Kino Lorber has just released a 4K UHD upgrade of Richard Attenborough’s 1977 film, A A Bridge Too Far.

A Bridge Too Far received 8 BAFTA nominations including Best Film and won 4. It did not have anywhere that kind of success with U.S. awards bodies, and in fact received no Oscar nominations at all.

The film is based on the book by Cornelius Ryan, author of The Longest Day which received 5 Oscar nominations including Best Picture and two wins for the 1962 film version.

A Bridge Too Far is in a way a sequel to The Longest Day as it deals with Operation Market Garden, which took place in September 1944, three months after the June 6, 1944 Normandy Beach allied invasion which was the subject of the earlier film.

In this film, the Allies attempt to capture several strategically important bridges in the Netherlands over the course of ten days in the hope of breaking the German lines.

Like The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far features an all-star cast most of whom are in a scene or two. Sean Connery and Dirk Bogarde have the biggest roles as they are on screen at the beginning and end of the film. Others in order of their appearance include Ryan O’Neal, Gene Hackman, Edward Fox, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, James Caan, Maximilian Schell, Hardy Kruger, Liv Ullmann, Elliot Gould, Ben Cross, Denholm Elliot, Laurence Olivier, and Robert Redford.

The all-star cast of The Longest Day, listed alphabetically, included Eddie Albert, Paul Anka, Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Richard Beymer, Bourvil, Richard Burton, Red Buttons. Sean Connery, Fabian, Mel Ferrer, Henry Fonda, Leo Genn, Jeffrey Hunter, Curt Jurgens, Roddy McDowall, Sal Mineo, Robert Mitchum, Kenneth More, Edmund O’Brien, Robert Ryan, Tommy Sands, George Segal, Rod Steiger, Richard Todd, Tom Tryon, Robert Wagner, Stuart Whitmean, and John Wayne.

Ryan wrote the screenplay for The Longest Day himself, but having died three years before A Bridge Too Far hit the screen, its screenplay was written by William Goldman the year after he supplied the screenplays for both All the President’s Men and Marathon Man.

Nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in place of A Bridge Too Far were Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl, Julia, Star Wars, and The Turning Point.

Nominated for Best Director instead of Attenborough were Woody Allen for Annie Hall, George Lucas for Star Wars, Herbert Ross for The Turning Point, Steven Spielberg for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Fred Zinnemann for Julia. Allen won.

Attenborough, previously overlooked for the World War I musical, Oh! What a Lovely War would later win for both Best Picture and Director for 1982’s Gandhi.

Nominated for Best Cinematography over A Bridge Too Far were Close encounters of the Third Kind, Islands in the StreamJulia, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and The Turning Point. Close Encounters of the Third Kind won.

The cinematographer on A Bridge Too Far was Geoffrey Unsworth who had already won an Oscar for Cabaret and nominations for Becket and Murder on the Orient Express would later win a second Oscar posthumously for Tess.