Waterloo Bridge (1940)

On the eve of World War II, a British officer revisits Waterloo Bridge and recalls the young man he was at the beginning of World War I and the young ballerina he met just before he left ... See full summary »

Director:

Mervyn LeRoy

Writers:

Robert E. Sherwood (play), S.N. Behrman (screenplay),

Stars:

Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor, Lucile Watson

Nominated for 2 Oscars.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Vivien Leigh	...	Myra
Robert Taylor	...	Roy Cronin
Lucile Watson	...	Lady Margaret Cronin
Virginia Field	...	Kitty
Maria Ouspenskaya	...	Madame Olga Kirowa
C. Aubrey Smith	...	The Duke
Janet Shaw	...	Maureen
Janet Waldo	...	Elsa
Steffi Duna	...	Lydia
Virginia Carroll	...	Sylvia
Leda Nicova	...	Marie
Florence Baker	...	Beatrice
Margery Manning	...	Mary
Frances MacInerney	...	Violet
Eleanor Stewart	...	Grace

Storyline

On the eve of World War II, a British officer revisits Waterloo Bridge and recalls the young man he was at the beginning of World War I and the young ballerina he met just before he left for the front. Myra stayed with him past curfew and is thrown out of the corps de ballet. She survives on the streets of London, falling even lower after she hears her true love has been killed in action. But he wasn't killed. Those terrible years were nothing more than a bad dream is Myra's hope after Roy finds her and takes her to his family's country estate.

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Plot Keywords:

ballet | officer | bridge | love | ballerina | 

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Genres:

Drama | War | Romance

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

17 May 1940 (USA)

Also Known As:

El puente de Waterloo

Filming Locations:

Bath, Somerset, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

108 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The play originally opened on Broadway in New York City, New York on 6 January 1930 and ran for 64 performances.

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Goofs

Even though the story takes place during the pre-1920 World War I period, all of Myra's clothes and hairstyles are strictly in the up-to-the-minute 1940 fashion.

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Quotes

Myra Lester: I may never see him again.

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Connections

Version of A Ponte de Waterloo (1959)

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Soundtracks

"The Minstrel Boy"
Traditional Irish air with lyrics by Thomas Moore
Heard as a theme while Myra waits for Roy's mother

User Reviews

Chaos of a life turned on its head

I've often thought that if Vivien Leigh hadn't had such a rocky and depressing life (manic depression, lost love in Lawrence Olivier, miscarriages, tuberculosis) she would have found a place among Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, and the like. She only made 19 films during her 30 year career, although that includes making legend as Scarlett O'Hara, and helping usher in a new era of acting by providing a pitch perfect classical foil as Blanche DuBois to Brando's smoldering and revolutionary Stanley Kowalski. But her favorite performance was that of Myra Lester in the tragic film Waterloo Bridge. Watching it it's no surprise: the film is subtly directed with a powerful story and well built characters that are an actor's dream to inhabit.

The story revolves around Myra, a ballerina turned prostitute during WWI when she believes her fiancée has died and she is plunged into poverty. The film was perfect fodder for melodrama, but rather it's a taut and realistic and uncompromising film. Direction is not overbearing and lets the film play out delicately except for several bold shots here and there which deeply accent it. Although the melodramas of the 40s are wonderful creatures, this film gained a lot by taking a rare path and going realistic.

Misfortune rules the day and is invited in after a series of near misses and miscalculations, and yet the plot doesn't feel technical or forced. Thanks to the script and performances, it all feels like the ebb and flow of the lives of these characters, pride and honesty and a slightly naive fiancée are the cause of Myra's downfall. And Leigh gives a performance on par with anything she's ever done, if not as epic as Gone With the Wind or wild as Blanche.

Leigh had a special way of handling the screen, of inhabiting her character with a certain distracted quality that made you feel as if she didn't realize there was a camera in the room or that she wasn't in fact the character she was playing. There are few actresses who could make it look as easy as she did, it seems like breathing. She was fierce and fearless, versatile; she could lose all her dignity on screen or be the living embodiment of it, and she possessed the rare quality of immediately communcating any emotion that was as tangible as anything with her face. That said, this is probably her most realistic character and her most tragic, and Leigh makes it profound and gut wrenching by being sophisticated and dignifed, and then at the right moments she takes the fall and gets ugly.

There's a brazen brilliant tracking shot where Myra, the former innocent ballerina, walks through Waterloo station in full slinky getup looking for johns, wearing a stone cold face that would intimidate O'Hara herself. It's seductive and we know she hates herself. Still, Leigh doesn't play an ounce of self pity or tragedy, she's determined to survive and get a client. In that way its very much a modern acting performance. It could be sexy, nowadays they'd try to make it sexy, but in the delicately built context of the story it's both mesmerizing and heartbreaking. And when she meets up with her not-dead-at-all love, played with sweet nobility by Robert Taylor, she tries to wipe off her lipstick when he goes to make a phone call, and the shame spills out from the screen.

The writing is very graceful (partly out of necessity to appease the almighty Production Code), at times remarkably candid and light (particularly with the earlier love scenes), and not very sentimental or stylized at all (not to say those are bad things, it's just that this film isn't). A lot of the dialogue sounds like conversation. It's romantic, but it doesn't resort to cliché or the easy way out: its tragedy is harsh and entirely unnecessary, the way it usually is in life. And Leigh's performance single handedly keeps you from forgetting Myra's story once the credits roll and you return to life in 2005. Not many actresses have that power. I only wish I could have seen what she would have done with less sorrow in her own life.