The Brink

On 16 August 1976, the Brink was packed with jeeps. Parking meters and lampposts had been removed, as they did not exist thirty years ago. That morning, a jeep carrying actor Edward Fox drove smoothly from De Waag towards Golstraat. Fox played General Horrocks, and in the film the Brink stands in for the Belgian town of Leopoldsburg, where Horrocks explained to the ground troops in 1944 the immense operation that lay ahead of them.

Just under a week later, on Sunday 22 August 1976, the Brink was once again at the heart of the film. This time, the square stood in for Eindhoven, where the liberation took place on 18 September 1944. It was to be a massive scene, for which over a thousand extras had signed up.

On the day of filming, Attenborough was delighted with the huge turnout. It was great to see that all the hairstyles and clothing had been meticulously recreated to match those of 1944. But he felt it all needed to be much more exuberant. “You’ve just come through five years of war. You’re allowed to be a bit more enthusiastic!” he bellowed across the Brink.

The crowd cheered, louder and louder. The barrel organ ‘De Turk’ played ‘Oranje Boven’ non-stop. A sea of orange and red, white and blue moved past De Waag. A parade of armoured vehicles and jeeps was greeted with cheers and waving. Amidst all the orange euphoria, a dialogue ensued between Colonels Stout and Vandeleur, played by Elliott Gould and Michael Caine. Naturally, this scene had to be repeated over and over again. Nobody minded. Those who couldn’t take part stood behind the barriers at the Bergkwartier. The crowd watched as the past came alive on the Brink and new history was being written. For the film and for the city.

Luxor

The scene in which General Horrocks addresses his troops was filmed in the main auditorium of the former Luxor cinema. Standing before a huge map, Horrocks rouses the audience’s enthusiasm for the plan involving thousands of paratroopers, the bridges to be captured, and the chance to defeat the enemy once and for all in a swift operation. Not an easy operation, he admits. But an adventure he wouldn’t miss for the world. ‘A story you’ll tell your grandchildren.’

The European premiere of *A Bridge Too Far* took place in the same hall on 21 June 1977. It was an evening of mixed feelings. Following a festive farewell in October 1976, relations between Joseph Levine and Deventer had become severely strained. Of the previously agreed plan to hold the world premiere in Deventer, all that remained in the end was the first European screening, one day before the gala premiere in Amsterdam.

The exact reason for this outcome has never been entirely clear. Once he had left, Levine proved harder to reach than during his stay on the banks of the IJssel, even though there were still matters to be settled. For instance, the council had sent Levine a proposal for the theatre’s refurbishment, to prepare it for the promised world premiere.

Levine, for his part, finally announced after a long silence that Deventer had made enough money from him and claimed he had never agreed to any renovations for a world premiere for which Deventer would not be a suitable venue at all.

Church Lane

The corner of Kerksteeg served as the backdrop for a dramatic scene in which a resistance leader leaves his deceased son behind. Filming in Deventer always attracted a large crowd. Even whilst filming in Kerksteeg, the actors were closely watched by a curious crowd.

For the people of Deventer, it was and remains virtually impossible to view *A Bridge Too Far* in isolation from their town and its residents. Leny Stappers, who also appeared as an extra on the Brink, said: “When I saw the finished film, I couldn’t really get into the story, because I kept seeing familiar faces and familiar locations in Deventer. In the film, you see an old lady walking alone down a narrow street between houses that have been shot to pieces. This should have evoked a sense of pity in me, but all I could think was: hey, there’s Toet walking there.”

Bergschild & Rijkmanstraat

Monday 26 April 1976 was the day. At a quarter to ten in the morning, Richard Attenborough’s voice boomed through the Bergkwartier via a megaphone. It wasn’t by the bridge, but here that the first scene of A Bridge Too Far was filmed in Deventer.

Cameras and lights were set up. Male extras were dressed as German soldiers. Women were dressed as ‘Moffenmeiden’ or ‘Grijze Muis’ – terms used at the time to refer to German soldiers. The plan was to film a scene in which a procession of dejected Germans marches out of Arnhem.

In the script, it was a simple walk. Down Menstraat, across Bergschild and into Rijkmanstraat. In practice, however, it was a meticulous operation, as the extras discovered. Their day began as early as half past six in the morning in Twello, where they were dressed and, where necessary, had their hair cut. They had to rehearse the walk countless times.

