The Boy and the Bridge

Believing his widowed father, Pat Doyle, to have killed a man and that the police, having arrested him, will soon come to put him in a children's home, Tommy Doyle, a little cockney boy, runs away from his Bermondsey lodgings and seeks sanctuary within the confines of his dream castle, Tower Bridge. He makes his home in a room at the top of the north tower, coming and going without being seen and, bit by bit, furnishing it with all the ingenuity of a nine-year-old boy. Here, he makes one friend, a seagull he names Sammy. To the boy, the bridge is a living character with a personality of its own and the catwalks, staircases, engine rooms and bascule chambers are a magic world in which he is king. Although he takes care not to be seen, the maintenance staff become aware of a strange “presence” and their fears are confirmed when one night, Tommy saves the life of a suicidal woman who is about to jump off the bridge into the river. "DON'T", he yells down to her, "DON'T JUMP OFF MY BRIDGE!" The woman is so startled by this voice from somewhere up there, that she changes her mind, believing the voice to be of a supernatural origin. The next day, the newspapers follow up with the story that a protective spirit presides over the bridge. Searching ceaselessly for his son, his father is suddenly confronted by Tommy on the bridge. Following the boy to the top of the tower, he realises that the building has become father, mother and home to the boy, all the things that he should have been. He explains to Tommy that the bridge was built to bring people together and has brought them together too and, as Sammy flies away to join his own kind, Tommy agrees to come home.

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This first film, made by a young director who has worked with both Mike Todd and John Huston, is remarkable for its naiveté and its pretensions. Elaborately angled views of Tower Bridge, shots of a willing but not outstandingly talented small boy trotting up and down the bridge and the streets, occasional interludes with whimsical East End characters, are presented at a length that nothing in their content can justify; and the final reconciliation is as sentimentally moralistic as a Victorian nursery tale. Occasionally, notably in the child's resourceful attitude to his housekeeping problems, the picture stumbles into a mild charm. But childhood fantasy needs more than a few winning smiles and a pet seagull to keep it going."^[2]

British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "This tiny fable adds up to very weak entertainment, despite inventive photography, because it has virtually no plot development."^[3]