Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990)
(James Ivory, US 1990, 126 min., 35mm)
In the Country Club District of Kansas City, Missouri, the Bridge family must grapple with changing morals and values of the 1930s and 1940s. Mr. Bridge (Paul Newman) is a lawyer who resists his children’s rebellion against conservative values he holds dearly. Mrs. Bridge (Joanne Woodward) labors to maintain a rose-colored view of the world against in the face of her husband’s emotional distance and her children’s eagerness to adopt a world view more modern than her own. Mr. and Mrs. Bridge must not only attempt to not only maintain the relationship between their children, but also themselves. Mr. & Mrs. Bridge is Newman and Woodward’s ten10th film together. Newman and Woodward met in the early 1950s while working in New York City on a Broadway production of Picnic. By the mid- 1950s, both of their careers were in Hollywood. In 1957, Newman was cast opposite Woodward and Orson Welles in The Long, Hot Summer. By the time filming ended, Newman and Wood were discreetly living together. Once Newman’s divorce from his first wife was finalized, the pair married in January 1958. They remained together until Newman’s death in 2008.
Post-screening discussion with Audrey Johnson, curator of the “Hollywood Pairings” series