Total dreck and arguably the worst film to walk off with a Best Picture Oscar. This still-born chronicle of British life as experienced through the eyes of the wealthy Marryot family and their servants, The Bridges, spanning from 1899 through 1933 is instantly forgettable and tiresome, and leaves nary a cliché unplumbed. It plays like a Cliff Notes version of Upstairs Downstairs with none of the depth, sophistication, insight or wit from that later series. The screenplay, inexplicably with Noel Coward as one of the writers, is more concerned with integrating events from the time period into the mix than fleshing out the people with whom the viewer should ostensibly identify, with most of the events flying past at such a speed that it is nearly impossible to have much of a reaction to them. When family members are lost, it is difficult to much care as we have barely been introduced to them before they are sacrificed for "the cause". Most of the scenes are stagy moments that seem lifted directly from a play to film brimming over with stilted dialogue and wooden performances. As the heads of the elegant Marryot family, Diana Wynyard and, especially, Clive Brook, are the quintessential caricatures of the stiff-upper-lip British couple, who feel that no sacrifice is too great for the Empire. The final moments when they look back at the loss of their entire family and decide that it was all worth it so long at Merry Old England can carry on into the future is surely one of the most laughably delivered and flat conclusions of any acclaimed film.
