Here's a film that can withstand whatever accolades you care to throw at it – masterpiece, epic, classic, or what-have-you. Although the film, as an artistic creation, falls to the credit of director David Lean, it was first the brainchild of producer Sam Spiegel.

Historical Background: Sam Spiegel was born on November 11th, 1903 in Jaroslau, in a part of Austria that is now part of Poland. Spiegel visited Hollywood in 1927 and took a job as a translator. Then, he returned to Europe where he produced German and French versions of films made by Universal Films. He had to flee Germany in 1933, however, and, by 1935, was back in the United States. In the forties and early fifties, he produced a string of films under the pseudonym S.P. Eagle, but, after a string of successes, he reverted to his birth name in 1954. Spiegel was one of the first truly successful independent film producers. Spiegel was fresh off a brilliant run of successes, including The African Queen (1952), On the Waterfront (1954), and The Strange One (1954), when an interesting new novel caught his eye during a trip to Paris for the opening of On the Waterfront. The novel, by Frenchman Pierre Boulle, was entitled The Bridge on the River Kwai and was loosely based on a real incident during World War II. Quite loosely, as it happens. When Spiegel returned to Hollywood, he finished reading the novel and immediately flew back to Paris to secure the screen rights to the novel from a rather astonished young author. Spiegel then hired soon-to-be-blacklisted author Michael Wilson to draft a script and, later, similarly-blacklisted Carl Foreman to rework the screenplay in entirety.

During the next three years before filming began, Spiegel traveled the globe four times over, with multiple trips to London, New York, Tokyo, Bangkok, and Colombo, in order to make his conception a reality. The first problem to be solved was the choice of a filming location. Spiegel, director David Lean, and cameraman Jack Hildyard traveled thousands of miles, through Burma, Siam, and Malaya, but to no avail. The jungles of Burma and Siam were inaccessible and the relevant sector of Malaya was engulfed in guerrilla warfare that actually cost the lives of half a truckload of the escorts that had been sent along to protect Spiegel's group. Finally, in Ceylon, Spiegel found the requisite conditions: gorgeous tropical scenery, a remote river with a gorge, willing extras, and natives willing and able to help build the requisite bridge, for a price.

None of the principal stars came to the project easily and had to be won over by the persuasive Spiegel. Jack Hawkins was the first to be signed, to play commando leader Major Warden. For the pivotal role of Colonel Nicholson, Spiegel and Lean had initially wanted Charles Laughton, but Laughton was a heavy set man and refused the part, anticipating that he would not fare well in the heat of the jungle. Guinness was their second choice. Up to that point in his career, Guinness was known mainly for his work as a comedian, in the so-called Ealing comedies (e.g., The Lavender Hill Mob). Guinness declined the role several times until Spiegel finally persuaded him over dinner in London, where Guinness was engaged in filming Hotel Paradiso. The change of heart was ultimately worth an Oscar to Guinness. During the same trip, Spiegel also signed James Donald to play the British doctor, Major Clipton. Spiegel then flew to Ceylon to check on the bridge construction.

It was already September, 1956 and pre-production shooting was to begin October 1st. Spiegel still did not have his American star, actors for the Burmese roles or the Japanese commander, or anyone to play his young Canadian commando. Spiegel flew off to Tokyo, where he signed an aging former star of silent pictures, Sessue Hayakawa to play Saito. Then he rushed back to Hollywood. Spiegel and Lean had wanted Cary Grant for the role of Shears, but he declined it. William Holden, the top male box office draw at the time, was the second choice. Spiegel dropped off a copy of the script for Holden to read and Holden called to negotiate the very next day. Holden was exceptionally well rewarded for his effort ($1 million and a percentage), though it was Guinness who took the Oscar.

Spiegel had next to fly to New York for a final look at The Strange One before its release. During the screening, Spiegel spotted stage actor Geoffrey Horne in a small role and recognized him as precisely what he had been wanting for the role of the knife-shy Lieutenant Joyce. Then it was off to Bangkok for Spiegel, where he signed a former soldier, M.R.B. Chakrabandhu, and four of Thailand's leading actresses for the Burmese villagers who help lead the commandos through the jungle. Finally, back in London, he signed Ann Sears for the role of the sexy nurse. By the time her scenes were shot, Guinness was done with his part of the film and back in London.

