WATERLOO BRIDGE: Blu-ray (MGM, 1940) Warner Archive

 In her first picture post-Gone with the Wind (1939), Vivien Leigh proved lightning could, indeed, strike twice, coming up a winner with co-star, Robert Taylor in Mervyn LeRoy’s syrupy romantic/drama, Waterloo Bridge (1940) – a picture to remain a personal favor in both star’s repertoires. Waterloo Bridge is, of course, a remake of…wait for it…Waterloo Bridge (1931), a tale told entirely in flashback, involving the undiluted wartime affair du Coeur between an aspiring ballerina and dashing Army Captain. In the roughly ten years between the original its infinitely more ever-lasting remake, time had been powerless to mellow the depth of emotion audiences had for its three-hanky charm. If anything, the advancing threat of war in Europe had made Americans even more sentimental for stories about love among the ruins. And thus, apart from its pre-sold title, Waterloo Bridge had the added blessing of starring the most sought-after actress working in Hollywood then; Vivien Leigh’s runaway success as Scarlett O’Hara, to have made her an overnight sensation around the world.  S. N. Behrman, Hans Rameau and George Froeschel’s screenplay remained ever-devoted to its Broadway roots; Robert E. Sherwood’s glorious prose given a light dusting off to make some of the dialogue more relevant to war-time audiences, while resident composer, Herbert Stothart and cinematographer, Joseph Ruttenberg – both Oscar-nominated for their contributions, ensured MGM’s adherence to gushing glamor was both steadfast and memorable.

Throughout the 1940’s MGM found great success in remaking movies of only passable prominence first introduced by other studios. As 1931’s release of Waterloo Bridge had come from Universal, MGM finagled an outright purchase of the rights to remake it, undaunted by the fact the earlier picture, despite its pre-Code status, had nevertheless encountered some resistance from censorship over its portrayal of prostitution. After 1934, this version of Waterloo Bridge was summarily banned from exhibition, leaving MGM’s ambitious plans for the remake the only real contender. As Hollywood’s self-governing Code of Censorship was ironclad and impenetrable by 1940, this Waterloo Bridge would emerge as a plushily romanticized, if bittersweet testament to a more ripened and tragic love. In the play, and the 1931 movie, Myra is an unemployed chorine who turns to prostitution to support herself, concealing the truth from Roy, a naïve expat who is blinded by love and unaware of her past. The girl is later accidentally killed, but only after revealing the truth to her lover. The general classiness and overall maturity of both Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh necessitated certain changes to sell this story to the public.

Thus, Myra is now an aspiring ballerina whose defiance of the ballet mistress – a resolute, Madame Olga Kirowa (Maria Ouspenskaya) results in her dismissal from the corps, along with her best friend, Kitty (Virginia Field). Prior to this, Myra and Capt. Roy Cronin (Taylor) have met during a bombing raid, taking refuge in the Underground. Afterward, she invites him to her final performance and he skips out on his superior’s birthday party to oblige. For several days thereafter, the couple are inseparable, spending every waking hour together. They share romantic, candlelit dinners and long walks in the rain. Regrettably, Roy’s proposal of marriage is thwarted by his call to the front. Myra misses his departing train by mere moments but has high hopes for Roy’s return. Regrettably, neither she nor Kitty have been able to secure legitimate work. And thus, Kitty turns to hooking first, altruistically, and not telling Myra where the money is coming from to help keep body and soul together, supporting Myra completely after the latter has fallen ill and requires costly medicine to restore her to wellness.

Myra’s gratitude she intends to repay in full once her lover returns, having already brought her to the threshold of marriage. Alas, a prearranged meeting with Roy’s mother, Lady Margaret Cronin (the ever-dependable, Lucille Watson) goes horrendously awry when Myra reads in the paper the obituaries mistakenly to report Roy has been killed in action. Fainting in despair, but nursed back to consciousness by the kindly hostess (Norma Varden), Myra is unable to articulate her despair to Lady Margaret. Instead, she comes off as aloof, wounding and frightfully rude. Unable to quantify her reaction, Lady Margaret graciously withdraws, leaving Myra to make the decision to follow Kitty into ‘the life’ in order to survive, but more so, to drown her sorrow at having lost the only man she ever loved. A cruel spate of seasons passes: summer, fall, winter and spring. By now, Myra has established herself as a working girl, frequenting the usual seedy pubs and railway station to procure new clientele. Unhappy chance, on this occasion she encounters Roy disembarking from the platform. Neither can believe their eyes and Myra, reluctantly embraces the man she thought was lost to her forever. A short while later, Myra elects to keep to her secret and devote herself to Roy. He is elated and wastes no time whisking her off to his ancestral manor in Scotland where Lady Margaret is as willing and eager as ever to welcome Myra into the fold.

Alas, Myra’s anxieties will not let her rest. Happiness eludes her at every opportunity. Even the kind regards of Roy’s uncle (C. Aubrey Smith) cannot quell this overwhelming sadness. And thus, after feigning joy to her lover yet again, Myra confesses all to Lady Margaret. The dowager, burdened by this discovery, nevertheless promises never to tell her son the truth. And so, Myra vanishes into the night, retreating to London where, presumably, she intends to return to her former ‘profession’. Roy pursues her to the flat she once shared with Kitty, only to learn Myra never came back. With Kitty’s aid, Roy is taken to every seedy pub and grindhouse in the vicinity. Eventually Roy, who is still in the dark regarding Myra’s disappearing act, comes to realize what became of her during his absence. Regardless, he vows to never stop searching for his beloved. Regrettably, as Myra gazes into the foggy eve on Waterloo Bridge, the place where she and Roy first professed their love, she now makes the fatal decision to end her life. As a convoy of Red Cross trucks drives across the expanse, Myra throws herself into oncoming traffic and is killed; her ‘good luck’ charm, she gave to Roy during the war, but he returned to her later, now cast to the pavement near her lifeless remains. The movie concludes with an aged Roy preparing for WWII, gazing into the uncertain mist from Waterloo Bridge, certain to never love another again.

