The Bridge on the River Kwai Film Notes
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Original release poster
Directed by
David Lean
Produced by
Sam Spiegel
Screenplay by
Based on
Michael Wilson
Carl Foreman
The Bridge over the River Kwai by
Pierre Boulle
William Holden
Jack Hawkins
Starring
Alec Guinness
Sessue Hayakawa
James Donald
Geoffrey Horne
Music by
Malcolm Arnold
Cinematography
Jack Hildyard
Editing by
Peter Taylor
Studio
Horizon Pictures
Distributed by
Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)
2 October 1957
Running time
161 minutes
Country
United Kingdom
Language
English
Budget
$3 million (estimated)
Box office
$33.3 million (in U.S.)
The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British World War II film by David Lean based on The
Bridge over the River Kwai by French writer Pierre Boulle. The film is a work of fiction but
borrows the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–43 for its historical setting. It stars
William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Alec Guinness and Sessue Hayakawa. The movie was filmed in
Sri Lanka (credited as Ceylon, as it was known at the time). The bridge in the movie was located
near Kitulgala.
The film achieved near universal critical acclaim, winning seven Academy Awards, and 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.
Plot
After the surrender of Singapore in World War II, a unit of British soldiers is marched to a
Japanese prison camp in western Thailand. They are paraded before the camp commandant,
Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), who informs them of his rules; all prisoners, regardless of
rank, are to work on the construction of a bridge over the River Kwai to carry a new railway line
to invade Burma.
Their commander, Lt. Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), reminds Saito that the Geneva
Conventions exempt officers from manual labour; Saito slaps him hard across the face with his
copy of the conventions. At the following morning’s parade, Nicholson orders his officers to
remain behind when the enlisted men head off to work. Saito threatens to have them shot, but
Nicholson refuses to back down. When Major Clipton (James Donald), the British medical
officer, intervenes, Saito leaves the officers standing all day in the intense tropical heat. That
evening, the officers are placed in a punishment hut, while Nicholson is locked in ‘the oven’, an
iron box, without food or water.
Clipton attempts to secure Nicholson's release, but Nicholson refuses to compromise.
Meanwhile, the prisoners are working as little as possible and sabotaging whatever they can.
Saito is concerned because, should he fail to meet his deadline, he would be obliged to commit
seppuku (ritual suicide). Using the anniversary of Japan's great victory in the 1905 RussoJapanese War as an excuse to save face, he gives in, and Nicholson and his officers are released.
Nicholson conducts an inspection and is shocked by what he finds. Against the protests of some
of his officers, he orders Captain Reeves (Peter Williams) and Major Hughes (John Boxer) to
design and build a proper bridge, despite its military value to the Japanese, for the sake of his
men's morale. The Japanese engineers had chosen a poor site, so the original construction is
abandoned and a new bridge is begun 400 yards downstream.
Meanwhile, three prisoners attempt to escape. Two are shot dead, but United States Navy
Commander Shears (William Holden), gets away, although badly wounded. After many days,
Shears eventually stumbles into a village, whose people help him to escape by a boat.
Shears is enjoying his recovery at the Mount Lavinia Hospital at Ceylon (with a pretty British
nurse), when Major Warden (Jack Hawkins) asks him to volunteer for a commando mission to
destroy the bridge. Shears is horrified at the idea and reveals that he is not an officer at all. He
was an enlisted man on the cruiser USS Houston. He switched uniforms with the dead
Commander Shears after the sinking of their ship to get better treatment. Warden already knows
this and has had "Shears" reassigned to British duty. Faced with the prospect of being charged
with impersonating an officer, Shears has no choice but to volunteer; Warden gives him the
"simulated rank of major."
Meanwhile, Nicholson drives his men, even volunteering to have them work harder to complete
the bridge on time. For Nicholson, its completion will exemplify the ingenuity and hard work of
the British Army for generations. When he asks that their Japanese counterparts join in as well, a
resigned Saito replies that he has already given the order.
The commandos parachute in, although one is killed in a bad landing. The other three—Warden,
Shears, and Canadian Lieutenant Joyce (Geoffrey Horne)—reach the river with the assistance of
Siamese women porters and their village chief, Khun Yai. Warden is wounded in an encounter
with a Japanese patrol, and has to be carried on a litter. The trio reach the bridge in time and
plant explosives underwater under cover of darkness.
