The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

The Bridge on the River Kwai, winner of the Oscar for Best Picture of 1957, is a film about willpower. A group of British soldiers are taken to a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp and forced to build a bridge to help the Japanese cause during World War II. An English colonel, played brilliantly by Alec Guinness, must clash repeatedly with the POW camp commander, played by Sessue Hayakawa. They differ greatly over the application of the Geneva Convention rules to the camp, and Hayakawa's Col. Saito tries any number of ways to break the spirit of Guinness' Col. Nicholson. He fails, of course, in this class of wills and then finds himself in the position of having Nicholson take charge of the bridge's construction. (Nicholson wants to prove the superiority of the British soldiers in completing a task.)

The other major plotline involves an American soldier, Commander Shears, played by William Holden, who escapes from the camp only to be "forced" into returning to help destroy the bridge that Nicholson and his men have built. Shears is a reluctant warrior, to say the least, particularly after spending time in the military hospital and being treated as a dignitary. However, he too must force himself to see the project through to the end. And there are numerous scenes of the shirtless Holden throughout the movie. I'm starting to wonder if Hollywood cast him on his chest alone rather than his considerable acting talent.

There's much to be admired in The Bridge on the River Kwai. The acting is all first-rate; each member of the cast is well-suited to his or her role. The location shooting in Sri Lanka captures the teeming, humid jungle that is the locale for the action, and the sequence involving the explosion of the bridge just as a train crosses it is justifiably a highlight. The screenplay itself, originally credited to novelist Pierre Boulle but really written by blacklisted authors Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman, is sharp in its insights into the men and the military structures that they represent. Among the actors, Guinness stands out for the cleverness with which his Col. Nicholson takes over control of the camp from Col. Saito, and Holden is able to bring his usual level of charm to the role of the American who would much rather lie on the beach with a beautiful nurse.

The Bridge on the River Kwai was directed by David Lean, and it's really a masterpiece. His ability to control massive numbers of actors is unparalleled. You sometimes have to remind yourself that this film uses no computer-generated imagery. Those are real mean standing in formation each day. Lean's movies tend to be large-scale films, movies about historical events with personal stories embedded within the larger framework.

I like the tension of this film. Col. Saito has a deadline of May 12 to complete the bridge and please his superiors, and he's willing to do almost anything to ensure its completion. Hayakawa portrays Saito's monomaniacal nature well; he was a very deserving nominee for Best Supporting Actor that year (ironically, the only Oscar the film lost out of eight nominations overall). He's particularly good when he tries to bribe Guinness' Nicholson with food after placing the Englishman in "the box" for several days in tropical heat. You sense that he knows he's going to lose to Nicholson all along.

This film is a good example of how the Academy does, sometimes, get it right. The Bridge on the River Kwai won seven awards in 1957, and it deserves its standing as a classic film. It's less a film about war than an examination of the different motivations that people have, about what makes them "tick." As such, it provides some keen psychological insight that is just as potent today as it was more than fifty years ago. It also has one of the greatest ending sequences in the history of film. If you've never experienced it yourself, you'll relish it upon your first viewing.