Have you seen Waterloo Bridge? Not the actual bridge in London, but the beautiful and profoundly sad black and white movie which has been known to reduce many a sentimental soul to tears.
The film begins with Colonel Roy Cronin (Robert Taylor), on his way to France to fight in WWII, stopping his cab on London’s Waterloo Bridge to reflect on the past, to a chance meeting in 1914 during an air raid with Myra Lester (Vivien Leigh), a beautiful ballet dancer. They seek shelter together and a whirlwind wartime romance follows, resulting in Roy asking Myra to marry him.
Before the ceremony can be performed, however, Roy is called to the front and Myra is fired for her impetuousness by her ballet mistress. When Myra’s friend Kitty sticks up for her, she is also fired. Unable to find work in another ballet or show, the two dancers soon find themselves broke and hungry. When Myra reads of Roy’s death in a newspaper she falls ill and lies close to death from grief. To earn money to cover her friend’s medical expenses, Kitty drifts into prostitution. When Myra recovers, she is touched by her friend’s sacrifice, and with no desire to live, she, too, becomes a prostitute.
One year later, Roy returns to London, and the first sight that he sees upon getting off the train is Myra, who has come to pick up soldiers. The only difference in her appearance is her glamorous dress and slightly darker lipstick, which she tries to discreetly wipe away. He believes that she has come to meet him, and knowing nothing of her life in the past year, takes her home to his family estate in Scotland. Although Myra tries to convince herself that they can be happy, she soon realizes that her past will ruin Roy’s life and, after confessing all to his mother, she runs away. Roy follows, despite Kitty’s revelations about Myra, but she kills herself by throwing herself in front of a truck on Waterloo Bridge.
As the movie draws to a close I’m a wreck, beyond repair, and have to go shakily to bed with a mug of warm milk and honey with the faint strains of Auld Lang Syne echoing in my ears.
I was startled to discover this week that in the original movie, made in 1931, the heroine was nothing more or less than a prostitute during World War I who falls in love with one of her clients, a young officer from an aristocratic family. After being warned by her lover’s mother that marriage isn’t an option, she ends her life by walking in the path of an enemy bomb. Hearing this, I realise I’ve been seduced by the movie-makers of the 1940’s, with their romantic notions, subtle manipulations and shadowy half truths, which soften and justify.
Was Myra simply a realist, or did she mistakenly give into despair? I like to believe that Roy would have continued to love Myra despite her past and her mistakes and that love would have conquered all. However, her despair consumed her and most of us who have felt despair can empathise with her plight.
Life Line Australia quotes that around seven people die each day from suicide in Australia alone, the same statistics that apply to those who die from breast cancer. This figure does not include the unsuccessful suicide attempts, which are believed to be ten times this figure.
The tendency to give into despair and lose hope is not confined to bittersweet love stories played out in black and white. I know I’ve felt it before and have felt incapable of reaching out for hope in a situation. Hopelessness is a black place, and options don’t exist. Lack of hope is often quoted as the main cause of suicide, along with a sense of lack of purpose and meaning.
When I lived in London I went alone one day to pay my respects to Waterloo Bridge. I was close to reaching my first anniversary of living in the UK and was contemplating returning to Australia. It was a rare sticky hot summer’s day in London. My forehead was sweaty, my shoulders sunburnt, and there were vibrant colours and laughter all around, in stark contrast to the gloom, mist, darkness, and coldness in the Waterloo Bridge of my imagination.
However, that day I did have a ‘Myra’ moment. I took an honest look at my life and allowed myself to feel the disappointment and loneliness. Although surrounded by good friends, travelling to amazing places, and constant partying, I felt empty. My heart was either shattered or numb from my messy romances, and alcohol, once the perfect accessory to any social event, was reaching into every area of my life with invisible fingers and taking control. If I were to walk under a truck, I wondered if anybody would weep for me.
God tapped me on the shoulder that day. It had been an adventure, but it was starting to get ugly. I had been running away, but I was getting lost in the process. Inside I felt so murky and fragmented – a jigsaw puzzle with many missing pieces. I was ashamed of who I was becoming. Yet the shoulder tap was not about judgment, it was a knowing smile, tinged with sadness, and open, accepting arms to fall into. It was about love, the very love I had been searching so desperately for. Later that day I phoned the airline and booked my flight home, content to cry over the movie, and to begin walking on a bridge toward hope.
He is the living Alchemist who can take the dregs from the slag-heaps of life – disappointment, frustration, sorrow, disease, death, economic loss, heartache – and transform the dregs into gold.
(Catherine Marshall from ‘Beyond Our Selves’)
