MovieChat Forums > Die Brücke (1961) Discussion > Where is the film meant to take place?

Where is the film meant to take place?

posted 14 years ago by Juhani_Jaervinen
6 replies | jump to latest

Obviously Germany, but does it ever mention a specific town? I remember they send the boys to Bremen for barracks and training. Would it just be a small town outside Bremen then?

[–] Akzidenz_Grotesk 14 years ago

Since they're fighting the Americans rather than the Russians, I guess it would be somewhere west of Bremen.

My votes:http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=9422378

[–] smarques5 14 years ago

But Bremen is way west of the Elba river. They soviets never occupied it.
Anyway I suppose the film takes place somewhere in Rhineland-Palatinate, near the border with Belgium and Luxembourg.

[–] cribe 14 years ago

They never mentioned in the movie where they are or where they where going to. No city name, no area name. It is just a city as hundred others at this time and a story like thousand others.
The movie was filmed in the city named cham in Bavaria.
The american tanks were made of wood because there was no american tank available at this time. You can see the truck tyres underneath the tanks when they appear in the movie.
The smallest boy called Sigi who died by the plane attack was 14 by making this movie.
Many others in the movie became famous Actors and Comedians in Germany later.

[–] sascha-17 14 years ago

I don't remember Bremen being mentioned, and didn't know that they filmed it in Cham (located near the east border of Bavaria btw) while I watched it for the first time. But from the look of the town it's pretty easy to tell that the location they used has to be somewhere in the south. For example: The church is a dead giveaway.

Historically, it's pretty tough to tell where the town is supposed to be. By the 27th of April (the date given in the movie for the "battle"), the U.S. had already made contact with the Soviets: This happened on the 25th in Saxony (part of today's eastern part of Germany). So placing the town on the western border of Germany doesn't really work. Those areas had been long overrun by the U.S. during the timeframe of the movie.

[–] benth04 12 years ago

The film made on basis of a novel of the same name, by an author of pseudonym Manfred Gregor - see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Dorfmeister
who had the hard luck to be a kid solider in a batlle like this. Gregor lived in Bad Tölz - a small town on the Isar in the absolute South of Bavaria (the site of a 'famous' SS Officer's Training School)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_T%C3%B6lz
It could be that town or one of several hundred others in today's Baden-Württemberg or Bavaria.
In one TV series about the final days of the war Gregor has told about the incident, which was so insignificant that it never reached any war diary (as the final text in the film says). But I think he tells the name of the town they 'defended'.

[–] persen1 10 years ago

I think the movie is suppose to take place in the town Tailfingen, who today is a part of Albstadt, located in Baden-Württemberg.
What i base this on, is that the author of the novel Gregor Dorfmeister was born and raised in that town.