Whale's overall career reflects the stylistic ambitions and dramatic disappointments of an expressionist in the studio-controlled Hollywood of the thirties. -- Andrew Sarris
Although Whale is known today mostly for his horror films (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Old Dark House), which are effectively stylish, he also directed a number of other beautiful films of love and fatalism that are not so well known: The Kiss Before the Mirror, The Great Garrick, Showboat and Waterloo Bridge among them.
Waterloo Bridge is a pre-code film about a soldier on leave, Roy (played by Douglass Montgomery) who meets a woman, Myra (beautifully played by Mae Clark) on Waterloo Bridge during an air raid and falls in love with her. Myra is a chorus girl who has turned to prostitution to survive but she hates herself for it and won't accept financial help from Roy. Roy tricks Myra into meeting his family when they take a trip to the country and Myra confesses to Roy's mother before leaving immediately for London. Roy finds Myra again on the Waterloo Bridge just before leaving for the battlefield and they plan to marry when he returns; as Myra heads home on the bridge she is killed by a bomb.
Whale made this eloquent film on a low budget with a number of gritty sets that evoke London durning WWI, in which Whale had been a British Infantry officer. It reminds one of Douglas Sirk's A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) in its evocation of how brief love can be in turbulent times. Whale handles his small cast beautifully (which also includes Bette Davis as Roy's sister) with a script by Benn Levy and Tom Reed based on Robert Sherwood's play and cinematography by veteran Arthur Edeson.
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