While Thornton Wilder is best known for his 1938 play, Our Town, he was by no means a one-hit wonder. Eleven years before Our Town, his novella (and only his second published work), The Bridge of San Luis Rey would release to wide acclaim and win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature the following year.
For those who aren’t familiar with the basic plot, it’s simply this: Five travelers on their way to Cuzco fall to their deaths while crossing an Incan rope bridge. A young Franciscan friar, Brother Juniper, witnesses the tragedy and makes it his mission to find out what the five travelers have in common. Is it a case of innocent souls simply dying prematurely, or was anyone reaping what they had sown? Brother Juniper decides to go on a fact-finding mission and spends the next six years putting all his findings in a book.
From there Wilder goes into quick, flavorful character sketches of his five victims. The first is Doña Maria, whose life has been both one of privilege and neglect. She has a stutter, she’s not the prettiest or nicest person, and her daughter tries to get away from her as quickly as she can by marrying a Spanish noble and moving to Spain. The Doña is so lonely that she asks a local orphanage to send her a girl to be her companion, and Pepita is the one. She’s a sweet, simple girl who ends up cluing the Doña to her flaws without even trying.
There’s also Esteban, who grew up in the convent with his twin brother, Manuel, and they’re so alike no one can tell them apart. Esteban is distraught when Manuel falls in love, has his heart broken, and finally falls ill and dies, after which Esteban struggles to find something to live for.
Then there’s Uncle Pio, who takes charge of his niece Camila Perichole’s son, Don Jaime, after his mother is disfigured by smallpox and refuses to let anyone see her face. Well, he’s not really Camila’s uncle, but more of her assistant, as Camila was an actress and very temperamental. However, Pio sticks by her, and figures taking care of Jaime is the ultimate service he can do for her. The characters are loosely based on a real-life actress named
It all leads up, of course, to the fateful journey across the bridge. And what conclusion does Brother Juniper draw? I’m not going to ruin anything, but the big takeaway is that no one is really forgotten as long as the people who loved them remember them.
Bridge‘s straightforward message and structure make it a natural for adaptation, and besides numerous stage versions, including an opera, it has been dramatized four times for the screen. Whether or not these filmed versions are accessible is another matter, however, so I haven’t seen all of them all the way through, although it’s not for lack of trying. Here we go…
1929
Produced at MGM, the 1929 version stars Lili Damita as Camila and Ernest Torrance as Uncle Pio and was part silent, part talkie. Cedric Gibbons was the film’s production designer and took home an Oscar, although some feel other movies were more deserving. Only the silent version of the movie survives and is preserved in the George Eastman House archives.
1944
Starring Lynn Bari as Michaela Villegas and Frances Lederer as Estaban and Manuel, this version goes into the romance between Pichole and Manuel and takes quite a few liberties with the original story, including a happier ending than Wilder probably had in mind. While it ended up getting bad reviews, this version is remarkable for being Nazimova’s next-to-last film appearance before her death; her Doña Maria is one of the highlights of the movie.
1958
Filmed for TV and sponsored by the DuPont Company, the 1958 movie aired on January 21st and is almost a one-to-one adaptation of Wilder’s original novel. The filming angles come across as pretty awkward sometimes, and it feels a little choppy despite most of the advertising being from DuPont, but there are some competent performances here. Judith Anderson plays the Marquesa de Montemayor opposite Sandra Whiteside as Pepita, Vivica Lindfors has a fine time chewing scenery as Camilla, with Hume Cronyn as her longsuffering mentor, Uncle Pio.
2004
This dismal adaptation sports a whopping 4% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which called it “lifeless,” despite what should have been a stellar cast. The Washington Post had plenty to say: “There’s DeNiro trying not to sound like a GoodFella as he plays a Peruvian archbishop. The same problem happens with Keitel, who should be banned from playing any character from Another Time. And there’s Byrne, looking unintentionally comical as he attempts to portray monklike humility with a Hendrix-size head of hair. Bates and F. Murray Abraham are the strongest players here.” Ouch.
Despite some missteps in its various adaptations, The Bridge of San Luis Rey still resonates, often coming to mind when human lives are lost. Tony Blair, for one, honored British victims of 9-11 by quoting this passage from Wilder’s text:
But soon we will die, and all memories of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love. The only survival, the only meaning.
September’s Substack recap is coming up tomorrow. As usual, thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1958) is available on DVD from Amazon, and is free to stream on Prime and Tubi. The 2004 version is available on DVD and Blu-ray, as is Thornton Wilder’s original novel.
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