A train carrying soldiers and important dignitaries is scheduled to be the first to use the bridge
the following morning, so Warden plans to destroy both at the same time. However, by dawn the
water level has dropped, exposing the wire connecting the explosives to the detonator. Making a
final inspection, Nicholson spots the wire and brings it to Saito's attention to the consternation of
the commando team. As the train is heard approaching, Nicholson, with Saito in tow, hurries
down to the riverbank to investigate. Joyce, hiding with the detonator, breaks cover and stabs
Saito to death; Nicholson yells for help, while attempting to stop Joyce from reaching the
detonator. Shears and Warden yell for Joyce to kill Nicholson, but Joyce is killed by Japanese
fire. Shears then swims across the river to fulfill the mission, but is shot just before he reaches
Nicholson.
Recognising the dying Shears, Nicholson exclaims, "What have I done?" Warden fires his
mortar, mortally wounding Nicholson. The dazed colonel stumbles towards the detonator and
falls on it as he dies, just in time to blow up the bridge and send the train hurtling into the river
below.
As he witnesses the carnage, Clipton shakes his head uttering: "Madness...Madness."
Cast
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William Holden as US Navy Commander/Seaman Shears
Alec Guinness as Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson
Jack Hawkins as Major Warden
Sessue Hayakawa as Colonel Saito
James Donald as Major Clipton
Geoffrey Horne as Lieutenant Joyce
André Morell as Colonel Hornsby
Peter Williams II (actor)|Peter Williams]] as Captain Reeves
John Boxer as Major Hughes
Percy Herbert as Private Grogan
Harold Goodwin as Private Baker
Ann Sears as nurse
Historical parallels
The bridge over the River Kwai in June 2004. The round truss spans are the originals; the
angular replacements were supplied by the Japanese as war reparations.
The largely fictional film plot is loosely 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 Tha Ma
Kham, five kilometres from the Thai town of Kanchanaburi.
According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission:
"The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of
war, was a Japanese project driven by the need for improved communications to support the
large Japanese army in Burma. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war
died and were buried along the railway. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also died in the
course of the project, chiefly forced labour brought from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, or
conscripted in Siam (Thailand) and Burma. Two labour forces, one based in Siam and the other
in Burma worked from opposite ends of the line towards the centre."[1]
The incidents portrayed in the film are mostly fictional, and though it depicts bad conditions and
suffering caused by the building of the Burma Railway and its bridges, historically the conditions
were much worse than depicted.[2] The real senior Allied officer at the bridge was British
Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. Some consider the film to be an insulting parody of Toosey.[3]
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,
due to his collaboration 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.[3] He strongly denied the claim that the book was
anti-British, though many involved in the film itself (including Alec Guinness) felt otherwise.[4]
Toosey was very different from Nicholson and was certainly not a collaborator who felt obliged
to work with the Japanese. Toosey in fact did as much to delay the building of the bridge as
possible. Whereas Nicholson disapproves of acts of sabotage and other deliberate attempts to
delay progress, Toosey encouraged this: termites were collected in large numbers to eat the
wooden structures, and the concrete was badly mixed.[3][5]
Some of the characters in the film have the names of real people who were involved in the
Burma Railway. Their roles and characters, however, are fictionalized. For example, a SergeantMajor Risaburo Saito was in real life second in command at the camp. In the film, a Colonel
Saito is camp commandant. In reality, Risaburo Saito was respected by his prisoners for being
comparatively merciful and fair towards them; Toosey later defended him in his war crimes trial
after the war, and the two became friends.
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/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 two did not collaborate on the script; Wilson took
over after Lean was dissatisfied with Foreman's work. The official credit was given to Pierre
Boulle (who did not speak English), and the resulting Oscar for Best Screenplay (Adaptation)
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. Subsequent releases of
the film finally gave them proper screen credit.
The film was relatively faithful to the novel, with two major exceptions. Shears, who is a British
commando officer like Warden in the novel, became an American sailor who escapes from the
POW camp. Also, in the novel, the bridge is not destroyed: the train plummets into the river from
a secondary charge placed by Warden, but Nicholson (never realizing "what have I done?") does
not fall onto the plunger, and the bridge suffers only minor damage. Boulle nonetheless enjoyed
the film version though he disagreed with its climax.
