Route 66 (TV Series) Incident on a Bridge (1961) User Reviews

Forbidden love with a mystery

[bote · 9/10 · 13 September 2013]

A troubling tale of love between an ostracized man and an oppressed girl, with an extra helping of jealousy from her would-be fiancé.

Anna's father rules his household with an iron fist allowing her only the escape of her music for one hour each day as she performs monotonous chores around the family boarding house in Cleveland. Dvorovoi can't stand the way her betrothed, Orlov, treats her with a violent controlling manner similar to her father's so they fight an impassioned battle over her. Buz and Tod open her eyes with a rare showing of kindness at just the right time for her not-so-secret admirer to open his heart and win her over. This pits her gloomy upbringing against the ray of hope to be happy with a man with a price on his head. The open-ended conclusion leaves the viewer to imagine their fate.

Shot at the double-track New York Central railroad drawbridge over the Cuyahoga River just down the tracks from "The Mistake By The Lake", this episode of Route 66 provides a time capsule for railfans. A couple NYC F-units pull a train over the bridge during the climactic getaway scene near the end.

NO CONCRETE ENDING TO THE STORY

[larryanderson · 7/10 · 25 May 2020]

There are three "possible" endings to the story but we are never told which one was the final solution. The couple jumped on the train and escaped even though the search down the line didn't prove that. They were stuck in the mud but were never found and they just "climbed up into the sky". The audience is never told what the final outcome was. I wish they had had a "hint" in the end scenes to give us some hope.

Nelson Riddle gets a shout out

[korth-2 · 10/10 · 14 July 2014]

As Tod and Buz are driving in the 'vette listening to a news report, the announcer says at the end of the report, 'And now, back to the music of Nelson Riddle.' I like to imagine they played the theme from Route 66. This episode has a great early performance by Lois Smith. It also reinforces why I love George Maharis' portrayal of Buz. He's the perfect combination of manly man and yet with such a sensitive soul underneath it all. It also points out in my opinion why the series only lasted 1 season after Maharis' departure. His replacement, Lincoln, seemed like a deer in the headlights and didn't provide the chemistry with Martin Milner that had worked so well in the first 3 seasons. Of course, the locations were like a 3rd character and remain to this day as a highlight of the series.

6/16/61: "Incident on a Bridge"

[schappe1 · 25 April 2015]

This series is pretty down to earth but occasionally they could suggest that something a bit beyond our conception of reality had taken place. This is a flashback episode with Tod and Buz explaining the events that led to the disappearance of two people at a railroad bridge in Cleveland. The police suspect they either jumped onto a passing train or they fell into the river. Tod thinks they may have just climbed the ladder they were on right up into the sky. At the end of the story, we aren't sure who is right.

This episode is over-wrought and excessive poetic, almost a verse drama at times, (and thus characteristic of Stirling Silliphant's work). The plot is derivative of both Victor Hugo's "the Hunchback of Notre Dame" and Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape". Nehemiah Persoff plays Divorovoi, (De Vor-Oh-Vye), an ape-like man working in a gravel yard where Tod and Buz have found jobs. Persoff used a mouth appliance and fake teeth long with an extended eyebrow and maybe contact lenses to suggest this ape-man. But it turns out he's a gentle, misunderstood soul inside. The one person who sees this is a mute woman who takes care of the chores in the boarding house where they all live. It's run by the woman's father, also the owner of the gravel yard, who doesn't want his daughter marrying an ape. He's chosen his foreman, a bully that T & B have their weekly fight with, as the groom. Divorovoi and the girl run off, setting up the incident at the bridge.

What I really like about this episode is that it's a product of its environment, a Russian community in Cleveland with the spires of a church always visible, (and suggesting an escape into the sky). The camera-work is very nourish. The place looks gritty and dirty. Despite the darkness of the story and atmosphere, it would be a good episode to be an introduction to Route 66, a show for which the stories grew out of the various places in which they took place. On that note, the first season came to an end.

An unusual fable

[lor_ · 1 February 2024]

Route 66's first season ends on a high note with Silliphant delivering a romantic fable, which he facetiously relates to the "Jack and the Beanstalk" fairy tale. Stars Nehemiah Persoff and Lois Smith are responsible for the show's power.

Shot in my home town of Cleveland, Ohio, in the Flats and Russian Hill districts (later immortalized on-screen by Michael Cimino in the wedding section of "The Deer Hunter"), the story is told in flashbacks narrated by Milner and Maharis. It pays tribute to the triumph of the human spirit when faced with extreme repression.

Silliphant takes his starting point with one of the city's many Eastern European ethnic communities, with M & M working on sand pile for Lois's stern father. She's betrothed to a brute who fights with Persoff and is ultimately killed by Nehemiah, protecting Lois, and they become the traditional star-crossed lovers.

Lois is a mute girl, slaving away for her dad with only a very young brother looking out for her. M & M instantly sympathize and defend her and Nehemiah. Though their interference is ineffective. With a railroad bridge over the Cuyahoga river as the framing device for the story, it leads to a fanciful open-ending.

Smith is fabulous, as usual in her lengthy career as one of the greatest of character actresses, and Persoff, outfitted with prosthetic bad teeth, is cast against type as something of a "Hunchback of Notre Dame" pitiful figure, very strongly performed. Directed by David Lowell Rich, there's a strangeness contrasted with the on-location realism that makes for a unique episode.