ABSTRACT

In 1962 the short French film, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, was introduced to American audiences. Its popularity in the United States came, in part, from its debut on television as episodes of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In a brief twenty-eight minutes, we are exposed to a gamut of emotions as our minds enter the escapism of fantasy. Although the first few minutes of the film explain the hero’s fate of hanging, we are surprisingly vulnerable to the fantasy of his escape despite the fact that there is not a single clue in the film to suggest this possibility. This adaptation of a short story by the American Ambrose Bierce seems to symbolize, in part, our preoccupation with avoiding death even when it is inescapable and, ultimately, inevitable.