Synopsis
Set during World War II, an upper-class family begins to fall apart due to the conservative nature of the patriarch and the progressive values of his children.
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Cast
- Paul NewmanWalter Bridge
- Joanne WoodwardIndia Bridge
- Saundra McClainHarriet Rogers
- Margaret WelshCarolyn Bridge
- John BellDouglas Bridge as a boy
- Kyra SedgwickRuth Bridge
- Simon CallowDr. Alex Sauer
- Blythe DannerGrace Barron
- Austin PendletonMr. Gadbury
- Robert Sean LeonardDouglas Bridge
Recommendations
- 90
Chicago Reader
This deserves to be seen and cherished for at least a couple of reasons: first for Joanne Woodward's exquisitely multilayered and nuanced performance as India Bridge, a frustrated, well-to-do WASP Kansas City housewife and mother during the 30s and 40s; and second for screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's retention of much of the episodic, short-chapter form of the books. - 90
The New York Times
Mr. and Mrs. Bridge is wise and funny and just a little bit scary. Though it's an adaptation, it has the manner of a true original. - 88
TV Guide Magazine
What fills the screen is not heightened melodrama, but a series of stark, sometimes painfully poignant vignettes that reflect the oppressive stasis of their lives. - 80
Time
This memory piece, shy in manner but tough in spirit, has brought out the best in everyone connected with it. - 80
Variety
Mr. & Mrs. Bridge is an affecting study of an uppercrust Midwestern family in the late 1930s. - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
The film is so well made and acted, because it captures its period so meticulously. - 75
Christian Science Monitor
It marks a new artistic peak for director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. - 75
Rolling Stone
The film is dawdling, sometimes maddeningly so, but Newman and Woodward deliver lovingly detailed and bruisingly true performances that not only command attention but richly reward it.
