraldine Chaplin, John Lynch, and brothers Mark Polish and Michael Polish. Special Features: o Cast/Crew Interview(s) o Filmographies o Interactive Menu o Scene Access o Trailer(s)

Average customer rating:

Boring movie, dull questioning...
Be careful with whom you associate! It could cost your life!
Wonderful
mixed response
silly

The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Starring: F. Murray Abraham , Kathy Bates , Gabriel Byrne , Geraldine Chaplin , and Robert De Niro
Director: Mary McGuckian
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( B ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B00005JOIY

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Customer Reviews:

Boring movie, dull questioning... .......2007-07-01

Be careful with whom you associate! It could cost your life!.......2007-02-11

Wonderful.......2006-09-12

mixed response.......2006-05-19

silly.......2006-02-15

this movie was silly, boring and poorly done. The only saving grace was he excellent performance by robert deniro playing himself pretending to be spanish.

DVD:

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Competition Judo -D

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