Filming
A scene in the film, bridge at Kitulgala in Sri Lanka, before the explosion
A photo of Kitulgala in Sri Lanka (photo taken 2004), where the bridge was made for the film.
Many directors were considered for the project, among them John Ford, William Wyler, Howard
Hawks, Fred Zinnemann and Orson Welles.[citation needed]
The film was an international co-production between companies in Britain and the United States.
It is set in Thailand, but was filmed mostly near Kitulgala, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), with a few
scenes shot in England.
Lean clashed with his cast members on multiple occasions, particularly Alec Guinness and James
Donald, who thought the novel was anti-British. Lean had a lengthy row with Guinness over how
to play the role of Nicholson; Guinness wanted to play the part with a sense of humour and
sympathy, while Lean thought Nicholson should be "a bore." On another occasion, Lean and
Guinness argued over the scene where Nicholson reflects on his career in the army. Lean filmed
the scene from behind Guinness, and exploded in anger when Guinness asked him why he was
doing this. After Guinness was done with the scene, Lean said "Now you can all f--- off and go
home, you English actors. Thank God that I'm starting work tomorrow with an American actor
(William Holden)."[6]
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."[citation needed]
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 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]
According to the supplemental material in the Blu-ray digipak, a thousand tons of explosives
were used to blow up the bridge. This is highly unlikely, as the film shows roughly 50 kg of
plastique being used simply to knock down the bridge's supports.
According to Turner Classic Movies, the producers nearly suffered a catastrophe following the
filming of the bridge explosion. To ensure they captured the one-time event, multiple cameras
from several angels were used. Ordinarily, the film would have been taken by boat to London,
but due to the Suez crisis this was impossible; therefore the film was taken by air freight. When
the shipment failed to arrive in London, a worldwide search was undertaken. To the producers'
horror the film containers were found a week later on an airport tarmac in Cairo, sitting in the hot
Egyptian sun. Though it was not exposed to sunlight, the heat-sensitive color film stock should
have been hopelessly ruined; however, when processed the shots were perfect and appeared in
the film.
Music
A memorable feature of the film is the tune that is whistled by the POWs—the first strain of the
march "Colonel Bogey"—when they enter the camp.[7] The march was originally written in 1914
by Kenneth J. Alford, a pseudonym of British Bandmaster Frederick J. Ricketts. The Colonel
Bogey strain was accompanied by a counter-melody using the same chord progressions, then
continued with film composer Malcolm Arnold's own composition "The River Kwai March,"
played by the off-screen orchestra taking over from the whistlers, though Arnold's march was not
heard in completion on the soundtrack. Mitch Miller had a hit with a recording of both marches.
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 film-goers, as its
melody was used for the song "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball." Lean wanted to introduce
Nicholson and his soldiers into the camp singing this song, but Sam Spiegel thought it too
vulgar, and so whistling was substituted. However, the lyrics were, and continue to be, so well
known to the British public that they didn't need to be belaboured.
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.
Arnold won an Academy Award for the film's score.
Lean later used another Allford march, "The Voice of the Guns," in Lawrence of Arabia.
Box office performance
Variety reported that this film was the #1 moneymaker of 1958, with a US take of $18,000,000.[8]
The second highest moneymaker of 1958 was Peyton Place at $12,000,000; in third place was
Sayonara at $10,500,000.[8]
Awards
Academy Awards
The Bridge on the River Kwai won seven Oscars:
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Best Picture — Sam Spiegel
Best Director — David Lean
Best Actor — Alec Guinness
Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium — Michael Wilson,
Carl Foreman, Pierre Boulle
Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Film — Malcolm Arnold
Best Film Editing — Peter Taylor
Best Cinematography — Jack Hildyard
It was nominated for
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Best Actor in a Supporting Role — Sessue Hayakawa
BAFTA Awards
Winner of 3 BAFTA Awards
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Best British Film — David Lean, Sam Spiegel
Best Film from any Source — David Lean, Sam Spiegel
Best British Actor — Alec Guinness
Golden Globe Awards
Winner of 3 Golden Globes
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Best Motion Picture — Drama — David Lean, Sam Spiegel
Best Director — David Lean
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama — Alec Guinness
Recipient of one nomination
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Best Supporting Actor — Sessue Hayakawa
Other awards
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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)
New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Director (David Lean)
New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Actor (Alec Guinness)
Other nominations
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Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album, Dramatic Picture Score or Original Cast
(Malcolm Arnold)
Recognition
The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
British TV channel Channel 4 held a poll to find the 100 Greatest War Movies in 2005. The
Bridge on the River Kwai came in at #10, behind Black Hawk Down and in front of The Dam
Busters.
