Bridges in film

Bridges are frequently featured in films for their impressive appearance, identifiability, and opportunity for chase scenes or spectacular collapses. They can also convey a metaphor of connectedness or distance, depending on the sequence of movement.

Real bridges
This is a list of actual bridges that have a noticeable role as themselves in films, sorted by chronological building order.
*Brooklyn Bridge (New York City 1883) - In , the bridge is attacked by Zilla, otherwise called the American Godzilla, destroying the towers and train tracks. In the 1998 film Deep Impact, a tsunami caused by a comet crashing into the Atlantic Ocean destroyed the bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge is featured at the end of Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. The bridge is featured in the 2004 film Team America: World Police. The bridge played an important part in a scene in . The movie Virginal Young Blondes (2004) also takes place on the Brooklyn Bridge, when the two main characters get stoned together in the movie's last scene. In 1978 the bridge was transformed into part of the "Yellow Brick Road" for the film version of The Wiz.
*San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (San Francisco-Oakland 1936) - In the movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman can be seen driving on the top level of the bridge, supposedly eastwards toward Berkeley. However, the upper-level traffic goes west to the San Francisco side, not Berkeley and the East Bay. A spectacular view of the bridge from one of San Francisco's hilly streets may be seen in the movie Vertigo. Unfortunately, this exact view can no longer be seen due to high-rise development on the south side of Market Street. The bridge also made a prominent appearance in several other films including The Thin Man, Born to Kill, The End of the World, George of the Jungle, Made in America, Basic Instinct, Hulk, and Sudden Impact.
*Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco-Marin 1937) - In Bicentennial Man a moving set in San Francisco, the bridge is glimpsed several times across the future, including a view in which it has a double deck structure. In Boys and Girls, Freddie Prinze Jr. plays an engineering student at Cal who admires and comments on the structural achievement of the bridge to co-star Claire Forlani while attempting to untangle their budding romantic relationship. The Bridge is a documentary film that chronicles the stories of a score of individuals who committed suicide at The Golden Gate Bridge in 2004. In The Core, deadly microwaves from the sun break through the magnetic field boiling the water, melting the suspension cables, and cutting though the road sending hundreds of traffic congested motorists and pedestrians into the boiling bay. In Dirty Harry, the villain "Scorpio" hijacks a school bus full of children and forces the driver to head North across the bridge. In Herbie Rides Again, Herbie is chased by Hawk's lawyers along the main cables of the bridge. In Hulk, Hulk jumps off the bridge to save a fighter jet. In Interview with the Vampire, following his interview with Louis, Daniel is attacked by Lestat while driving over the bridge. In The Joy of Life, film-maker Jenni Olson offers a history of suicide and the Golden Gate Bridge and features gorgeously shot images of the bridge as well as a personal reflection on the production history of Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo (1958). In It Came from Beneath the Sea, a giant octopus terrorizes San Francisco. Although some stock footage was shot using the real bridge, the scenes where the octopus attempts to destroy the bridge by wrapping itself around the towers were accomplished by using highly-detailed miniatures and stop-motion animation created by special effects master Ray Harryhausen. In the 1959 film, On the Beach, the bridge is seen intact after a nuclear war but eerily devoid of traffic. A persistent urban legend maintains guards were hired to block traffic for a minute to get the shot. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones' plane flies over the newly-built bridge. Although many regard this as anachronistic because of the film's 1936 setting, the bridge's suspension towers and much of the roadway was actually completed by late 1936. In The Rock, the bridge can be regularly seen in the background as film was shot near Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. Near the end of the film, fighter jets fly under the bridge en route to Alcatraz. In The Golden Gate Murders (aka Specter on the Bridge), a madman attacks people on the bridge, throwing them into the water, making it look like suicides. In So I Married an Axe Murderer, a newly married couple travel over the bridge en route to their honeymoon. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Starfleet Headquarters is located to the immediate southeast of the bridge's south approach-way; in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the Klingon bird-of-prey used by the crew of the Starship Enterprise barely avoids hitting the Golden Gate Bridge on its way to crashing into the Bay; chambers of the Federation Council are located in the Marin Headlands, immediately west of the bridge's north approach-way. In Superman, Superman saves a school bus about to fall from the bridge. In Alfred Hitchcock's film, Vertigo, the bridge is a prominent backdrop in a scene set just east (bayside) of Fort Point. In the James Bond film, A View to a Kill, Bond and Max Zorin fight on top of one of the bridge's towers. In X-Men: The Last Stand, the bridge is moved by Magneto to access Alcatraz, and is later shown in the process of being rebuilt in the film's final scene. (Coincidentally, this movie was released on May 26, 2006 - one day short of the 69th anniversary of the bridge's opening.) In The Love Bug, Herbie attempts to commit "suicide" by trying to drive over the barrier.
*Maas bridges: used in the movie A Bridge Too Far as places to attack, defend, hold, and for combat scenes.

Fictional bridges
*Three films have been based on the Thornton Wilder novel, including:
** The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929)
** The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944)
** The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2004)

*The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) uses the construction of a bridge as the backdrop for the brutality inflicted by Japanese captors on their mostly British prisoners of war.

*The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1953) uses a bombing raid on heavily-defendend bridges during the Korean War as backdrop to the story.

*For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

*Bataan (1943). A motley band of American soldiers is assigned to prevent the Japanese from rebuilding a key bridge as long as possible in the retreat to Bataan.

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