For director David Lean (1908-1991), The Bridge on the River Kwai was a major turning point in his career. Lean already had a reputation as a superlative director, but was known for character-driven chamber-type films. Lean first learned his craft co-directing a film in 1942 with the great Noël Coward (In Which We Serve) and then solo directing adaptations of Coward plays. Lean's reputation was solidified by Brief Encounter (1945), which won a Palme d'Or from Cannes. He followed with two fine adaptations of Dickens novels, Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). He had further success with The Sound Barrier, starring his second of six wives, Ann Todd. It took the British Film Academy (BAFTA) Award for Best Film and Best British Film, in 1952. Then there was Hobson's Choice (1954), another BAFTA award winner for Best British Film. Summer Madness (1955), starring Katharine Hepburn, was another success, earning Lean the Best Director award from the NYFCC. All of these films consisted of intimate dramas.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) was Lean's first big-budget epic (it cost more than $3 million to make, which was a lot in 1957), but certainly not his last. The films for which Lean would become most recognized still lay ahead of him and were all lavish spectacles, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ryan's Daughter (1970), and A Passage to India (1984). Lean would ultimately be knighted (in 1984) and receive a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute (in 1990).

The Story: Many of you will already know the broad contours of this film's story. In a Japanese POW camp in Burma, commanded by Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), the mostly British captives are being used as slave labor for the construction of a railroad that will ultimately connect Malaysia and Rangoon. The job at this particular site is to construct a bridge over the River Kwai and the Japanese camp commander's own life depends on its successful completion. When a new contingent of captured British soldiers come marching into the camp, whistling the Colonel Bogey March, under the command of old-school Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness), the wily American veteran prisoner of the camp, Commander Shears (William Holden), predicts increased grave-digging duty. Shears despises the war and considers it all so much lunacy.

Col. Nicholson is a stickler for rules and when Saito declares that officers will work as well as enlisted men, Nicholson sites the Geneva Convention restrictions on use of officers for manual labor. Saito's sole interest is in meeting his schedule, but Nicholson refuses to order his officers to work, even under the threat of massacre. Saito has Nicholson and his officers throw into "the ovens" – metal containers that bake under the scorching tropical sun. Nicholson refuses various compromises offered by Saito, although he and his fellow officers are suffering badly. Finally, Saito has to relent because progress on the bridge is badly behind schedule, due to both the incompetence of his engineer and the subtle sabotage by the prisoners. When Saito uses the excuse of a Japanese holiday to declare amnesty, Nicholson agrees only that he and his officers will supervise the men's work.

In the meanwhile, Shears manages to escape from the camp by diving into the rapids. He very nearly perishes in the jungle, but manages to find his way to a Burmese village. They nurse him back to life and he proceeds down the river in a skiff, almost perishing again from malaria and lack of drinking water. After being spotted by aerial reconnaissance, Shears ends up in an Allied hospital at Ceylon, where he cavorts with a willing nurse (Ann Sears) and happily anticipates a medical discharge.

To the surprise of his junior officers, Nicholson decides that the best way to improve the morale of his contingent and whip them into shape is to set about building the bridge as quickly, efficiently, and effectively as possible. They'll show the enemy what British pride and ingenuity are all about. One of Nicholson's officers is an engineer and experienced bridge builder. They draw up plans that include moving the planned location of the bridge, which the Japanese engineer had situated unwisely. Saito assents to Nicholson's proposal as well as his plan for increasing his men's productivity. Major Clipton (James Donald), the British medical officer, questions whether such enthusiastic work on the bridge might not be construed as abetting the enemy, but Nicholson rests his case on military technicalities. Nicholson becomes obsessed with not only completing the bridge on time, but also making it a masterpiece of engineering and construction. It will be his legacy after a thirty-year career.

Back in Ceylon, Shears is requested by British Maj. Warden (Jack Hawkins) to report to a British special operations unit. The British High Command has made the destruction of the bridge on the River Kwai a strategic priority. They've got the commandos but Shears is the only man available with first-hand knowledge of the camp's layout. Shears has zero interest in volunteering but, as it turns out, he's actually just an enlisted man impersonating an officer, so his fate is sealed. His own outfit has assigned him to the Brits. A team of four commandos is put together and sets out for the prison camp and the bridge, but one dies during the parachute jump, leaving Shears, Warden, and a young commando, Lt. Joyce (Geoffrey Horne). They'll have to bushwhack through the jungle with a Siamese guide and four female porters (all of whom just happen to be gorgeous!), in order to avoid Japanese patrols.

