The Bridge on the River Kwai
| 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 Geoffrey Horne |
| 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 | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$3,000,000 (est) |
| IMDb profile | |
The Bridge on the River Kwai is an Academy Award-winning 1957 World War II war film based on the novel Le Pont de la Rivière Kwaï by French writer Pierre Boulle. The film is fiction, 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.
In 1997, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry।
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 prisoners arrives, marching in defiantly whistling the Colonel Bogey March, under the leadership of Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness).
The camp commander, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), addresses them, informing them of his rules. He insists that all prisoners, regardless of rank, will work on the construction of a bridge over the Kwai River as part of a railroad that will link all of Burma.
The next morning, when Saito orders everyone to work, Nicholson commands his officers to stand fast. He points out that the Geneva Conventions state that captured officers are exempt from manual labour. Saito is infuriated and backhands Nicholson in the face, but the latter refuses to back down, even after Saito has a machine gun set up. Saito is dissuaded from shooting by Major Clipton (James Donald), the medical officer; instead, the Japanese commander leaves Nicholson and his officers standing in the intense heat. As the day wears on, one of them collapses, but Nicholson and the rest are still standing defiantly at attention when the men return from the day's work. After Colonel Nicholson is beaten in Saito's quarters, the British officers are sent into a punishment cage and Nicholson into his own 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 in part to many "accidents" arranged by the British.
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 great 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. Saito for his part breaks down in tears in private.
Having recovered from his ordeal physically, but mentally broken, Nicholson sets off on an inspection and is shocked to find disorganization, shirking and outright sabotage on the construction site. He decides to build a better bridge than the Japanese. He orders Captain Reeves (Peter Williams) and Major Hughes (John Boxer) to come up with designs for a proper bridge, despite its military value to the Japanese. He wants to show up his captors and keep his men busy.
Meanwhile, three men, one of them Shears, attempt to escape. 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 (at the time, Ceylon). While recuperating, he dallies with a lovely nurse.
Major Warden (Jack Hawkins), a member of the British Special Forces, asks to speak with him. He informs Shears that he is leading a small group of commandos on a mission to destroy the Kwai bridge. He asks Shears to volunteer, since he knows the area. Shears refuses, finally admitting that he is not Commander Shears at all, but a Navy enlisted man. Shears recounts that he and a Navy Commander survived the sinking of their ship, but the Commander was subsequently 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 then had no choice but to continue the impersonation. Warden tells him that they already knew this. To avoid bad publicity, the U.S. Navy is only too happy to loan him to the British. Warden offers him a deal: in exchange for his services, he will be given the "simulated rank" of major on the mission and avoid being charged. Shears reluctantly "volunteers".
Back in the camp, Clipton watches in sheer bewilderment as Nicholson maniacally drives his men 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. As the Japanese engineers had chosen a poor site, the original bridge is abandoned and construction of a whole new bridge is commenced 400 yards downriver.
Meanwhile, the commandos parachute in. One dies due to a bad landing. The rest make their way to the river, assisted by native women porters and their village chief, Yai (M.R.B. Chakrabandhu). 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 important officials is scheduled to be the first to use the bridge; Warden wants to blow them both up.
As dawn approaches, Nicholson proudly walks up and down his bridge. As he makes a final inspection, the water level in the river has receded overnight and exposes the wiring connected to the explosives, as the train can be heard approaching. Nicholson and Saito hurry downstream, pulling up and following the wire towards Joyce. 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; Yai is killed. 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!?!" Mortally wounded, 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, utters one of the most memorable last lines in the history of motion pictures, "Madness! ... Madness!".
Historical accuracy
The story is based on the building in 1943 of one of the railway bridges over the Mae Klong - renamed Khwae Yai in the 1960s - 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 collaborator who felt obliged to work with the Japanese. 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.
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.
Production
Screenplay
The screenwriters, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, were on the Hollywood blacklist and could only work on the film in secret. The official credit was given to Pierre Boulle (who did not speak English), and the resulting Oscar was awarded to him. Only in 1984 did the Academy rectify the situation by retroactively awarding the Oscar to Foreman and Wilson, posthumously in both cases. 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]
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 United States. 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 S.W.R.D. 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]
Music
A memorable feature of the movie is the tune that is whistled by the POWs — the Colonel Bogey March when they enter the camp. The piece was originally written in 1914 by Kenneth Alford. It was accompanied by a counter melody composed by Malcolm Arnold (known as The River Kwai March) played by the off-screen orchestra taking over from the whistlers. Mitch Miller had a hit with a recording of both marches. Arnold 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 a specific symbol of defiance to British movie-goers as it 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, British audience members of the time knew them well enough to mentally sing along when the tune was heard.
The soundtrack of the film is largely diegetic; background music is not widely used. In many tense, dramatic scenes, only the sounds of nature are used. An example of this is when commandos Warden and Joyce hunt a fleeing Japanese soldier through the jungle, desperate to prevent him from alerting other troops.
Cast
- William Holden as US Navy Commander Shears. Shears was written with Cary Grant in mind, but he was unavailable.
- 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 was 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]
- Jack Hawkins as Major Warden, a British commando officer.
- Sessue Hayakawa as Colonel Saito, the prison camp commander.
- James Donald as Major Clipton, the medical officer.
- Geoffrey Horne as Lieutenant Joyce.
- André Morell as Colonel Green.
- Peter Williams as Captain Reeves.
- 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.
Awards
Academy Awards
| Award | Person | |
| Best Director | David Lean | |
| Best Actor | Alec Guinness | |
| Best Cinematography | Jack Hildyard | |
| Best Picture | Sam Spiegel | |
| Best Film Editing | Peter Taylor | |
| Best Music | Malcolm Arnold | |
| Best Adapted Screenplay | Carl Foreman* Michael Wilson* Pierre Boulle | |
| Nominated: | ||
| Best Supporting Actor | Sessue Hayakawa | |
(* - Honored posthumously in 1984, see above.)
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)
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)
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Around the World in Eighty Days | Academy Award for Best Picture 1957 | Succeeded by Gigi |
| Preceded by Gervaise | BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source 1958 | Succeeded by Room at the Top |
| Preceded by Reach for the Sky | BAFTA Award for Best British Film 1958 | Succeeded by Room at the Top |
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.
Mistakes
There are some prints of the film in which Alec Guinness' name is misspelled "Guiness" in the credits.
Culture references
| Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
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"; he whistles the Colonel Bogey March just prior to detonating the explosive. It was also revealed that Higgins was part of the Burma Campaign.
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, alongside Doctor Zhivago and Brief Encounter.
The film is mentioned in the video-game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater when Para-medic asks Naked Snake if he ever saw the film.
The comedy team of Wayne and Shuster did an episode of their TV show titled "Kwai Me a River" in which an officer in the British Dental Corps is captured in a Japanese POW camp along with his men, and forced to build the commander a (dental) 'bridge on the river Kwai'.
Stephen Colbert uses a clip from the movie to transition whenever he brings up the "Colbert/Branson Interview Trainwreck" on The Colbert Report.
The popular Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) references Kwai in the bridge battle sequence, specifically with the Union Army Captain (Aldo Giuffrè) being more afraid of breaking military law than being killed in battle (after detailing his plan to destroy the bridge which is the center of the battle, he then says "But what I lack is the guts". He is later killed leading his men in combat).
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