Why do holiday movies look and sound so similar?
James Bond (Roger Moore) and Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts) end up climbing San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge to battle it out with villain Zorin (Christopher Walken) in the climatic ending of 'A View to a Kill.'
In a set piece scene, the "Good" (Clint Eastwood) and the "Ugly" (Eli Wallach) dynamite a bridge separating Union and Confederate forces. The resulting explosion sends the heavy structure flying into the air in bits.
Richard Attenborough's wartime blockbuster recreates the failed 1944 Operation Market Garden where Allied forces attempted to capture and secure several bridges over the Rhine River in the Netherlands.
The historic covered wood bridges of Madison County in Iowa are the stars of this romantic drama, along with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.
Set during the Cold War, the film tells the real-life story of the exchange by Soviet officials of captured US Air Force pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolf Abel, a convicted KGB spy held by the United States. The name of the film refers to the Glienicke Bridge, which connects Potsdam with Berlin, where the prisoner exchange took place. Tom Hanks stars as the go-between, James B. Donovan.
The landmark Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama is used to recreate the events of March 7, 1965, when police attacked civil rights movement demonstrators with horses, billy clubs, and tear gas as they were attempting to march to the state capital, Montgomery. David Oyelowo portrays Martin Luther King Jr.
Harrison Ford's eponymous hero has to cross a rope bridge above a river to flee the bad guys. But the only way to escape their clutches is to cut the bridge, leaving him and his companions hanging on for their lives.
This gentle coming-of-age drama has plenty of memorable scenes. But a standout moment is when Gordie and Vern (Wil Wheaton and Jerry O'Connell) are nearly run over by a locomotive while walking across a train bridge. River Phoenix and Kiefer Sutherland also star in the movie.
The dramatic conclusion (warning: spoiler) to 'The Mothman Prophecies' sees Richard Gere's character imploring motorists to get off the Silver Bridge at Point Pleasant in West Virginia before it collapses. The supernatural-horror mystery is based on real events.
This computer-animated science fiction comedy film is voiced by numerous stars. The confrontation at San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge between Ginormica (Reese Witherspoon) and Gallaxar (Rainn Wilson) is pure magic, and great fun.
Stop motion animation special effects genius Ray Harryhausen created a giant octopus for this 1950's B movie classic. At one point, the marauding mollusk wraps its tentacles around the Golden Gate Bridge as it attacks San Francisco.
A colossal sea monster emerges from under a bridge in Sydney Harbor to attack the city's landmark opera house in Guillermo del Toro's entertaining science fiction movie 'Pacific Rim.'
Sarah Jessica Parker is the Lucy in question in this romantic comedy, who decides to form a death pact with Joe (Eric Schaeffer): if they do not both find true love by the time Lucy turns 30, then they will both jump off the Brooklyn Bridge! Pretty dramatic, wouldn't you say?
Alfred Hitchcock directed this taught British thriller, which stars Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. On the run and handcuffed, the desperate pair make a decision to jump off a bridge to escape members of a mysterious spy ring. Gripping stuff!
Inspired by real events, a teenager named Billy Joe McAllister (Robby Benson) throws himself off the Tallahatchie Bridge in Choctaw Ridge, Mississippi. Country music star Bobbie Gentry explained the background to the story earlier in her 1967 hit 'Ode to Billy Joe.'
A gritty noir that met with critical acclaim, 'The Naked City' features an edge-of-seat scene that takes place on New York's Williamsburg Bridge.
Considered one of the best British crime thrillers ever made, this violent and bleak story takes place in and around Newcastle upon Tyne. In a key scene, Carter (Michael Caine) arranges to meet Margaret (Dorothy White) on the city's High Level Bridge.
Pictured: Kathleen Quinlan and Kurt Russell in the final confrontation scene from the film 'Breakdown,' which takes place on a bridge along the Golden State Highway in California.
Laurel, Hardy, and pianos never got on well together. Remember 'The Music Box' (1932)? In 'Swiss Miss,' the comedy duo are at it again, this time trying to move a composer's treasured piano along a rope bridge to cross a deep ravine. Guess what happens!
In French known as 'Le Salaire de la Peur,' this celebrated thriller directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot and starring Yves Montand features a nail-biting scene where a truck loaded with jerrycans of nitroglycerin wavers on a vast, unstable suspension bridge.
Oddball (Donald Sutherland) is scanning a bridge through binoculars. "It's still up," he says. The structure is then bombed by an enemy plane. "No it ain't," he sighs. It's just another light-hearted moment in this war film, which also stars Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, and Don Rickles.
A tragic look at the price effected by the defense of bridges is shown in the German anti-war film 'Die Brucke' ('The Bridge'). Based on an actual event, it tells the story of a group of seven 16-year-old boys given the task of defending a useless bridge from the advancing enemy.
Adapted from the Hemingway novel, 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' is set during the Spanish Civil War and stars Gary Cooper, who's on a desperate mission to blow up a strategically important bridge to protect Republican forces.
The second of three 1960s films starring Michael Caine as the character Harry Palmer, 'Funeral in Berlin' is real cloak and dagger stuff. It contains a scene in which a bridge connecting East to West Berlin is crossed by a hearse—a high-ranking Communist official is being smuggled into the West as a "corpse."
Released during the height of the disco era and starring John Travolta as Anthony "Tony" Manero, 'Saturday Night Fever' features a nighttime scene on the Verrazzano–Narrows Bridge during which one of Tony's friends falls to his death.
Known in English as 'The Lovers on the Bridge,' this French drama stars Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant as two Paris vagrants who meet and fall in love on the city's famous Pont Neuf, Paris's oldest bridge, while it's closed for repairs.
A beloved Hollywood musical, 'On the Town' took full advantage of several New York City landmarks including the Brooklyn Bridge, where Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin find their dancing feet.
Swedish actress Britt Ekland tries to stop Totò, real name Antonio de Curtis, from climbing over the parapet of a bridge in a truly realistic scene from the movie which translates into English as 'The Commandant', an Italian comedy-drama directed by Paolo Heusch.
Sylvester Stallone and Janine Turner walking on a very shaky-looking wooden footbridge in a tense scene from this action-adventure movie set in the Rocky Mountains.
See also: The world's most remarkable bridges.
Perhaps the definitive "bridge movie," David Lean's 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' epic war film is based on the real-life hardships and brutality suffered by Allied prisoners of war at the hands of their Japanese captors during the building of the notorious Burma-Siam railway during the Second World War.
Some of cinema's most memorable scenes have been set on or near bridges. Occasionally, a bridge itself is the subject on which a movie is based. In fact, bridges have helped span a whole new world of entertainment.
Click on these celluloid connections and take a walk across some memorable movie bridge moments.
During the last months of the Second World War, the American 9th Armored Division approached Remagen in Germany and captured the intact Ludendorff Bridge. The film focuses on the heroism and human cost in gaining a bridgehead across the Rhine before the Allies' final advance into Germany.
Memorable movie bridge moments
Scenes on bridges to remember
MOVIES Cinema
Some of cinema's most memorable scenes have been set on or near bridges. Occasionally, a bridge itself is the subject on which a movie is based. In fact, bridges have helped span a whole new world of entertainment.
Click on these celluloid connections and take a walk across some memorable movie bridge moments.