Herman Remmelenkamp was one of the extras and says: “As a soldier, I just had to lie on the street. We were given instructions through a megaphone: ‘silence’, then a clapperboard and ‘action’. Those takes were repeated four or five times. No idea why. They didn’t explain why a scene had to be reshot. I think we were on set for about six hours on my first day of filming. It mainly consisted of waiting, waiting and doing it all over again. Food and drink were provided. I particularly remember the delicious pastries from a well-known Deventer bakery.”

By midday, the scene was finally in place and the film crew were able to continue with the interior shots at 48 Rijkmanstraat. In the finished film, this is the first scene in which the bridge can be seen, hidden in the distance. In the reflection of the window through which actor Erik van ’t Wout is looking, soldiers are trudging out of the city.

On this first day of filming, Deventer brilliantly took on the role of Arnhem.

Assenstraat

For the very last outdoor scenes filmed in Deventer, on 23 September 1976, all that was needed was a pile of rubble in and around several streets in the city centre, including Burseplein, Muggeplein and Assenstraat. Combined with the requisite smoke and flames, this was enough to make it look like the smouldering ruins of Arnhem in September ’44. The filming in Assenstraat, which incidentally was not used in the film, was one of the last in the city of Deventer, where by then nobody batted an eyelid at clouds of smoke and the sound of gunfire. The previously boundless tolerance for all the bells and whistles was beginning to wane somewhat. Curious onlookers who did turn up to watch the goings-on saw a sign hanging at the cordon in front of Assenstraat: “Ter Hoeven Verf open despite the film. Don’t let the tanks put you off.”

Levine had initially set his sights on Deventer because of the Wilhelmina Bridge, but he also made it clear fairly quickly that the then rather dilapidated parts of Deventer’s town centre had caught his interest. And sometimes the crew got lucky, too, when it came to finding dilapidation at a bargain price. When one of the set houses accidentally caught fire on 15 June 1976, one camera kept rolling just to be on the safe side whilst the fire was being put out. Beautiful shots of a sea of flames always come in handy in a war film. Something similar happened after a real fire at the former Burgers bicycle factory on Rozengaarderweg. The demolition company was asked to hold off on clearing the site for a while. First, the crew quickly drove a tank through the remains of a charred wall.

Polstraat

To reach the bridge, Anthony Hopkins (playing General John D. Frost) led his men through Polstraat. For his role, Anthony Hopkins was able to count on advice that was as unique as it was valuable. Frost, who as a lieutenant-colonel actually commanded the battalion of British paratroopers during the Battle of Arnhem, had travelled from his sheep farm in England to Deventer at the invitation of Attenborough and Levine.

He spent the night in a camper van on the Worp. He told the Deventer Dagblad that he felt it was important for A Bridge Too Far to be a realistic war film, so that the whole world could see how Operation Market Garden had unfolded. He had gladly accepted the invitation to act as an advisor. This allowed him to explain to Hopkins that he should run less fast, otherwise the enemy would think he was afraid of them. Alongside Frost, the real General Gavin, General Horrocks, Urquhart and Brigadier Vandeleur were also on hand to provide the film crew, including the actors, with military advice.

Thumb gate

With the bridge in the background, Duimpoort also provided a fitting backdrop for that same stealth scene. If you look closely, you can see a wall in the scene that isn’t actually there in reality. It was a set wall, complete with propaganda posters.

Bookings

With life-size set houses lining the bridge, Deventer was transformed into Arnhem in 1944. The houses were made of wood, so they could easily be shot to pieces during filming.

Four months before filming began on and around the bridge, British craftsmen started building the houses. The workshop used for this purpose was the warehouse of the former Davo fireplace factory, located in the industrial estate further down the road.

Hundreds of photographs hung on the walls of the warehouse, alongside a full-scale model. These served as examples to guide the specialist set builders in their work. The photographs mainly showed the façades of buildings in Deventer city centre. A suitable ornament was recreated in plaster based on the example and incorporated into the wooden set. The model showed the situation at the bridge, as it will soon appear. The bridge itself and the Arnhem houses on either side were modelled in great detail. Even the Panoramaflat had been recreated, so that it could be seen in advance how it would be kept out of the picture.

The big boss on the Davo sets was Terry Marsh, a highly experienced production designer who had previously won two Oscars for his work. Much of the material needed for the set houses came from businesses in Deventer. Verenigde Houthandel ’t Noord-Oosten B.V. did a roaring trade with Marsh. Timber merchant P. Stoffel also saw orders pouring in, followed almost immediately by payment. Levine thus kept his word to do business with Deventer’s local businesses.

