The Bridge on the River Kwai

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The Bridge on the River Kwai
Original movie poster
Directed by	David Lean
Produced by	Sam Spiegel
Written by	Pierre Boulle (novel) Carl Foreman & Michael Wilson (screenplay)
Starring	Alec Guinness Sessue Hayakawa William Holden Jack Hawkins
Music by	Malcolm Arnold
Cinematography	Jack Hildyard
Editing by	Peter Taylor
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	October 2, 1957 December 18, 1957 (NYC premiere)
Running time	161 min.
Country	UK/USA
Language	English
Budget	US$3,000,000 (est)
IMDb profile

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 World War II war film based on the novel Le Pont de la Rivière Kwaï by French writer Pierre Boulle. The film is fictive, but uses the historical construction of the Burma Railway in 1942-43 as its setting. It was directed by David Lean and stars Alec Guinness, Sessue Hayakawa, Jack Hawkins and William Holden.

[edit] Synopsis

Two prisoners of war are burying a corpse in the graveyard of a Japanese World War II prison camp in southern Burma. One of them, American Navy Commander Shears (William Holden), routinely bribes the guards to ensure he gets sick duty, which allows him to avoid hard labour. A large contingent of British soldiers arrives. Though beaten and having been ordered to surrender, the men march in proudly, under the leadership of Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), whistling the Colonel Bogey March.

The camp commander, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), addresses them, informing them of his rules. He insists that all prisoners, without regard to rank, work on the construction of a bridge over the Kwai River that will link all of Burma. Shears informs Nicholson that things are run a bit differently in this camp, but Nicholson brushes him off, saying that Saito seems a reasonable man.

The next day, everyone is ordered to go to work, but Nicholson commands his officers to stand fast. Saito is infuriated by this act of defiance and backhands Nicholson in the face, but the latter refuses to back down, even after Saito threatens to have them machine-gunned. Saito is dissuaded by Major Clipton (James Donald), the medical officer; instead, the Japanese officer decides to leave Nicholson and his officers standing in the intense heat. As the day wears on, a few of them collapse, but Nicholson and the others are still standing at attention when the men return from work. Saito then orders the officers into a punishment cage and Nicholson into his own wooden box for solitary confinement.

When Clipton requests to be allowed to check the officers, Saito agrees on the condition that Clipton persuade Nicholson to change his mind. Nicholson, however, refuses to budge, saying "if we give in now there'll be no end to it." In the meantime, construction falls far behind schedule, due to many "accidents", a form of passive protest by the enlisted British workers.

Saito has a deadline; if he should fail to meet it, it would bring him great shame and oblige him to commit seppuku. So Saito reluctantly releases Nicholson, telling him that he has proclaimed an "amnesty" to commemorate the anniversary of Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War, using it as an excuse to exempt the officers from work. Upon their release, Nicholson and his officers proudly walk through a jubilant reception.

Meanwhile, three men attempt to escape, including Shears. The other two are killed; Shears is shot, falls into the river and is swept downstream. After many days in the jungle, he stumbles into a Siamese village, whose residents help him get back to his side. Shears is shipped to a British hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka. While recuperating in the relative luxury of the officers' ward, he dallies with a lovely nurse.

Major Warden (Jack Hawkins), a member of the British Special Forces, asks to speak with him, supposedly about the prison camp. He informs Shears that he is leading a small group of elite commandos on a mission to destroy the bridge. He asks Shears to volunteer, since he would be the best guide. Shears refuses, finally admitting that he's not Commander Shears. He is an enlisted man who served with Shears. They both survived the sinking of their ship, but the commander was killed by a Japanese patrol. "Shears" switched dog tags with the dead officer, hoping to get preferential treatment in captivity. It didn't work, but he continued the impersonation through and after his rescue. Then Warden informs him that they already knew this. To avoid bad publicity, the US Navy was only too happy to loan him to the British. Knowing that he will face punishment for his acts, Shears reluctantly gives in. In exchange for his services, he will be given the "simulated rank" of major on the mission and avoid being charged.

Back at the prison camp, Nicholson takes over the bridge project with maniacal enthusiasm; he tolerates no slackers, not even the sick. When reminded that it is the duty of POW's to impede the enemy, he replies that it is not a bridge that he wants to build, but a great monument that might last hundreds of years that the prisoners can be proud of. He also realizes that the men need something to keep their spirits up.