The British Film Institute placed The Bridge on the River Kwai as the eleventh greatest British
film.
American Film Institute recognition
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1998 — AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies — #13
2001 — AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills — #58
2005 — AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes
o "Madness. Madness" — Nominated
2006 — AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers — #14
2007 — AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) — #36
First telecast
The film was first telecast, uncut, by ABC-TV in color on the evening of September 25, 1966, as
a three hours-plus special on The ABC Sunday Night Movie. The telecast of the film lasted more
than three hours because of the commercial breaks. It was still highly unusual at that time for a
television network to show such a long film in one evening; most films of that length were still
generally split into two parts and shown over two evenings. But the unusual move paid off for
ABC—the telecast drew huge ratings.[9] On the evenings of January 28 and 29, 1973, ABC
telecast another David Lean color spectacular, Lawrence of Arabia, but that telecast was split
into two parts over two evenings.[10]
Restorations
On November 2, 2010, Columbia Pictures released a newly restored The Bridge on the River
Kwai for the first time on Blu-ray. According to Columbia Pictures, they followed an all-new 4K
digital restoration from the original negative with newly restored 5.1 audio.[11] The Original
Negative for the feature was scanned at 4k (roughly four times the amount of resolution in High
Definition), and the color correction and digital restoration were also completed at 4k. The
negative itself manifested many of the kinds of issues one would expect from a film of this
vintage: torn frames, imbedded emulsion dirt, scratches through every reel, color fading. Unique
to this film, in some ways, were other issues related to poorly made optical dissolves, the original
camera lens and a malfunctioning camera. These problems resulted in a number of anomalies
that were very difficult to correct, like a ghosting effect in many scenes that resembles color misregistration, and a tick-like effect with the image jumping or jerking side-to-side. These issues,
running throughout the film, were addressed to a lesser extent on various previous DVD releases
of the film and might not have been so obvious in standard definition.[12]
See also
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BFI Top 100 British films
List of historical drama films
List of historical drama films of Asia
To End All Wars (film)
Return from the River Kwai (1989 film)
References
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14.
^ Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Kanchanaburi War Cemetery
^ links for research, Allied POWs under the Japanese
^ a b c Summer, Julie (2005). The Colonel of Tamarkan. Simon & Schuster Ltd. ISBN 0-7432-6350-2.
^ Brownlow, Kevin (1996). David Lean: A Biography. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-145780. pp. 391 and 766n
^ Davies, Peter N. (1991). The Man Behind the Bridge. Continuum International Publishing Group.
ISBN 0-485-11402-X.
^ (Piers Paul Read, Alec Guinness, 293)
^ The Colonel Bogey March MIDI file
^ a b Steinberg, Cobbett (1980). Film Facts. New York: Facts on File, Inc.. p. 23. ISBN 0-87196-313-2.
When a film is released late in a calendar year (October to December), its income is reported in the
following year's compendium, unless the film made a particularly fast impact. Figures are domestic
earnings (United States and Canada) as reported each year in Variety (p. 17).
^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050212/trivia
^ http://www.tvobscurities.com/2010/05/nielsen-top-ten-january-29th-february-4th-1973/
^ http://bridgeontheriverkwaibd.com/
^ http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/columbiaclassics/in-production/
^ http://www.thegoonshow.net/facts.asp
^ "Wayne and Shuster Show, The Episode Guide (1954-1990) (series)". tvarchive.ca.
http://www.tvarchive.ca/database/18984/wayne_and_shuster_show,_the/episode_guide/. Retrieved 200711-03.