The Bridge (1959) on Netflix
In 1945, as the war nears its end, seven boys of about sixteen from a small German town are recruited into the army. They are ordered to hold the village bridge.
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- Netflix4.5/5
- IMDb7.9/109,467 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
American forces are advancing on a small German town in 1945, and its schoolboys are excited that the fighting is coming closer. Klaus Hager pays no attention to his classmate Franziska. Walter Forst resents his father, the town's Nazi Party leader, who uses a Volkssturm meeting as cover to save himself. Jürgen Borchert, whose officer father was killed in action, wants to live up to him. The boys, all about sixteen, join a local army unit over their parents' objections, and their teacher Stern asks the commander to keep them out of the fighting. After one day in the barracks the unit is called out, and the boys are posted to defend the village bridge, which has no strategic value, with a veteran sergeant left to command them.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Bridge (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Die Brücke won its director Bernhard Wicki international attention, and the result was his taking part in co-directing the 1962 film The Longest Day.
- A line placed just before the end credits states that the real event behind the film happened on April 27, 1945, and was so unimportant it was never mentioned in any war communique.
- The film adapts Gregor Dorfmeister's 1958 novel, published under the pseudonym Manfred Gregor, and the story came from an actual event told in the personal report of a surviving veteran who had lived through something similar in his own youth in World War II.
