A Bridge Too Far - 1977 - 80 Years Market Garden - Fan Cut Edition

A Bridge Too Far, is a 1977 war movie portraying Operation Market Garden from 1944, where it's objective was to create a 64 mile (103 km) salient into German territory with a bridgehead over the Nederrijn (Lower Rhine River), creating an Allied invasion route into northern Germany.

The operation succeeded in capturing the Dutch cities of Eindhoven and Nijmegen along with many towns, and a few V-2 rocket launching sites. It failed in its most important objective; securing the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem.

Richard Attenborough, took on the heavy task to portray this operation as best as he possibly could in 1977, this movie has some inaccuracies that irked historians for many years. This fan cut, released on 80 years after Operation Market Garden, is my attempt at fixing some of those inaccuracies.

Other changes to the movie are:

Upscaled to 2K and cleaned up.

Extensive changes to the color of the movie using LUT's to give the movie a more gritty look.

Upgraded and enhanced sound for more clarity and punch to the sounds. Also more ambient background battle sounds have been added to give a better feel for the viewer being in a actual battle raging on.

New sound effects like a new Piat and Bren Gun firing sound, better explosions, gun fire, etc. Also sound effects added where they were not present like a gun firing and no sound is heard. A good example is the mortars hitting Urquhart at 1:05:46 with no sound at all. The truck at 1:57:21 can now actually be heard and seen being hit as before, it just blew up. Now it looks like it got hit buy a anti tank gun or tank.

Blood splatters, only two times these were added as no wounds were present on the screen. (49:13 German soldier and 1:16:17 British paratrooper)

Some scenes that have been altered or even removed:

The United Artists logo has been changed to a older one for a more nostalgic look.

The scene of Major Fuller, who was advised to take a sick leave, has been removed, as this never happened, Major Fuller was based on Major Brian Urquhart (no relation with the character played by Sean Connery) and he was never put on sick leave. The subsequent failure of the operation and the heavy casualties that resulted vindicated Urquhart's judgment. He became deeply depressed by his failure to persuade his superiors to halt the operation, and requested a transfer out of the airborne forces. In the movie he can be seen packing his bag to go on his sick leave, this has been used to portray him actually going with the rest of the troops.

The Spitfire fly over scene had been moved more forward to be a continuous scene with Major Fuller and Lt .Gen. Browning.

The radio engineers foreshadowing the radios being not strong enough has been removed.

Airborne Troops running for the bridge in the open road has been removed.

The scene at 1:03:40 with the tanks driving on a dike, has the background changed as the original background had modern power cable towers in plain sight.

The James Caan jeep forest chase has been removed as it never happened.

Field Marshal Model dismissing the found secret Market Garden plans has been altered, that they do take it serious, as Model indeed took the plans serious and acted upon them.

The scene at 2:01:00 where Hardy Krüger's character Maj. Gen. Ludwig is on the phone with Lt. Gen. Bittrich, has the background on the bridge altered, as it showed cars from the 70's driving.

Robert Redford arguing with the British officer, the "drink tea" scene has been removed as they mainly had allot of resistance ahead and were not really ordered to stop.

The scene of John Frost running around in rubble and explosions and getting injured has been removed as he was injured just standing around as he got hit by a random mortar shell.

2:13:57, the scene of John Frost talking with Maj. Carlyle, has been cut short, as it shows Carlyle succumb to his wounds, but the character of Maj. Carlyle was based on Major Allison Digby Tatham-Warter, who survived the war.

Gene Hackman's character aka Maj. Gen. Sosabowski's last statement of "lets play a wargame" has been removed as it's just a weird statement from a General.

Before the end credits, the little boy on the bottom left now continues on to walk out of the frame.

Vimeo version: https://vimeo.com/1011666908

Chapters:
00:00 - Logo/Prologue
08:51 - General Browning's H.Q.
17:00 - Spitfire Reconnaissance
19:44 - Tanks
24:17 - XXX Corps H.Q.
28:09 - Colonel Frost's Quarters
31:13 - Lift off
42:00 - Drop Zone
1:01:54 - The Son Bridge
1:04:15 - Top Secret
1:08:33 - First Attack
1:13:34 - Counter Attack
1:19:25 - Surrounded
1:23:51- Eindhoven
1:26:04 - Keeping promises
1:39:03 - Second Counter Attack
1:51:36 - Destroy Arnhem
2:00:48 - River Crossing
2:10:14 - Arnhem
2:15:12 - Surrender
2:23:36 - Polish Crossing
2:28:00 - Cease Fire
2:35:58 - A Bridge Too Far
2:41:39 - Credits