As the Japanese engineers had chosen a poor site, the original bridge is abandoned and construction of a new bridge is commenced 400 yards downriver. Nicholson is determined to complete the project by the deadline: ironically, he even volunteers his junior officers to assist with the physical labor - provided that the Japanese officers are willing to pitch in as well.

Meanwhile, the commandos parachute in and make their way to the river, assisted by native women porters. As the camp celebrates the completion of the bridge on time, Shears and Lieutenant Joyce (Geoffrey Horne) wire explosives to it under cover of darkness. The next day, a Japanese train full of soldiers and VIPs is scheduled to be the first to use the bridge; Warden wants to blow them both up at the same time.

As dawn approaches, Nicholson proudly walks up and down the bridge. As he makes a final inspection, the receding water exposes the wire connected to the explosives as the train can be heard approaching. He and Saito hurry downstream, pulling up the wire. When they get too close, Joyce breaks cover and stabs Saito to death. Nicholson yells for help and then tries to stop the commando (who cannot bring himself to kill Nicholson) from getting to the detonator. A firefight erupts. When Joyce is hit, Shears swims across the river to finish the job, but is killed just before he reaches the colonel. Recognizing Shears, Nicholson suddenly comes to his senses and exclaims "What have I done!?!" as fragments from a mortar round mortally wound him. Whether by intent or happenstance, he stumbles over to the plunger and falls on it, just in time to blow up the bridge and send the train hurtling into the river. (A full-sized bridge and a real train were used, probably the first time this had been done without model shots since the silent film era. Buster Keaton's The General included an almost identical scene.)

His mission accomplished, Warden hobbles back into the jungle, aided by his porters. Clipton, who has witnessed the carnage from a point high on the opposite bank, utters one of the most memorable last lines in the history of motion pictures, "Madness!!! Madness!!!"

[edit] Historical accuracy

The bridge over the Kwai River in June 2004. The round truss spans are the originals; the angular replacements were supplied by the Japanese as war reparations.

The story is based on the building in 1943 of one of the railway bridges over the Kwai Yai at a place called Tamarkan, five kilometres from the Thai town of Kanchanaburi. This was part of a project to link existing Thai and Burmese railway lines to create a route from Bangkok, Thailand to Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) to support the Japanese occupation of Burma. About a hundred thousand conscripted Asian labourers and 12,000 prisoners of war died on the whole project.

Although the suffering caused by the building of the Burma Railway and its bridges is true, the incidents in the film are mostly fictional. The real senior Allied officer at the bridge was Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. Some consider the film to be an insulting parody of Toosey.^[1] On a BBC Timewatch programme, a former prisoner at the camp states that it is unlikely that a man like the fictional Nicholson could have risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel; and if he had, he would have been "quietly eliminated" by the other prisoners. Julie Summers, in her book The Colonel of Tamarkan, writes that Pierre Boulle, who had been a prisoner of war in Thailand, created the fictional Nicholson character as an amalgam of his memories of collaborating French officers.

Toosey was very different to Nicholson and was certainly not a semi-collaborator who felt obliged to work with the Japanese due to legal loopholes. Toosey in fact did much to delay the building of the bridge as much as possible. Whereas Nicholson disapproves of acts of sabotage and other deliberate attempts to delay progress, Toosey encouraged this: white ants were collected in large numbers to eat the wooden structures and the concrete was badly mixed. For more details see Philip Toosey's own entry.

The destruction of the bridge as depicted in the film is entirely fictional. In fact, two bridges were built: a temporary wooden bridge and a permanent steel and concrete bridge a few months later. Both bridges were used for two years until they were destroyed by Allied aerial bombing. The steel bridge was repaired and is still in use today.

[edit] Production

[edit] Screenplay

The screenwriters, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, were on the Hollywood blacklist and could only work secretly. The official credit was given to Pierre Boulle (who did not in fact speak English), and the resulting Oscar was awarded to him. Only in 1984 did the Academy rectify the situation by awarding the Oscar to Foreman and Wilson retroactively (and posthumously in both cases, although Foreman did live long enough to know that it was going to happen). At about the same time, a new release of the film finally gave them proper screen credit.

Reportedly, Sessue Hayakawa edited his copy of the script so that it only contained his own lines of dialogue; thus, he did not know that his character was to be killed off at the end of the film.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Filming

Many directors were considered for the project, among them John Ford, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, Fred Zinnemann, and Orson Welles. Producer Sam Spiegel later said that David Lean - then virtually unknown outside of the United Kingdom - was chosen "in absence of anyone else."^{[citation needed]}

Alec Guinness later said that he subconsciously based his walk while emerging from "the Oven" on that of his son Matthew when he was recovering from polio. He called his walk from the Oven to Saito's hut while being saluted by his men the "finest work I'd ever done".

