‘Six Bridges to Cross’ or — A Big Little Epic?

Depression era Boston and juvenile delinquent Jerry Florea suffers a terrible injury after robbing a local grocery store — he has his balls blown off by a rookie cop (I’m not making this up). Guilt-ridden by the fact Jerry will never have children of his own the cop, Edward Gallagher (George Nader), forms a paternal bond with the young rascal and as Jerry grows up to be Tony Curtis Jerry repays Gallagher’s kindness with helpful pieces of inside information and tip-offs regarding the criminal underworld.

Obviously Gallagher would love nothing more than for Jerry to go on the straight and narrow but considering Jerry’s life of crime has advantages for them both, as well as society’s decks being stacked against Jerry, that isn’t looking too likely. It starts looking even less likely when Jerry gets a job across the street from Brinks where $2.5 million is being held.

What’s surprising about ‘Six Bridges to Cross’ (1955) is how deceptively ambitious it is with this tight, lean film covering several decades in the lives of both men, lives where the line between criminal and cop become tangled and blurred. So Gallagher will frequently lecture Jerry about his habitual law-breaking only for Jerry to point out that it’s the information he’s been passing Gallagher over the years that’s allowed him to rise up the ranks and buy his wife (Julie Adams) that lovely big house. Isn’t that type of financial gain as corrupt as receiving stolen goods or backhanders?

These lines are further clouded by an implicit homoeroticism in the relationship’s dynamic (the women barely feature at all here). There’s an eye-popping moment when Jerry realises that Gallagher has him banged to rights and as he prepares for his inevitable screwing he turns his back to his friend, presents his posterior to him and coquettishly smiles over his shoulder “That’s some squeeze you’ve got figured out.” But Curtis was always good at this style of coy submissiveness, something he’d refine two years later with his Sidney Falco.

The cinematography was by legendary William H. Daniels so the film has that on location, vérité energy he brought to classics such as ‘The Naked City’ (1948) and this loose and natural feel is enhanced by director Joseph Pevney’s handling of the extras and background characters, all of whom possess a believable attitude of underplayed realism. Pevney also pulls off a few nice visual flourishes, a great example being Jerry’s gangs use of surgical stockings as masks which gives them the surrealist look of Magritte’s ‘The Lovers’.

The film isn’t a masterpiece and contains several unconvincing plot beats as well as a number of issues (Nader is undeniably inert) but as a crime saga charting a hoodlum’s life from childhood to middle-age it almost works better, and is certainly more entertaining, than Leone’s ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984).

If you’re in the mood for a meaty gangster epic but want it crammed into ninety minutes then this is most satisfying.