Across the Bridge
Directed by Ken Annakin
Written by Guy Elmes and Dennis Freeman; story by Graham Greene
1957/UK
The Rank Organization
First viewing/Netflix
[writing in 1990] “I have somehow in the last years lost all my interest in films and I don’t think I have seen one for the last nearly ten years.” — Graham Greene
Rod Steiger pulls off a masterful, restrained performance as a corrupt German businessman.
Financier Carl Schaffner (Steiger) has lived in England for several years and is now visiting New York. While there, he learns that auditors will soon discover his swindle of $3 million from investors back in England. He figures that if he can get to Mexico before that happens he can lawyer up and escape extradition for years. The fraud proceeds are already safely stashed away. He has no visa for Mexico but plans to get in by bribing border officials. He takes the train so as not to be spotted on any airline passenger list. But before the train has travelled half way to Mexico, headlines are screaming about his crime.
In the first of many, many coincidences in the plot, Schaffner meets a man, Paul Scharff, who is practically his double and has a Mexican passport. Scharff likes a drink and he passes out at the end of a drinking session with Schaffner. Schaffner begins plotting to assume Scharff’s identity. This will prove to be his undoing. The plot is loaded with surprises and I don’t want to spoil them. With Bernard Lee as a Scotland Yard inspector.
Rod Steiger can be brilliant or the epitome of ham. Here he is marvelous in a role that requires an accent and moves from being unsympathetic to utterly pathetic. At first, I was frustrated with all the plot twists and coincidences because they didn’t seem to go anywhere. The ending was really satisfying though and I forgave everything.
Stills set to excerpts from the score
