Waterloo Bridge
This is very obviously a ‘woman’s picture’. And why not? Women make up half the world. But there’s more to it being a woman’s picture than that.
Let’s start with the casting of Robert Taylor as the male lead, Roy Cronin. Taylor had been a hugely popular star during 1936-38, and had archetypal leading man looks for the women of the audience. In 1939 Taylor was displaced by either Errol Flynn or the return of James Cagney. Perhaps this film was seen as a chance to boost a flagging career before the youthful looks go. The choice is a serious miscalculation for this role. Just about every line he delivers in this film seems to hit the wrong register to my ear. His manner is just not British enough, there being too much Midwestern earnestness. To his credit, there are moments when his demeanour displays a genuine attraction to his co-star, but it is not reciprocated. People have described his performance as ‘restrained’, but I found it lacklustre.
By contrast the women actors fill their roles to perfection. Every single woman in this film is a better actor than her male counterpart, to such an extent that it is quite distracting. Vivien Leigh as Myra rightly dominates the film. Yet every time she stares lovingly at Cronin, it seems like Ms Leigh is not quite in the scene, perhaps thinking of someone else. (Olivier, no doubt, who could have been cast as Cronin, but was not.) It doesn’t stop with Ms Leigh. Her friend Kitty (Virginia Field, last seen by me in CHARLIE CHAN AT MONTE CARLO) and Cronin’s mother Lady Margaret (Lucile Watson) turn their characters into real individuals, with no help from the script at all. It’s all in gesture and the delivery of their lines. By contrast, The Duke (C. Aubrey Smith) is an archetype dredged out of Hollywood’s cupboard of ‘British gentry roles’ once again.
The story is quite a good one. Man and woman meet cute. But events carry them away from each other. Woman falls on hard times after losing hope. They reunite but there is a Serious Problem. Unfortunately, the dialogue in the film has a lot of trouble accommodating British idioms, so possibly it is not quite Taylor’s fault that his lines lack authenticity. Field does her best to sound working class, but keeps slipping back to her natural posh voice which destroys the effect. A for the story, D for the dialogue.
What really infuriated me about this film was the apparent complete ignorance of London geography on the part of the script-writer, and the very bizarre depiction of London in the set design. At the start of the film, Cronin leaves his barracks by car to start across the Channel to France in 1939. Any fool knows that the only troops regularly stationed in London are artillerists and members of Guards regiments. During the flashback sequence, Cronin appears to be a member of the Grenadier Guards, but in fact he is part of a made-up regiment, the ‘Rendleshire Fusiliers’. So, perhaps he is seconded to the War Office, in which case his car is departing Horse Guards. The driver implies a lengthy detour is needed to cross Waterloo Bridge. From Horse Guards to Waterloo Bridge by car is one of the most simple and direct journeys one could make. The Waterloo Bridge of 1939 looks more like the Brooklyn Bridge, despite the fact that the studio background very carefully depicts Somerset House. But what really sent me over the top was the fact that the bridge of the flashbacks would have been a perfectly acceptable re-imagination of Waterloo Bridge. Why did they change it?
I really could go on and on and on. I did while watching it. But you have the general idea.
What this film presents is an Americanised view of London in particular and Britain more generally. It is typical of the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’ in destroying and homogenising the outside world, turning it into imperialist caricatures that unfortunately still have some purchase on the American imagination some eighty years later. When Hollywood doesn’t do that, it just sticks something American in and pretends it is foreign – like Robert Taylor. It isn’t that we hate your freedoms, but rather that we hate your lack of respect. One might console oneself that arguably Hollywood was more dominant in film-making in the 1930s and the post-war decade than today. Nonetheless its treatment of the rest of the world back then foreshadowed the American bullying all countries have felt in this age of American Empire.
© 2026 Paul Brewer
Let’s start with the casting of Robert Taylor as the male lead, Roy Cronin. Taylor had been a hugely popular star during 1936-38, and had archetypal leading man looks for the women of the audience. In 1939 Taylor was displaced by either Errol Flynn or the return of James Cagney. Perhaps this film was seen as a chance to boost a flagging career before the youthful looks go. The choice is a serious miscalculation for this role. Just about every line he delivers in this film seems to hit the wrong register to my ear. His manner is just not British enough, there being too much Midwestern earnestness. To his credit, there are moments when his demeanour displays a genuine attraction to his co-star, but it is not reciprocated. People have described his performance as ‘restrained’, but I found it lacklustre.
By contrast the women actors fill their roles to perfection. Every single woman in this film is a better actor than her male counterpart, to such an extent that it is quite distracting. Vivien Leigh as Myra rightly dominates the film. Yet every time she stares lovingly at Cronin, it seems like Ms Leigh is not quite in the scene, perhaps thinking of someone else. (Olivier, no doubt, who could have been cast as Cronin, but was not.) It doesn’t stop with Ms Leigh. Her friend Kitty (Virginia Field, last seen by me in CHARLIE CHAN AT MONTE CARLO) and Cronin’s mother Lady Margaret (Lucile Watson) turn their characters into real individuals, with no help from the script at all. It’s all in gesture and the delivery of their lines. By contrast, The Duke (C. Aubrey Smith) is an archetype dredged out of Hollywood’s cupboard of ‘British gentry roles’ once again.
The story is quite a good one. Man and woman meet cute. But events carry them away from each other. Woman falls on hard times after losing hope. They reunite but there is a Serious Problem. Unfortunately, the dialogue in the film has a lot of trouble accommodating British idioms, so possibly it is not quite Taylor’s fault that his lines lack authenticity. Field does her best to sound working class, but keeps slipping back to her natural posh voice which destroys the effect. A for the story, D for the dialogue.
What really infuriated me about this film was the apparent complete ignorance of London geography on the part of the script-writer, and the very bizarre depiction of London in the set design. At the start of the film, Cronin leaves his barracks by car to start across the Channel to France in 1939. Any fool knows that the only troops regularly stationed in London are artillerists and members of Guards regiments. During the flashback sequence, Cronin appears to be a member of the Grenadier Guards, but in fact he is part of a made-up regiment, the ‘Rendleshire Fusiliers’. So, perhaps he is seconded to the War Office, in which case his car is departing Horse Guards. The driver implies a lengthy detour is needed to cross Waterloo Bridge. From Horse Guards to Waterloo Bridge by car is one of the most simple and direct journeys one could make. The Waterloo Bridge of 1939 looks more like the Brooklyn Bridge, despite the fact that the studio background very carefully depicts Somerset House. But what really sent me over the top was the fact that the bridge of the flashbacks would have been a perfectly acceptable re-imagination of Waterloo Bridge. Why did they change it?
I really could go on and on and on. I did while watching it. But you have the general idea.
What this film presents is an Americanised view of London in particular and Britain more generally. It is typical of the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’ in destroying and homogenising the outside world, turning it into imperialist caricatures that unfortunately still have some purchase on the American imagination some eighty years later. When Hollywood doesn’t do that, it just sticks something American in and pretends it is foreign – like Robert Taylor. It isn’t that we hate your freedoms, but rather that we hate your lack of respect. One might console oneself that arguably Hollywood was more dominant in film-making in the 1930s and the post-war decade than today. Nonetheless its treatment of the rest of the world back then foreshadowed the American bullying all countries have felt in this age of American Empire.
© 2026 Paul Brewer
Mini Review: For a film with undeniable strengths (all the women, and especially Vivien Leigh, and a solid story), its weaknesses (all the men, dialogue, the change to the bridge) are too much for me to rate it any higher.