Waterloo Bridge (1940)

Good concept, poorly executed.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Very strong performances by a cast that seemed to know the writing was very good. Vivien Leigh's face was a silent mirror as she ran the emotions of love and then horror when she knew she would be found out. Taylor gives an inspired performance, and they seemed to have strong chemistry on screen. The supporting cast was terrific. As an amateur historian, I am mystified by the terrible costuming and hair that fit the 1940 issue date, not the 1914-15 period of the story. How could all the trucks (lorries) be so right and the soldier's equipment and the men's and women's costumes be so wrong? I wish Vivien Leigh had made a hundred more films for us.

This is what I call a "procrastination movie". In other words, it is a one of those "must see" films that your friends told you to see, and you wound up "putting it off" for a long period of time for one reason or another. When you finally took the time to see it ... you wind up "kicking" yourself for waiting for so long to see it. Dumb me! I did the same thing with films like "North By Northwest" and "Glory. Vivien Leigh plays Myra, a ballerina, who meets Captain Roy Cronin, Robert Taylor on Waterloo Bridge during an air raid in London. The two are forced by fate to share several hours together. Sound familiar? Kind of like Rhett Butler's fateful situation of sleeping on a couch and running into Scarlet O'Hara after a conversation with Leslie Howard. Yep! It's Gone With The Wind all over again .... two people madly in love finding themselves surrounded by the chaos of war as they suffer the trials and tribulations of separation and reunion placed by circumstance. It is also my understanding that Vivien Leigh had to agree by contract to make this film when she signed for the role of Scarlet O'Hara in "Gone With The Wind". What a great flick this is! There is no question in my mind that this is Robert Taylor's greatest performance, and Vivien Leigh's 2nd best performance. How could she or anyone possibly top her Scarlet O'Hara? How does it end? I'll never tell ... but I wills tell you this .... Maria Ouspenskaya, who plays Leigh's Balarina Mentor, makes Bette Davis and Joan Crawford look like Girl Scouts when it comes to playing a "queen bee".

This script desperately needed another revision.After learning that Britain has just declared war on Germany in 1939, the movie opens with an aged army officer driven through London to catch a train in order to sail to France to begin fighting in WWII. He seems a solid chap, and he turns out to be Robert Taylor, who orders his driver to detour his route to Waterloo Station by going via Waterloo Bridge. We learn this man fought in WWI. He's a hardened soldier. He stops at the bridge and calmly reminisces about a woman. He even has a small good luck charm.Utter nonsense. As we learn by the end of the movie, the man loved the woman in a tragic, miraculous romance. No soldier would cheerily allow himself the indulgence of "fondly" thinking about something that came to such a horrible, tragic end. This movie is a heart-render, a tear-jerker of the first order. Your guts get cut out. No man would want to relive this. A soldier would simply close the door of his memory and blot it out of his mind just like he would a horrible battlefield experience. Yet Taylor with a bit of a smirk goes and daydreams on the bridge about a woman who he one time said he will "love forever". The bulk of the movie is seen through this flashback contrivance which has you gritting your teeth with annoyance five minutes into the picture.That's your opening. A tragic twist of mistaken identity causes the crisis in the movie. Our heroine Myra (played by the astounding Vivian Leigh - more on her in a moment) learns of the tragedy as she is just about to meet her future fiancé's mother. Myra is in shock and comes off badly with the future mother-in-law, who is very gracious and still hopes that the two can one day be "good friends". Fast forward to the climax of the movie, where Myra is wrestling with the results of the tragic twist. She seeks out the future mother-in-law, who again has said that she knows that the two of them will be "good friends." But in Myra's time of need - in great crisis - the mother-in-law DOES NOT act like a good friend; she DOES NOT take her years of experience and guide young Myra through her crisis. She stands idly by like she just met someone at the library. Either take out the multiple references to "good friends" - OR - have her act like a good friend! Total failure of vision. The mother is a fine full character until the moment of crisis and then she becomes a cardboard cut out, leaving us alone in agony waiting for the destruction of Vivian Leigh. No movie with such a sequence can be a 10.Hence the movie gets an 8.On the plus side is the incredibly beautiful Vivian Leigh bathing us in a large array of emotions via her heavenly face. Her beauty is striking. And the emotions that shine through that beauty make them all the more powerful. She walks the line of frailty trying to become strong with great grace. Taylor, who always seems to be aping that annoying Errol Flynn "what, me worry?" positivism, has found the perfect role here for his talents and dispositions. His optimism about his new fiancé', his instantaneous love, only serve to remind us just how beautiful Myra (Ms. Leigh) is. It underscores the miracle of the movie: if YOU were to randomly meet Vivian Leigh in a bomb shelter, wouldn't YOU fall in love with her? Those things do happen in life, and having them happen with Ms. Leigh makes them especially precious. Once you get swept up in the miracle, the movie sails away and takes you on a fine ride - until the crisis, and a good friend acting badly.The beginning, the ending, the lucky charm are all incredibly weak and annoying. But in the middle is a fine film and perhaps Ms. Leigh's greatest performance.

Made in the heyday of the studio system and movie stars, Waterloo Bridge is one of those films that once seen, will remain forever unforgettable. It features the upbeat Robert Taylor and the incandescent Vivien Leigh. Forget the outdated elements of the plot: surrender yourself to the luminous on-screen presence of Vivien Leigh, and you will not be able to take your eyes off her. That face goes through a gamut of emotions, particularly in the restaurant scene when she waits for Lady Cronin alone at her table, as she slowly turns her attention to the newspaper. Robert Taylor is no slouch here, too. He shines in the opening scene of the film, as he stands on the bridge. Both actors are outstanding, and there is a palpable chemistry between them. Virginia Field, Maria Ouspenskaya, C. Aubrey Smith, and Lucile Watson complement the two stars in one of the most romantic films of all time.