In the second week of February, the enormous wooden panels were mounted on foundations on either side of the bridge, in Emmastraat and Bokkingshang. As the set houses rose up like giants along the bridge, the area around the bridge took on a completely different appearance. Deventer was transformed into a film set. In the period that followed, the houses attracted a great deal of attention. After two months of filming, the wooden set houses had been reduced to a wreck, exactly as Levine had intended for his war film.

Wilhelmina Bridge

The star of *A Bridge Too Far* was the Wilhelmina Bridge. To film all the action, during which the flames sometimes rose above the arch, the bridge was closed twice for a week. A leaflet entitled Deventer Filmstad was distributed door-to-door, listing the final dates on which the Wilhelmina Bridge would be closed: from 16 to 24 May and from 14 to 21 June.

During the first week the crew had the bridge at their disposal, intense battle scenes were filmed. In the finished film, these are the sequences in which Frost and his troops open fire on the German enemy, who respond with heavy anti-tank guns. Clouds of smoke billowed from the bridge, which had been painted black in certain places to make it look even more battered. Promises to add war sounds later in the studio appeared to have been forgotten. Spectators could hear the rattling of machine guns, explosions and screeching steel from far away on the Welle. At other times, it was quiet again, or only voices could be heard coming from the megaphone.

Meanwhile, everyday life tried to carry on as normal during a week without the bridge. Temporary traffic lights and numerous diversions created a traffic puzzle that only a dedicated working group could make sense of. On the water, ferries handled the heavy traffic. Pedestrians and cyclists crossed free of charge on the boats operated by Rederij Smeets. Buses, emergency services and slow-moving traffic made the crossing via a military ferry. As agreed, the cycle path on the bridge was open to cyclists and pedestrians between 5.00 pm and 8.30 am, who, in their everyday clothes, curiously crossed the IJssel past the grim remains of a war scene.

Following two weeks of filming, the spotlight was turned on the bridge one last time in August for a night-time shoot in which the bridge was set alight. In his book, Cornelius Ryan described how the paint on the Rhine Bridge caught fire during the fighting. This distinctive detail of the Battle of Arnhem was therefore essential to the film adaptation. Afterwards, Deventer got the bridge back. Apart from a few minor damages, it had emerged from the battle unscathed.

Deventer Town Hall (Grote Kerkhof 4)

On 21 June 1976, filming took place at the town hall, just a stone’s throw from the Wilhelmina Bridge. The very place where Levine had presented his film plans to the council less than a year earlier proved to be the perfect setting for the headquarters of the German general Bittrich, played by Maximilian Schell.

Lebuinus Church & Grey Silo

The scene in which the generals discuss Urquhart’s fate and look back on the failed operation whilst gazing out over the Netherlands was also filmed in Deventer. Contrary to what the final film scene might suggest, the gentlemen were not standing on a church tower (the Lebuinus Tower in the film). This shot featuring the actors was taken a mile away, on the Grijze silo in the Havenkwartier.

Outside the centre of Deventer, there are two other places worth visiting:

Zandweerd

Battle scenes were filmed in the Zandweerd area near Gerard Ter Borchplein and Zandweerdsweg. On 17 September 1944, after landing west of Arnhem, Major-General Urquhart lost radio contact with the other battalions. To keep track of their advance towards the Rhine bridge, he decided to enter Arnhem, where he became trapped in a residential area. Surrounded by Germans, Urquhart spent 36 hours in hiding in the loft of a terraced house.

It took two sunny July days in 1976 to re-enact these events in Deventer. The location for this was the Zandweerd neighbourhood. Leaning in doorways, behind crowd barriers and from behind their windows, local residents watched as Sean Connery took cover along Gerard Ter Borchplein and fared better than his sergeant, who fell to the ground with a bullet in his body on the small lawn in front of their house. A day later, the adjacent Zandweerdsweg shook as the German tank rattled through it.

Het Schol

(Wilpsedijk 10, Wilp) serves as Hotel Hartenstein in the film, the headquarters of the British airborne troops. When filming began in Deventer in 1976, the film crew did not yet have a suitable location in mind. The real Hotel Hartenstein in Oosterbeek was not an option, as it was in use as a hotel and wished to remain intact. Whilst the crew were searching for a villa which, like the set houses, could be transformed into a ruin, the local council directed them to Het Schol.

The similarities between Het Schol and Hotel Hartenstein were striking. In the weeks that followed, the building on Wilpsedijk underwent a major refurbishment. Large letters gleamed above the entrance: Restaurant Park-Hotel Hartenstein. A few months later, little remained of it. By the end of the film, Het Schol looks like a ruined, charred-black ruin.