The film was initially scripted by screenwriterCarl Foreman, who was later replaced byMichael Wilson. Both writers had to work in secret since they were on theHollywood 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 theAcademy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; many years later, Foreman and Wilson posthumously received the Academy Award.[4]
In February 1943, a contingent of Britishprisoners of war, led byColonel Nicholson, arrive at aJapanese prison camp inThailand.United States NavyCommander Shears describes the horrific conditions to Nicholson, who forbids any escape attempts because they had been ordered to surrender by their own headquarters.
Colonel Saito, the camp commandant, informs the prisoners the camp needs no fences because the surrounding jungle makes escape impossible and that they will be used as labour to construct a bridge over theRiver Kwai for the railway connectingThailand andBurma. Nicholson objects, citing theGeneva Convention exempting officers from manual labour. Saito threatens to have the officers shot, butMajor Clipton, the British medical officer, warns him there are too many witnesses. The officers are left standing in the intense heat until evening when Saito confines them to a punishment hut. Nicholson is beaten and locked in an iron box. Shears becomes the only survivor of an escape attempt and recuperates inBritish Ceylon after being tended to by Thai civilians.
British sabotage and deliberately slow work impedes bridge construction, made worse by incompetent Japanese engineering. When Nicholson is released from confinement, he is shocked by the poor job his men have done and orders the construction of a proper bridge that he feels will be a lasting tribute to theBritish Army's superiority. Clipton unsuccessfully argues it is collaboration with the enemy. Even though Saito had given in to his principled stand and excused the British officers from manual labour, Nicholson volunteers them to join in the physical work.
Shears' comfortable life in Ceylon is shaken up when Major Warden tries to recruit him for a commando mission to destroy the bridge. Shears reveals he impersonated an officer to get better treatment in the camp, but Warden already knew of his deception and arranged his attachment to the British military, forcing him to participate. Warden, Shears, Chapman and Joyce parachute into Thailand. Chapman dies on landing, and Warden is wounded in an encounter with a Japanese patrol. Khun Yai, a village chief, and a group of Thai women guide the trio to the river. Under cover of darkness, Shears and Joyce plant explosives at the base of the bridge towers and plan to destroy it and the first train to cross, scheduled for the next morning.
Sunrise reveals the river level has dropped, exposing the wire leading to the detonator. Nicholson spots the wire, and he and Saito investigate 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 calls for help and attempts to stop Joyce from reaching the detonator. After Joyce is shot, Shears swims across the river to detonate the explosives but is fatally wounded. Recognizing Shears, Nicholson exclaims, "What have I done?" Warden fires amortar, wounding Nicholson. Dazed, Nicholson stumbles towards the detonator and falls on the plunger, blowing up the bridge; the train tumbles into the river. Warden, turning toward the group's horrified guides, pleads, "I had to do it! They might have been taken alive!". Witnessing the carnage, Clipton exclaims, "Madness! ... Madness!"
The screenwriters,Carl Foreman andMichael Wilson, were on theHollywood 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 officialcredit was given toPierre Boulle (who did not speak English), and the resulting Oscar for Best Screenplay (Adaptation) was awarded to him. Only in 1984 did theAcademy 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]
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]Cary Grant was offered the role of Nicholson but turned it down in favor ofThe Pride and the Passion to work withMarlon Brando before he was replaced byFrank Sinatra on that film.[12] 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.[13]
William Holden's deal—he received 10% of the film's gross receipts—was considered one of the best ever for an actor at the time.[14]
Director David Lean clashed repeatedly with his cast members, particularly 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; the actor wanted to play the part with a sense of humour and sympathy, while Lean thought Nicholson should be "a bore." On another occasion, they argued over the scene where Nicholson reflects on his career in the army. Lean filmed the scene from behind Guinness and angrily exploded when Guinness asked him why he was doing this. After Guinness was done with the scene, Lean said, "Now you can all fuck off and go home, you English actors. Thank God that I'm starting work tomorrow with an American actor (William Holden)."[18]
Guinness later said that he subconsciously based his walk while emerging from "the Oven" on that of his eleven-year-old sonMatthew,[21] who was recovering frompolio at the time, a disease that left him temporarily paralyzed from the waist down.[22] Guinness later reflected on the scene, calling it the "finest piece of work" he had ever done.[23]
Lean nearly drowned when he was swept away by the river current during a break from filming.[24]
In a 1988 interview with Barry Norman, Lean confirmed that Columbia almost stopped filming after three weeks because there was no white woman in the film, forcing him to add what he called "a very terrible scene" between Holden and a nurse on the beach.
The filming of the bridge explosion was to be done on 10 March 1957, in the presence ofS.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, thenPrime 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.[24]
British composerMalcolm Arnold recalled that he had "ten days to write around forty-five minutes worth of music"—much less time than he was used to. He described the music forThe Bridge on the River Kwai as the "worst job I ever had in my life" because of the time constraint. Despite this, he won an Oscar and a Grammy.[27] The film's soundtrack was released on LP soon after the film (Columbia CL 1100). In 1990,Christopher Palmer arranged a concert suite for large orchestra for Arnold's 70th birthday.
A memorable feature of the film is the tune that is whistled by the POWs—the first strain of the "Colonel Bogey March"—when they enter the camp.[28]Gavin Young[29] recounts meeting Donald Wise, a former prisoner of the Japanese who had worked on theBurma Railway. Young: "Donald, did anyone whistleColonel Bogey ... as they did in the film?" Wise: "I never heard it in Thailand. We hadn't much breath left for whistling. But in Bangkok I was told that David Lean, the film's director, became mad at the extras who played the prisoners—us—because they couldn't march in time. Lean shouted at them, 'For God's sake, whistle a march to keep time to.' And a bloke called George Siegatz[30]... —an expert whistler—began to whistleColonel Bogey, and a hit was born."
The march was written in 1914 byKenneth J. Alford, a pseudonym of British Bandmaster Frederick J. Ricketts. For the film, Arnold wrote an accompanyingcounter-melody to the Colonel Bogey strain using the same chord progressions, then continued with his own "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 (apparently for copyright reasons[31]).Mitch Miller had a hit with a recording of both marches.
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.
TheRiver Kwai railway bridge in 2017. The arched sections are original (constructed for theEmpire of Japan during theSecond World War); the two sections with trapezoidal trusses were built byJapan after the war aswar reparations, replacing sections destroyed by Allied aircraft.
The plot and characters of Boulle's novel and the screenplay were almost entirely fictional.[3] There are many historical inaccuracies in the film, as noted by historians citing eyewitnesses to the building of the real Burma Railway.[32][33][34][35]
The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built byCommonwealth, 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.[37]
Lieutenant ColonelPhilip Toosey of theBritish Army was the real senior Allied officer at the bridge in question. Toosey was very different from Nicholson and was certainly not a collaborator who felt obliged to work with the Japanese. In fact, Toosey strove to delay construction. While 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.[33][34] Some consider the film to be an insulting parody of the then Lt. Col. Toosey.[33]
On aBBCTimewatch 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 hiscollaboration he would have been "quietly eliminated" by the other prisoners.[citation needed]
Julie Summers, in her bookThe Colonel of Tamarkan, writes that 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.[33] He strongly denied the claim that the book was anti-British, although many involved in the film itself (including Alec Guinness) felt otherwise.[38]
In Pierre Boulle's bookThe Bridge over the River Kwai and the film which was based on it, the impression was given that British officers not only took part in building the bridge willingly, but finished in record time to demonstrate to the enemy their superior efficiency. This was an entertaining story. But I am writing a factual account, and in justice to these men—living and dead—who worked on that bridge, I must make it clear that we never did so willingly. We worked at bayonet point and under bamboo lash, taking any risk to sabotage the operation whenever the opportunity arose.[32]
A 1969 BBC television documentary,Return to the River Kwai, made by former POW John Coast,[35] sought to highlight the real history behind the film (partly through getting ex-POWs to question its factual basis, for example Dr Hugh de Wardener and Lt-Col Alfred Knights), which angered many former POWs. The documentary itself was described by one newspaper reviewer when it was shown on Boxing Day 1974 (The Bridge on the River Kwai had been shown on BBC1 on Christmas Day 1974) as "Following the movie, this is a rerun of the antidote."[39]
Some of the characters in the film use the names of real people who were involved in the Burma Railway. Their roles and characters, however, are fictionalised. For example, a Sergeant-Major 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. Some Japanese viewers objected to the film's "implication that they are incapable engineers".[40]
The major railway bridge described in the novel and film did not actually cross the river known at the time as the Kwai. However, in 1943 a railway bridge was built by Allied POWs over theMae Klong river—renamedKhwae Yai in the 1960s as a result of the film—at Tha Ma Kham, five kilometres fromKanchanaburi, Thailand.[41] Boulle had never been to the bridge. He knew that the railway ran parallel to the Kwae for many miles, and he therefore assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just north ofKanchanaburi. This was an incorrect assumption. The destruction of the bridge as depicted in the film is also 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 bombing. The steel bridge was repaired and is still in use today.[41]
American theatrical release poster, "Style B", featuring Holden.
