THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI Movie Review
1955 Mark Robson
Though the subject is the Korean conflict, this is really a Cold War film, perhaps the archetypal Cold War film, with Red-baiting politics, a strongly pro-military agenda, and an absolute blindness to the situation it addresses. To a degree, that attitude has to be expected from a film made with the full cooperation of the Navy—including liberal access to aircraft carriers at sea—but seen in the light of history, the film reveals the prejudices of its time with unforgiving clarity.
In 1952, Lt. Harry Brubaker (William Holden) is flying jet fighters from a carrier off the coast of Korea. Though the script is a little vague on the point, his participation in the war is less than completely voluntary. He had expected another reserve unit to be called up before his, or something to that effect. Whatever the circumstances, he finds himself involved in the dangerous business of taking off from and landing on a floating postage stamp in the middle of a roiling ocean. He's good at his work, though the helicopter rescue team of Forney (Mickey Rooney) and Gamidge (Earl Holliman) has had to fish him out of the drink. To his boss, Rear Adm. Tarrant (Fredric March), Brubaker is almost a surrogate son.
The best parts of the film are the flying and carrier scenes. Both have a degree of authenticity that Hollywood seldom achieves. Comparatively few models and special effects were used. The bombing runs and the landings have a strong you-are-there quality, and the filmmakers handle them with loving attention to details. That side of the film could not be better.
The same cannot be said of the long central section when the carrier docks in Japan. There, Brubaker spends his time with perfect blonde wife Nancy (Grace Kelly) and his freshly scrubbed children, while Forney and Gamidge get into the kind of trouble that enlisted men on leave always get into in war movies. Given that extended pause in the action, Adm. Tarrant takes the opportunity to hold forth on Cold War politics. “If we don't stop the Koreans here,” he sagely states, “they'll be in Japan, Indochina, and the Philippines” and then on to Mississippi. “Like most people at home, you've been protected,” he tells Nancy “You're ignorant and defenseless.” The same patronizing superiority comes into play when he explains why women just can't seem to understand why men have to do what men have to do in war.
To underscore those points for contemporary audiences, the last act eerily anticipates the kind of action that would become far too common more than a decade later in Vietnam.
Hindsight gives the whole film, particularly the conclusion, a horrible inevitability. At the risk of belaboring one of this book's central points, war movies contain emotional truths, not historical truths. In this case, the filmmakers reveal a rigid us-vs.-them mentality that was widely accepted at the time. As a snapshot of mid-1950s American attitudes and their consequences, The Bridges of Toko-Ri has few equals.
Cast: William Holden (Lt. Harry Brubaker), Grace Kelly (Nancy Brubaker), Fredric March (Rear Adm. George Tarrant), Mickey Rooney (Mike Forney), Robert Strauss (Beer Barrel), Earl Holliman (Nestor Gamidge), Keiko Awaji (Kimiko), Charles McGraw (Cmdr. Wayne Lee), Richard Shannon (Lt. Olds), Willis Bouchey (Capt. Evans); Written by: Valentine Davies; Cinematography by: Loyal Griggs; Music by: Lyn Murray. Producer: Paramount Pictures, George Seaton, William Perlberg. Awards: Academy Awards '55: Best Special Effects; Nominations: Academy Awards '55: Best Film Editing. Running Time: 103 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV.