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The Bridge on the River Kwai

  • 2 October 1957 (1957-10-02) (London-premiere)
  • 11 October 1957 (1957-10-11) (United Kingdom)
  • 14 December 1957 (1957-12-14) (United States)

161 minutes

United Kingdom
United States[1]

English
Japanese

$2.8 million[2]
(equivalent to $29 million in 2022)

$30.6 million[2](equivalent to $319 million in 2022)

Boulle's novel and the film's screenplay are almost entirely fictional, but use the construction of the Burma Railway, in 1942–1943, as their historical setting.[3] The cast includes William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Sessue Hayakawa.


It was initially scripted by screenwriter Carl Foreman, who was later replaced by Michael Wilson. Both writers had to work in secret, as they were on the Hollywood blacklist and had fled to the UK in order to continue working. As a result, Boulle, who did not speak English, was credited and received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; many years later, Foreman and Wilson posthumously received the Academy Award.[4]


The Bridge on the River Kwai is now widely recognized as one of the greatest films ever made. It was the highest-grossing film of 1957 and received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. The film won seven Academy Awards (including Best Picture) at the 30th Academy Awards. In 1997, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress.[5][6] It has been included on the American Film Institute's list of best American films ever made.[7][8] In 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Bridge on the River Kwai the 11th greatest British film of the 20th century.

Plot[edit]

In 1943, a contingent of British prisoners of war, led by Colonel Nicholson, arrive at a Japanese prison camp in Thailand. U.S. Navy Commander Shears tells Nicholson that the camp conditions are horrific. Nicholson forbids any escape attempts because headquarters ordered them to surrender. Also, the dense surrounding jungle renders escape virtually impossible.


Colonel Saito, the camp commandant, informs the new prisoners they will construct a railway bridge over the River Kwai connecting Bangkok and Rangoon. Nicholson objects, citing the Geneva Convention exempting officers from manual labour. Saito threatens to have the officers shot, until Major Clipton, the British medical officer, warns there are too many witnesses. The officers are left standing in the intense heat until evening when Saito then confines them to a punishment hut. Nicholson is beaten and locked in an iron box.


Meanwhile, Shears and two other prisoners escape. Shears is wounded and wanders into a Siamese village, where he is nursed back to health. He eventually reaches the British colony of Ceylon.


The bridge construction proceeds badly due to faulty Japanese engineering and the prisoners' slow pace and sabotage. Saito is required to commit ritual suicide if the completion deadline is unmet. Desperate, he releases Nicholson and his officers, exempting them from manual labour. Nicholson, shocked by the poor job his men have done, orders building a proper bridge. He considers it a tribute to the British Army's ingenuity but Clipton argues it is collaboration with the enemy. Nicholson's obsession with the bridge drives him to allow officers to voluntarily work on the project.


Shears is convalescing in Ceylon near a commando school referred to as "Force 316". Major Warden wants to recruit Shears for a commando mission to destroy the bridge. Shears refuses only to discover he has been temporarily transferred to the British military and has no choice.


Warden, Shears, and two other commandos—Chapman and Joyce—parachute into Thailand. Chapman is killed during the jump, and Warden is wounded in an encounter with a Japanese patrol. Khun Yai, a village chief, and a group of Siamese women lead Warden, Shears, and Joyce to the river. Under cover of darkness, Shears and Joyce plant explosives on the bridge towers. The first train to cross the bridge is scheduled for the following day, and Warden wants to destroy both the train and the bridge. By daybreak, however, the river level has dropped, exposing the wire leading to the detonator.


Nicholson spots the wire, and he and Saito investigate the riverbank as the train approaches. Nicholson pulls up the wire on the riverbank, leading them toward Joyce, who is manning the detonator. Joyce breaks cover and stabs Saito to death. Nicholson inexplicably calls to Japanese soldiers for help and attempts to stop Joyce from reaching the detonator. Joyce is shot and Shears swims across the river to detonate the explosives, but he is wounded. Recognizing Shears, Nicholson comes to his senses and realizes what he has done.


Warden fires a mortar, killing Shears and Joyce and fatally wounding Nicholson. Nicholson falls on the plunger, blowing up the bridge, and the train hurtles into the river. Warden leaves with the Siamese women. Witnessing the carnage, Clipton exclaims, "Madness! ... Madness!"

The Bridge on the River Kwai (Original Soundtrack Recording)

1957

21 October 1957

44:49

Various

Production[edit]

Screenplay[edit]

The screenwriters, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, were on the Hollywood blacklist and, even though living in exile in England, 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. David Lean himself also claimed that producer Sam Spiegel cheated him out of his rightful part in the credits since he had had a major hand in the script.[9]


The film was relatively faithful to the novel, with two major exceptions. Shears, who is a British commando officer like Warden in the novel, becomes 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 realising "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.[10]

Casting[edit]

Although Lean later denied it, Charles Laughton was his first choice for the role of Nicholson. Laughton was in his habitually overweight state, and was either denied insurance coverage, or was simply not keen on filming in a tropical location.[11] Guinness admitted that Lean "didn't particularly want me" for the role, and thought about immediately returning to England when he arrived in Ceylon and Lean reminded him that he wasn't the first choice.[12]


William Holden's deal was considered one of the best ever for an actor at the time, with him receiving $300,000 plus 10% of the film's gross receipts.[13]

1998 — — #13

AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies

2001 — — #58

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills

2006 — — #14

AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers

2007 — — #36

AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)

First TV broadcast[edit]

ABC, sponsored by Ford, paid a record $1.8 million for the television rights for two screenings in the United States.[61] The 167-minute film was first telecast, uncut, in colour, on the evening of 25 September 1966, as a three hours-plus ABC Movie Special. 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 with a record audience of 72 million[61] and a Nielsen rating of 38.3 and an audience share of 61%.[62][63][64]

Restorations and home video releases[edit]

In 1972, the movie was among the first selection of films released on the early Cartrivision video format, alongside classics such as The Jazz Singer and Sands of Iwo Jima.[65]


The film was restored in 1985 by Columbia Pictures. The separate dialogue, music and effects were located and remixed with newly recorded "atmospheric" sound effects.[66] The image was restored by OCS, Freeze Frame, and Pixel Magic with George Hively editing.[67]


On 2 November 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.[68] The original negative for the feature was scanned at 4K (four times the resolution in High Definition), and the colour 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, embedded emulsion dirt, scratches through every reel, colour 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 colour mis-registration, 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.[69]

In 1962, and Peter Sellers, with Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller, released the LP record Bridge on the River Wye (Parlophone LP PMC 1190, PCS 3036 (November 1962)). This spoof of the film was based on the script for the 1957 Goon Show episode "An African Incident". Shortly before its release, for legal reasons, producer George Martin edited out the 'K' every time the word 'Kwai' was spoken.[70]

Spike Milligan

The comedy team of performed a sketch titled "Kwai Me a River" on their 27 March 1967 TV show, in which an officer in the British Dental Corps (Wayne) is captured by the Japanese and, despite being comically unintimidated by any abuse the commander of the POW camp (Shuster) inflicts on him, is forced to build a (dental) "bridge on the river Kwai" for the commander and plans to include an explosive in the appliance to detonate in his mouth. The commander survives the explosion, attributed to a toothpaste commercial punchline in 1960s commercials.[71]

Wayne and Shuster

In season 1, episode 1 of , Detective Jimmy McNulty laments, "I feel like that motherfucker at the end of Bridge over the River Kwai, like what the fuck did I do?" [72][73]

The Wire

BFI Top 100 British films

List of American films of 1957

List of historical drama films

List of historical drama films of Asia

(film)

To End All Wars

(1989 film)

Return from the River Kwai

(film)

Siam-Burma Death Railway

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The Bridge on the River Kwai

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at the TCM Movie Database

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The Bridge on the River Kwai

essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN 0826429777, pages 537-538

The Bridge on the River Kwai