The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

After settling his differences with a Japanese PoW camp commander, a British colonel co-operates to oversee his men's construction of a railway bridge for their captors - while oblivious to a plan by the Allies to destroy it.

Director:

David Lean

Writer:

Pierre Boulle (novel)

Stars:

William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins

Top 250 #103 | Won 7 Oscars. Another 24 wins & 5 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
William Holden	...	Shears
Alec Guinness	...	Colonel Nicholson
Jack Hawkins	...	Major Warden
Sessue Hayakawa	...	Colonel Saito
James Donald	...	Major Clipton
Geoffrey Horne	...	Lieutenant Joyce
André Morell	...	Colonel Green (as Andre Morell)
Peter Williams	...	Captain Reeves
John Boxer	...	Major Hughes
Percy Herbert	...	Grogan
Harold Goodwin	...	Baker
Ann Sears	...	Nurse
Heihachirô Ôkawa	...	Captain Kanematsu (as Henry Okawa)
Keiichirô Katsumoto	...	Lieutenant Miura (as Keiichiro Katsumoto, K. Katsumoto)
M.R.B. Chakrabandhu	...	Yai (as M.R.B. Chakrabandhu {Col. Broome})

Storyline

The film deals with the situation of British prisoners of war during World War II who are ordered to build a bridge to accommodate the Burma-Siam railway. Their instinct is to sabotage the bridge but, under the leadership of Colonel Nicholson, they are persuaded that the bridge should be constructed as a symbol of British morale, spirit and dignity in adverse circumstances. At first, the prisoners admire Nicholson when he bravely endures torture rather than compromise his principles for the benefit of the Japanese commandant Saito. He is an honorable but arrogant man, who is slowly revealed to be a deluded obsessive. He convinces himself that the bridge is a monument to British character, but actually is a monument to himself, and his insistence on its construction becomes a subtle form of collaboration with the enemy. Unknown to him, the Allies have sent a mission into the jungle, led by Warden and an American, Shears, to blow up the bridge.

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Plot Keywords:

bridge | japanese | jungle | river | construction | 

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Taglines:

It spans a whole new world of entertainment!

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Genres:

Adventure | Drama | War

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG for mild war violence

Details

Country:

UK USA

Language:

English Japanese Thai

Release Date:

14 December 1957 (USA)

Also Known As:

El puente sobre el río Kwai

Filming Locations:

Ambepussa, Sri Lanka

Box Office

Budget:

$3,000,000 (estimated)

Gross:

$27,200,000 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Columbia Pictures Corporation, Horizon Pictures (II)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

161 min

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) (RCA Sound Recording) Mono (35 mm prints) (RCA Sound Recording) 4-Track Stereo (Linear PCM)

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

In order to save money, Sam Spiegel actively looked into making the film in Yugoslavia. Naturally, a European location simply couldn't match the jungle setting the film required.

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Goofs

While the prisoners are all supposed to be sick and/or mistreated, in fact all look reasonably healthy and even tanned, and none in any kind of starved or emaciated state. In reality, as numerous photographs of actual prisoners of the Japanese show, all prisoners were uniformly emaciated, having lost an enormous amount of weight, starved, and with skeletal frames - conditions noticeably absent from any of the prisoners in the film. However, Saito was based on one of the more humane commandants who was acquitted of war crimes after war's end.

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Quotes

Commander Shears: You mean, you intend to uphold the letter of the law, no matter what it costs?
Colonel Nicholson: Without law, Commander, there is no civilization.
Commander Shears: That's just my point; here, there is no civilization.
Colonel Nicholson: Then we have the opportunity to introduce it.

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Crazy Credits

and introducing Geoffrey Horne

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Connections

Spoofed in Caveman (1981)

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Soundtracks

"Colonel Bogey March"
(1914) (uncredited)
Music by Kenneth Alford
Whistled by Alec Guinness with British Prisoners of War,
Accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold

User Reviews

KWAI -- NOW

Without belittling `Kwai,' it does seem, looking backwards at David Lean's career, to be a dress rehearsal for the more operatic, tightly controlled (and better written) `Lawrence of Arabia.' Alec Guiness's passionate, detailed performance as Colonel Nicholson, above all other factors, makes Kwai a still watchable and important experience. The screenplay, however, divides unevenly between those who must build the Bridge and those who must destroy it. Ebert, in his Great Movies article, correctly identifies William Holden's character in Kwai as undergoing an implausible transition from escaped POW to martini-guzzling playboy to selfless war hero. Verbatim: `Holden's character, up until the time their guerrilla mission begins, seems fabricated; he's unconvincing playing a shirker, and his heroism at the end seems more plausible.' That, I believe, is also Kwai's greatest weakness. Holden's relationship with Jack Hawkins (playing a parallel role to his General Allenby in Lawrence) seems pallid next to the mighty Guiness/Hayakawa standoff – in fact, it seems to be in another movie altogether. Also, Malcolm Arnold's score, which I loved when I was a kid, seems now jarringly inappropriate from start to finish. I am too much influenced, I suppose, by the rock and roll jungle menace of Coppola's `Apocalypse Now.' Lastly, it is many decades past 1957. Images of whistling soldiers, marching proudly after months of captivity, then putting on an `entertainment' more expected in the world of Rodgers and Hammerstein, may ring very false to today's viewer. But keep your eyes fastened tight to Alec Guiness. Kwai is the Everest of his career, and very few actors climb that high.