The Bridge on the River Kwai (film)
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 a work of fiction but borrows the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942-43 for historical 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.
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
Cast
William
Holden - Cmdr. Shears
Jack Hawkins - Maj. Warden
Alec
Guinness - Col. Nicholson
Sessue Hayakawa - Col. Saito
James Donald
- Maj. Clipton
Geoffrey Horne - Lt. Joyce
André Morell - Col.
Green (as Andre Morell)
Peter Williams - Capt. Reeves
John Boxer - Maj.
Hughes
Percy Herbert - Pvt. Grogan
Harold Goodwin - Pvt. Baker, Sick
List Volunteer
Ann Sears - Nurse at Siamese hospital
Heihachiro Okawa
- Capt. Kanematsu (as Henry Okawa)
Keiichiro Katsumoto - Lt. Miura
M.R.B.
Chakrabandhu - Yai (as M.R.B. Chakrabandhu {Col. Broome})
Vilaiwan Seeboonreaung
- Siamese girl
Ngamta Suphaphongs - Siamese girl
Javanart Punynchoti
- Siamese girl
Kannikar Dowklee - Siamese girl
Plot
Two
prisoners of war are burying a corpse in the graveyard of a Japanese World War
II prison camp in southern Burma. One, American Navy Commander Shears (William
Holden), routinely bribes 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 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.
Shears recuperates after his escape.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.
Nicholson
beside a plaque commemorating the completion of the bridge.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 The Big Trees (1952). 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 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 largely fictitious film plot 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 portrayed in the film are mostly fictional. Historically the conditions were much worse. The real senior Allied officer at the bridge was Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. Some consider the film to be an insulting parody of Toosey. 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 from 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.
Some of the characters in the film have the names of real people who were involved in the Burma Railway. Neither their roles nor their characters appear to be portrayed accurately. For example, historically a Sergeant-Major Saito was second in command at the camp. In the film a colonel of the same name is camp commandant.
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.
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