An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (The Twilight Zone)

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The Twilight Zone original series Season five (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1963 – Summer 1964 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: In Praise of Pip Steel Nightmare at 20,000 Feet A Kind of a Stopwatch The Last Night of a Jockey Living Doll The Old Man in the Cave Uncle Simon Probe 7, Over and Out The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain Ninety Years Without Slumbering Ring-a-Ding Girl You Drive The Long Morrow The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross Number 12 Looks Just Like You Black Leather Jackets Night Call From Agnes—With Love Spur of the Moment An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Queen of the Nile What's in the Box The Masks I Am the Night—Color Me Black Sounds and Silences Caesar and Me The Jeopardy Room Stopover in a Quiet Town The Encounter Mr. Garrity and the Graves The Brain Center at Whipple's Come Wander With Me The Fear The Bewitchin' Pool

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.

Roger Jacquet in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”

Details

Episode number: 142
Season: 5
Production code: Produced as a short film independent of the Twilight Zone series
Original air date: February 28, 1964
Writer: Robert Enrico from the story of the same name by Ambrose Bierce, first published in the 1891 collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
Director: Robert Enrico
Producer: Marcel Ichac and Paul de Roubaix.
Music: Original score by Henri Lanoe

[edit] Cast

Peyton Farquhar (Confederate Spy): Roger Jacquet
Mrs. Farquhar: Anne Cornaly
Union Officer: Anker Larsen

[edit] Synopsis

The story is essentially that of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", a short story by Ambrose Bierce.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A Civil War civilian prisoner is about to be hanged from Owl Creek Bridge. As he is dropped, the rope breaks, and he swims away, the soldier's bullets missing him. After avoiding capture, the man arrives at his home. He sees his wife and child. He runs toward his wife, she runs toward him. Just as they are about to fall into each other's arm's, his head and neck suddenly jerks back, and we see him hanging from the bridge. His escape was only in his imagination.

[edit] Trivia

Produced in 1962 by a team of French film-makers, Twilight Zone’s producer William Froug saw it and decided to buy the rights to syndicate it on American television. The transaction cost Twilight Zone $10,000—significantly less than the average of $65,000 they expended on producing their own episodes. However, Froug’s purchase allowed for it to be aired only twice. Subsequently it is not included on Twilight Zone’s syndication package, however it is included on Image Entertainment's DVD box set of the original series.
Won first prize for best short subject at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.
Won the 1963 Academy Award for best short subject.
This episode's introduction is notable for Rod Serling breaking the fourth wall even more than usual, to explain how the film was shot overseas and later picked up to air as part of The Twilight Zone.
In the written short story, the protagonist feels a worsening pain in his neck as he escapes the hanging. When he makes it home, the pain worsens and he realizes that he was in fact hanged. He had been imagining the journey home in the short space between the moment in which he was pushed from the bridge and the point at which he died.