I remember this when I was a kid...I read it when I was in high school.
Dame Daphne Du Maurier, the widow of Lt.-General Browning, complained that her husband had been "made the fall guy" for the failure of "Operation Market Garden" by this film. Browning and the unseen Field Marshal Montgomery, who are shown as responsible for the failure, had both died by the time the film opened in 1977 (unlike the other commanders involved).
A familiar story element in the World War II genre war film is the blowing-up of a bridge. This is especially common in films with the word "bridge" in the title such as The Bridge at Remagen and The Bridge on the River Kwai. Ironically, this film A Bridge Too Far which features a quite a number of bridges in it, only the Son bridge is depicted as destroyed. Just as Col. Stout ('Elliot Gould') approaches the crossing, the bridge is blown up by German artillery (but the actual blowing-up of the bridge is not seen in the movie). The Germans also attempt to blow up the Waal Bridge at Nijmegen, but are unsuccessful when demolition charges fail to explode. In the case of this film, "A Bridge Too Far" refers to the over-ambitions of the Allied strategy in Operation Market Garden. In order for the campaign to be successful, the Allies needed to secure several enemy bridges in a very short period of time. They were tragically unsuccessful.
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