The Bridge on the River Kwai was a massive commercial success. It wasthe highest-grossing film of 1957 in the United States and Canada and was also the most popular film at the British box office that year.[42] According toVariety, the film earned estimated domestic box office revenues of $18,000,000[43] although this was revised downwards the following year to $15,000,000, which was still the biggest for 1958 and Columbia's highest-grossing film at the time.[44] By October 1960, the film had earned worldwide box office revenues of $30 million.[45]
The film was re-released in 1964 and earned a further estimated $2.6 million at the box office in the United States and Canada[46] but the following year its revised total US and Canadian revenues were reported byVariety as $17,195,000.[47]
Onreview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, the film received anapproval rating of 96% based on 105 reviews, with an average rating of 9.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "This complex war epic asks hard questions, resists easy answers, and boasts career-defining work from star Alec Guinness and director David Lean."[48] OnMetacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 88 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[49]
Bosley Crowther ofThe New York Times praised the film as "a towering entertainment of rich variety and revelation of the ways of men".[50] Mike Kaplan, reviewing forVariety, described it as "a gripping drama, expertly put together and handled with skill in all departments."[51] Kaplan further praised the actors, especially Alec Guinness, later writing "the film is unquestionably" his.[51] William Holden was also credited for his acting for giving a solid characterization that was "easy, credible and always likeable in a role that is the pivot point of the story".[51] Edwin Schallert of theLos Angeles Times claimed the film's strongest points were for being "excellently produced in virtually all respects and that it also offers an especially outstanding and different performance by Alec Guinness. Highly competent work is also done by William Holden, Jack Hawkins and Sessue Hayakawa".[52]Time magazine praised Lean's directing, noting he demonstrates "a dazzlingly musical sense and control of the many and involving rhythms of a vast composition. He shows a rare sense of humor and a feeling for the poetry of situation; and he shows the even rarer ability to express these things, not in lines but in lives."[53]Harrison's Reports described the film as an "excellent World War II adventure melodrama" in which the "production values are first-rate and so is the photography."[54]
Among retrospective reviews,Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, noting that it is one of the few war movies that "focuses not on larger rights and wrongs but on individuals", but commented that the viewer is not certain what is intended by the final dialogue due to the film's shifting points of view.[55]Slant magazine gave the film four out of five stars.[56]Slant stated that "the 1957 epic subtly develops its themes about the irrationality of honor and the hypocrisy of Britain's class system without ever compromising its thrilling war narrative", and in comparing to other films of the time said thatBridge on the River Kwai "carefully builds its psychological tension until it erupts in a blinding flash of sulfur and flame."[56]
Balu Mahendra, theTamil film director, observed the shooting of this film atKitulgala,Sri Lanka during his school trip and was inspired to become a film director.[57]Warren Buffett said it was his favorite movie. In an interview, he said that "[t]here were a lot of lessons in that... The ending of that was sort of the story of life. He created the railroad. Did he really want the enemy to come in across it?"[58]
ABC paid a record $1.8 million for the television rights for two TV broadcasts in the United States.[59] The 167-minute film was first broadcast uncut and in color on the evening of 25 September 1966, as an ABC Movie Special, sponsored by theFord Motor Company. The broadcast of the film was over three hours long, including commercial breaks. It was highly unusual at that time for a television network to show such a long film in one evening; most longer films were generally shown in two parts over two consecutive evenings. The movie drew huge ratings for ABC, with a record audience of 72 million[59] and aNielsen rating of 38.3 and an audience share of 61%.[60][61][62]
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.[64] The image was restored by OCS, Freeze Frame, and Pixel Magic with George Hively editing.[65]
On 2 November 2010 Columbia Pictures released a newly restoredThe 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.[66] 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.[67]
The comedy team ofWayne and Shuster performed a sketch titled "Kwai Me a River" on their 27 March 1967 TV show,[citation needed] 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.[69]
In season 1, episode 1 ofThe Wire, 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?"[71][72]
^Joyaux, Georges.The Bridge over the River Kwai: From the Novel to the Movie, Literature/Film Quarterly, published in the Spring of 1974. Retrieved 09-24-2015.
^abA transcript of the interview and the documentary as a whole can be found in the new edition of John Coast's bookRailroad of Death.Coast, John (2014).Railroad of Death. Myrmidon.ISBN978-1-905802-93-7.
^Steinberg, Cobbett (1980).Film Facts. New York: Facts on File, Inc. p. 23.ISBN0-87196-313-2. 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 inVariety (p. 17).
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, 2010ISBN0826429777, pages 537-538
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