Retro Movie Review: THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN (1969), Free Comic Day In Stone Mountain

The battle for the last bridge over the Rhine in 1945 gets dramatized. Also I'm selling in Stone Mountain again.

(I’d originally planned on sending this out 4/12, but I’d sent out a lot of newsletters in later March and April and I figured I’d give people a break. In the meantime, welcome to the 17 subscribers from StellarFest 2025.)

When I was home sick as a kid, I remember renting some old-school war movies — Midway (1976), Anzio (1968) (check out my previous review), and The Battle of Britain (1969). The trailer compilation Drive-In Delirium acquainted me with a cool-looking 1969 World War II movie The Bridge at Remagen, so I figured I’d give it a shot. The fact it was on Tubi and I could watch it for free helped. :)

(This was one of the original posters for sale on a British website that’s since been sold.)

The Plot

On March 7th, 1945, only one remaining bridge across the Rhine River remains. The Americans want to capture it to secure entry into Germany and prevent the escape of the Germany Fifteenth Army, 75,000 strong. Meanwhile, the Germans suffer from divided counsels — Hitler wants the bridge immediately destroyed to block the Allies from entering Germany, while Major Paul Kreuger (Robert Vaughn), under orders from Colonel General von Brock (Peter van Eyck), wants it held long as possible to allow the Fifteenth Army to cross to safety.

The prolonged pursuit of the retreating Germans, however, is exhausting the American soldiers. Making things worse for one unit in particular is Major Barnes (Bradford Dillman), who keeps volunteering them for whatever his superiors come up with. Lieutenant Phil Hartman (George Segal), based on the real-life Karl H. Timmermann, is placed in command of a company after his captain gets himself killed, has to carry out Barnes’ orders. Accompanying Hartman is Sergeant Angelo (Ben Gazzara), based on the real-life Alexander A. Drabnik, who thinks everybody else is getting rich off the war and therefore looting dead Germans here and there isn’t a problem.

Will the Allies capture the bridge and trap the Germans, or will they escape? Only one way to find out…

The Good

*The movie is much livelier than Anzio. The filmmakers had the budget for action sequences and it shows. I liked the opening where an Allied tank force trades fire across the Rhine with the Germans when they try to rush the Oberkassel railway bridge. It makes for good watching while on the elliptical — seriously, the time passed really quickly — or while ironing clothes. There’s also a good sequence featuring American aircraft bombing Remagen. The battle scenes in general are exciting.

*The movie does a good job depicting the ruthlessness of higher-ups and how the men at the sharp end have to deal with it. Hitler is obsessed with the Allies not setting a single foot on German soil even if that means trapping tens of thousands of his own men on the wrong side of the Rhine. Most of the German side of the story involves middle-ranking officers having to find ways around that to save their comrades, with the consequences for disobedience extremely severe. More subtly on the Allied side, the leadership is running their men ragged trying to trap the Fifteenth Army, with Major Barnes repeatedly volunteering his exhausted men to be in the vanguard. Under the circumstances it’s hard to blame them — those 75,000 men would be a real problem once they’ve recovered and are reequipped — but that doesn’t make the GIs’ job any less difficult.

*The movie accurately depicts the breakdown of the German army late in the war — ordinary German citizens are abandoning “the cause,” the soldiers are old men, kids, and walking-wounded, “defeatists” are getting shot, the SS are acting like a bunch of homicidal political commissars policing the regular troops, double-digit percentages have deserted, and even the Russian and Polish “volunteers” (whose original governments would not be pleased with them) are taking their chances elsewhere. The fact the “hiwis” are even mentioned at all is a point in the movie’s favor, as I don’t recall ever seeing them on-screen before.

(Netflix’s The Forgotten Battle depicts a young Dutch man fighting for the Nazis, but the Germans viewed the Dutch as fellow Germanics. Russians and Poles were officially “subhuman,” although the demands of the war meant greater and greater inclusion of Slavic auxiliaries into German service was necessary, racial ideology be damned. The movie depicts the resulting tensions, with German officers blaming “Poles” for things going wrong and suggesting they be shot.)

The Bad

*During the bombing of Remagen Bridge, it looks like they use WWII bomber footage to depict the aircraft. It’s grainier and clearly a different film stock than the rest of the movie filmed in the 1960s. Although given budgetary and SFX limitations at the time this might’ve been their only option if they wanted the planes on-screen, it does kind of stick out.

*When events take place at night, it’s hard to see what’s actually going on.

*The film’s climax is weirdly prolonged — to get literary, it’s not clear what the climax and what the denouement are. The whole ending is kind of dragged out.

*When the movie was made, Hitler, the Gestapo, the SS, etc. were considered the primary perpetrators of the Nazis’ crimes, with the Wehrmacht’s reputation still relatively clean. The regular German troops (as opposed to the black-coated SS) are depicted more sympathetically than one would realistically expect, especially after the purges and increasing Nazification of the regular army after the failure of Operation Valkyrie.

(Then again, most of the Wehrmacht’s war crimes were on the Eastern Front, so Western Front soldiers behaving decently, especially if these are older reservists who haven’t been serving long or simply don’t wish to misbehave in front of their own civilian population, makes a certain amount of sense.)

*There’s a French woman who propositions one of the Americans when she’s found in a German jail, is sent away, and is never seen again. To cite the almighty TVTropes, it’s a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. If her sequence was trimmed or cut entirely, the movie might well be PG.

The Verdict

Definitely worth seeing once, especially if it’s on one of the free streaming services. It’s on Tubi now, but I’m pretty sure it’s leaving soon, so get to it. 8.5 out of 10.

Charlie’s Collectible Shows Comic Con and Free Comic Book Day May 3-4

My next appearance will be the comic convention at Charlie’s Collectible Show in Stone Mountain May 3-4. Here’s the Facebook event, which discusses all the interesting people who’ll be there. Ben Bishop, one of the artists for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic The Last Ronin, will be attending, as will Lane Toran, who voiced Arnold in Hey, Arnold! and King Bob in Recess!

For those of you who’ve bought books from me at CCS events before, this is the first time I’ll be bringing The Walking Worm, the second book in the series that begins with The Thing in the Woods and continues with The Atlanta Incursion.

CCS is located at 6009 Memorial Drive Unit 14, Stone Mountain, GA, United States, Georgia 30083. The event will run from 10 AM on Saturday until 5 PM on Sunday. People who come can get free comic books.

Correction: Who’s Running StellarFest

In my previous newsletter, I wrote that StellarFest, the science fiction convention I was selling at last weekend, was run by the same people who run ConPossible. That was incorrect — it’s run by the same people who run CONJuration.

Attention to detail is an important thing, people. :(