Masters in depicting the superficial machinations of England's repressed upper classes, director James Ivory and his partners, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and producer Ismail Merchant, take on the American middle class in Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. Paul Newman and wife Joanne Woodward play the eponymous main characters: a patriarch and wife of a well-to-do family, whose members are struggling to define themselves under their father's undefiable command and the changing times. With one daughter who wants to become an actress in New York, another who chooses the "wrong" kind of man to marry, and a son who quits school to join the Air Force during World War II, Mr. Bridge finds that his control over his family is slipping. Spanning the 1930s and '40s, the film presents nuances in how both the dramatic and the smaller moments are woven together. Weddings and arguments are no more important to capturing the essence of the Bridge family then are their moments of daily reverie.
A quiet film that succeeds in establishing its characters' intimacy, with themselves and each other, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge owes much of that success to Woodward. While Newman doesn't always seem comfortable as the stern ruler of the Bridge household, Woodward steals the film as the long-suffering woman whose identity is precariously built on her ascribed roles as mother and wife, taken for granted and often overlooked by the family she truly loves. --Natasha Senjanovic
Screen favorites Paul Newman (ROAD TO PERDITION) and Joanne Woodward (PHILADELPHIA) star as a well-off couple who raise their children in the comfort of country club society only to find their control over the family's fate slipping away. Daughter Ruth (Kyra Sedgwick -- BEHIND THE RED DOOR), leaves for the artistic bohemia of New York, more conventional Carolyn marries the "wrong sort" of man, and brother Douglas (Robert Sean Leonard -- DRIVEN) joins the army. In an empty house, the Bridges' marriage shifts. Mr. Bridge grows more rigid. But Mrs. Bridge becomes more vulnerable and searching as she begins to wonder if her husband really loves her. Directed by James Ivory (A ROOM WITH A VIEW, HOWARDS END), MR. & MRS. BRIDGE offers a wryly emotional portrait of a marriage as it rides the tumultuous changes of 1930s and '40s America.
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