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The Bridge on the River Kwai

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The Bridge over the River Kwai taken in June 2004. The round shaped spans are original, the others have been replaced after demolition.
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The Bridge over the River Kwai taken in June 2004. The round shaped spans are original, the others have been replaced after demolition.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) was an Anglo-American war film based on the novel by Pierre Boulle. It was filmed mostly in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) near Kitulgala (close to a rest-house there today) with a few scenes shot in England.

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 16,000 prisoners of war died on the whole project.

The destruction of the bridge in the film was accomplished by blowing up a full-sized bridge as a real train drove over it. This may have been the first time such a scene had been attempted without model shots since the silent film era. (Buster Keaton's The General includes an almost identical scene.)

Contents

Historical accuracy

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. On the BBC Timewatch programme, a former prisoner at the camp said that it is unlikely that a man like the fictional Nicholson could have risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. If he had, he thought that he probably would have been "quietly eliminated" by the other prisoners.

Julie Summers, in her book The Colonel of Tamarkan, said 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.

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 using the AZON bomb. The steel bridge was repaired and is still in use today.

Primary cast

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 Robert Bolt
Michael Wilson
Pierre Boulle
Nominated:
Best Supporting Actor Sessue Hayakawa

Award wins:

Award nominations: The screenwriters, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, were on the Hollywood blacklist and could only work secretly. Pierre Boulle, who did not speak English, was given screen credit for adapting his own novel, and the Oscar was awarded to him. Only in 1984 did the Academy rectify the situation by awarding the Oscar to Foreman and Wilson retrospectively (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.

The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

It was ranked #14 at AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers.

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, is now widely associated with the movie, and even sometimes referred to as the "River Kwai March." The film won an academy award for its score.

Besides serving as an example of British fortitude and dignity in the face of privation, the "Colonel Bogey March" suggested (whether or not intended by the screenwriters) a specific symbol of defiance to movie-goers of the period: Many WW II veterans and their baby-boom 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 never heard in the film, audience members of the time knew them well enough to mentally sing along when the tune was heard.

See also

External links


Academy Award for Best Picture: Winners (1941–1960)
1941: How Green Was My Valley | 1942: Mrs. Miniver | 1943: Casablanca | 1944: Going My Way | 1945: The Lost Weekend | 1946: The Best Years of Our Lives | 1947: Gentleman's Agreement | 1948: Hamlet | 1949: All the King's Men | 1950: All About Eve | 1951: An American in Paris | 1952: The Greatest Show on Earth | 1953: From Here to Eternity | 1954: On the Waterfront | 1955: Marty | 1956: Around the World in Eighty Days | 1957: The Bridge on the River Kwai | 1958: Gigi | 1959: Ben-Hur | 1960: The Apartment

 

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