Originally, she did not intend to play the character of Mrs. Bridge due to the difference in age, but by the late 1980s, when developing the project proved difficult, that was no longer the case.

[6] Estimated at $7.5 million, with $500,000 immediately earmarked on interest payments for loans, it was considered a very modest budget, but it also granted Merchant and Ivory the freedom to make the film as they wished.

[6] With the exception of a scene in Paris and another that took advantage of an Ottawa snowfall, the film was shot entirely in Kansas City, Missouri, on the same streets that Connell would have traveled as a child and teenager.

For example, when filming the law office of Mr. Bridge over a single morning, the furniture and Newman's makeup and clothes were changed every hour, as the scenes jumped through spring 1932, autumn 1938, winter 1945, and summer 1938.

Merchant borrowed bridge tables from a local society woman and a desk used by the founder of Hallmark from his son, who was the head of the company at the time.

"[8] Jonathan Rosenbaum of The Chicago Reader wrote, "I'm not much of a James Ivory fan, but this 1990 adaptation of Evan S. Connell's novels deserves to be seen and cherished for at least a couple of reasons: first for Joanne Woodward's exquisitely multilayered and nuanced performance, and second for screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's retention of much of the episodic, short-chapter form of the books.

It's true that she and Ivory have toned down many of the darker aspects, but as [The Village Voice] critic Georgia Brown has suggested, Woodward's humanization of her character actually improves on the original.

"[9] Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised the film, calling it "a vigorous, witty, satiric attempt to give dramatic shape to two aggressively anti-dramatic prose works".

He also commended Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward for "the most adventurous, most stringent performances of their careers", observing that "there is a reserve, humor and desperation in their characterizations that enrich the very self-conscious flatness of the narrative terrain around them".