Lean nearly drowned when he was swept away by a river current during a break from filming; Geoffrey Horne saved his life.^{[citation needed]}

The film was an international co-production between companies in the UK and the USA. It is set in Burma, but was filmed mostly near Kitulgala, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), with a few scenes shot in England.

The filming of the bridge explosion was to be done on March 10, 1957, in the presence of Solomon Bandaranaike, then Prime Minister of Ceylon, and a team of government dignitaries. However, cameraman Freddy Ford was unable to get out of the way of the explosion in time, and Lean had to stop filming. The train crashed into a generator on the other side of the bridge and was wrecked. It was repaired in time to be blown up the next morning, with Bandaranaike and his entourage present.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Music

A memorable feature of the movie is the tune that is whistled by the POWs — the Colonel Bogey March. This piece, originally written in 1914 by Kenneth Alford, was rearranged by Sir Malcolm Arnold and is now widely associated with the movie. The film won an academy award for its score.

• The Colonel Bogey March MIDI file

Besides serving as an example of British fortitude and dignity in the face of privation, the Colonel Bogey March suggested (whether or not it was intended by the screenwriters) a specific symbol of defiance to older movie-goers; many World War II veterans and some of their baby boomer children associated the melody with a vulgar verse about Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany and Japan's principal ally during the war. Although the mocking lyrics were not used in the film, audience members of the time knew them well enough to mentally sing along when the tune was heard.

[edit] Cast

• Alec Guinness as Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson. Contrary to popular belief, Guinness was Spiegel's first choice for the role (if not David Lean's), but he initially turned it down because he disliked the part and thought Boulle's novel to be anti-British. Charles Laughton, James Mason, Ralph Richardson, Noel Coward, and Anthony Quayle were all approached. Guinness changed his mind largely due to his friend Jack Hawkins, who had been cast as Major Warden.^{[citation needed]}
• Sessue Hayakawa as Colonel Saito.
• William Holden as Commander Shears. Shears was written with Cary Grant in mind, but he was unavailable.
• Jack Hawkins as Major Warden.
• James Donald as medic Major Clipton.
• Geoffrey Horne as Lieutenant Joyce.
• Peter Williams as Captain Reeves.
• André Morell as Colonel Green.
• John Boxer as Major Hughes.
• Percy Herbert as Private Grogan.
• Harold Goodwin as Private Baker.
• Ann Sears as the nurse at the hospital in Ceylon where Shears recuperates.
• Heihachiro Okawa as Captain Kanematsu.
• Keiichiro Katsumoto as Lieutenant Miura.
• M.R.B. Chakrabandhu as Yai.

[edit] Awards

[edit] Academy Awards

(* - Honored posthumously in 1984, see below.)

[edit] Other awards

• BAFTA Award for Best Film
• Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama
• New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Film
• Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (David Lean, Assistants: Gus Agosti & Ted Sturgis)
• Golden Globe Award for Best Director - Motion Picture (David Lean)
• New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Director (David Lean)
• Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama (Alec Guinness)
• New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Actor (Alec Guinness)

[edit] Other nominations

• Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture (Sessue Hayakawa)
• Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album, Dramatic Picture Score or Original Cast (Malcolm Arnold)

[edit] Recognition

• The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
• It was ranked #13 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies.
• It was ranked #14 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers.
• It was ranked #58 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills.

[edit] Mistakes

There are some prints of the film in which Alec Guinness' name is misspelled "Guiness" in the credits.

[edit] Culture references

In Magnum, P.I., the character of Higgins is seen building a model of the Bridge on the River Kwai out of matchsticks in the episode "Did You See the Sunrise?". Higgins knocks over the bridge in the episode "The Big Blow." Magnum blows up the bridge in the episode "Paper War."

The plot of the film was used as a set up for a mission in the game Commandos 2: Men of Courage

The film is mentioned in the 1989 Billy Joel song We Didn't Start the Fire.

It was also featured in a "Lean Night" of movies in the popular "Unforgivable" sketches on YouTube

[edit] See also

• JEATH War Museum

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

The Bridge on the River Kwai

• Account of bombing crew
• The Bridge on the River Kwai at the Internet Movie Database