Waterloo Bridge remains an eloquent and nostalgic tome to the idealistic promises made by true love, denied – even betrayed – by the ever-shifting winds of change. The picture’s success is partly owed Ms. Leigh’s catapult into the stratosphere of megawatt stardom after her startling debut in Selznick’s southern masterpiece. Leigh, who already had a lucrative career in her native Britain, was nevertheless still largely unknown to American audiences before Gone with the Wind. Afterward, no one could forget her. That MGM chose to retreat a peg or two from the towering ‘event’ status of Selznick’s grand epic for Leigh’s next picture is a bit of a curiosity. In the absence of Irving Thalberg, Metro’s wunderkind producer, prone – as Selznick - to constructing such edifices in homegrown and forefront leading super-productions, Louis B. Mayer’s guiding principle for his dream factory, after Thalberg’s untimely passing in 1936, was to produce more pictures per annum, modestly rendered with their appeal firmly anchored in Metro’s formidable star power. By all accounts, Waterloo Bridge is an unpretentious picture. Most of the sets, moodily lit and photographed by cinematographer extraordinaire, Joseph Ruttenberg, are hand-me-downs from other pictures, particularly Copperfield square, built for 1935’s David Copperfield, and Quality Street, created for a 1927 Marion Davies’ movie of the same name, playing host to an endless line-up of pictures supposedly taking place in merry ole England.  

Early on, Leigh had pressed Mayer to consider casting her real-life lover, Laurence Olivier as her co-star in Waterloo Bridge. As Oliver was not under contract to Metro, and Mayer preferred to mine his own star field for talent, Robert Taylor was cast in his stead. Taylor embraced the role, perceiving it as a means to expand his reputation beyond that of the impossibly handsome, heartsore and youthful matinee idol he so often played in pictures like Camile (1936) and Personal Property (1937). In fact, Taylor and Leigh had appeared together before in A Yank at Oxford (1938) – shot on Leigh’s native soil at MGM’s Borehamwood Studios before WWII prevented such Anglo-American alliances from flourishing. Alas, there is something remiss in the ‘chemistry’ between these two stars in Waterloo Bridge. Even as Taylor is dashing and romantic as ever, and Leigh permits herself the intermittent luxury to emote with grand gestures – as in collapsing, not once, but twice, in a dead, if glamorous faint – their best moments in this picture play apart rather than together.

Leigh is superb in the scene with Lucille Watson where she struggles to maintain a sense of decorum with the great lady, choking back tears and confusion that prevent her from revealing what she has only just learned (or thinks she has); that her lover, and Lady Cronin’s son has died gallantly in battle. Leigh also excels in the Anna Karenina-inspired finale; Myra’s mounting looks of quiet desperation caught in the foggy headlights of the oncoming Red Cross motorcade until the moment when she can bear the strain no more. But her scenes with Taylor lack the necessary spark of sexual attraction. He does his best to whisper sweet nothings about the future into her ear. But she seems, if not entirely unresponsive, then simply to be going through the actor’s prerequisite handbook of emotional responses to hearing such good news; moistened lips, dewy eyes, a downturned mouth suddenly curled into a polite smile. It works – on a superficial level – but it never entirely warms our hearts as it should. Waterloo Bridge may be fondly recalled today as one of the great romance pictures from the start of the war years. But personally, I prefer the similarly-themed The White Cliffs of Dover (1944) to it, or even Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), and, undoubtedly, Random Harvest (1942).

Waterloo Bridge’s Blu-ray debut from the Warner Archive (WAC) is cause for celebration. The 2011 DVD release, despite being advertised as from a restoration effort, left a good deal to be desired. But now we get Waterloo Bridge in hi-def, sourced from a new 4K scan of the best surviving elements. The gray scale here is excellent. Joseph Ruttenberg’s cinematography is of a rare perfection, shot under dim, key-lit conditions, employing heavy shadows to evoke a strangely romanticized version of London’s wartime blackouts. The candlelit waltz to Auld Lang Syne, as the fictional Candlelight Club’s orchestra continues to extinguish the flicker of their flames lighting their sheet music holders until the entire ballroom is plunged into moonlit darkness, skates on the peripheries of the film’s emulsion, keeping our lovers in shadowy focus throughout, and remains a high-water mark in the movie. Film grain has been accurately reproduced herein. The image is beautifully contrasted with not an age-related artifact in sight. A wonderful effort, indeed. The 1.0 DTS mono is solid. Apart from a badly worn theatrical trailer and radio broadcast, there are NO extras. Bottom line: Waterloo Bridge is a charming piece of escapist romantic entertainment, made at an epoch when Hollywood knew how to convey the breadth of human emotion with awe-inspiring subtlety. Not every moment committed to film requires a flourish of orchestral underscore to convey these unfettered thoughts of two human beings desperate to belong to one another, but denied the opportunity by fate. And thus, Waterloo Bridge remains happily ensconced in most viewer’s minds as a somewhat understated tragedy, marred only by the seemingly tacked on theatrics of its last act finale. You could do a lot worse, folks. And this one – especially in this Blu-ray incarnation, is decidedly a real/reel keeper. Recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

1