So, the conflicting purposes are now fully established. On the one side, you've got Col. Nicholson, obsessed with completing the bridge as his personal legacy and, on the other side, Maj. Warden, determined to blow it to smithereens at all costs. Most readers will be able to anticipate the outcome, but for those who prefer to imagine mystery, I'll leave the rest of the particulars to be discovered.

Themes: For a war film, The Bridge on the River Kwai is unusually rich in its thematic range. Certainly there is something of the standard antiwar theme in this film, articulated most especially by Maj. Clipton, "Madness, madness!" Certainly there is plenty of madness on display, from Col. Nicholson's losing sight of the big picture behind narrow concerns for pride and military discipline to Maj. Warden's determination that none of his men be taken alive. One is prepared to sacrifice military objectives for the welfare of his men; the other to sacrifice his men for military objectives. Each is crazy in his own way, but Nicholson most of all. Standing at the center of his masterpiece, Nicholson waxes philosophical for a moment, saying, "There are times when suddenly you realize you're nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything." War has a way of cutting off lives so prematurely as to deny satisfactory answers to such questions. Most viewers will sympathize with Shears's more reasonable desire to stretch out on the beach with his lover. War is a madness unique to man, however, and the film opens and closes with birds flying about in the sky, as if to say that nature, at least, will persist whatever man's insanity.

Then there's something to be learned from the titanic battle of wits between Nicholson and Saito. Saito appears to have all of the cards, in the conflict, but Nicholson wins, in the end, for one simple reason. Saito had more to lose: the descent all the way from command to hari-kari. Perhaps the strongest theme of the film, however, is the issue of collaboration with the enemy. How far can a prisoner-of-war go by way of cooperation in order to survive before it becomes treason? Some reviewers claim the ending is ambiguous about the question of whether Nicholson redeems himself, but it appeared obvious to me that he did not. Sometimes there is a thin line between a hero and a fool, as this film makes evident. It's rare to find a war film that is also a solid psychological study.

Production Values: Though an epic, The Bridge on the River Kwai is blessed with a strong character-driven script, thus nicely drawing on the strengths that director Lean had developed while making his early films. This film is less about actual battles or warfare and more about the madness of the participants. The script very effectively adapted Pierre Boulle's novel. Additional scenes were added to give the film mass-market appeal. Shears was made into an American (for the American market and so that a big-name American actor could be engaged) and the romantic elements (including the nurse in Ceylon and the gorgeous Siamese village girls) were added. Boulle would later state that he wished he had included the additional scenes in his novel.

One significant controversy in relation to the script is that it was based on a real episode of World War II except that the man on whom Colonel Nicholson was based, Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey, had behaved not only honorably but heroically, as all of his men later attested. Viewers need to keep in mind that they are watching a work of fiction. The film also deviates significantly from the reality of how deplorably the real life POW's were actually treated. Nevertheless, as a work of art, the film succeeds admirably.

Still another controversy ensued when the film was released without writing credits being given to either Michael Wilson or Carl Foreman. McCarthyism was at its height and both writers had been blackballed. The screenplay was attributed to Boulle, as an adaptation from his own novel, when, in reality, Boulle had played no part in drafting the screenplay. The problem was further complicated when the film won an Oscar for its screenplay, which was awarded to Boulle. More than twenty-five years later, in 1984, the Academy redressed the injustice by awarding Oscars to both Wilson (posthumously) and Foreman. Foreman died the day after receiving his just recognition.

Plot-wise, The Bridge on the River Kwai is really two almost independent stories. The first is the battle of wills between Nicholson and Saito and the second the adventure story of the commandos determined to destroy the bridge. The one story leads smoothly into the other, however, much like an episode of Law and Order. The direction provided by Lean for the film is exceptional, making the film's 161-minute length rush by as though it were much shorter. Though the story is complex, it is never difficult to follow. Tension and suspense are sustained throughout. As Maj. Warden declares repeatedly, "There's always the unexpected."

Cinematographer Jack Hildyard earned as Oscar for this gorgeously shot and composed effort. The obstacles were enormous. Shot almost entirely in the midst of a tropical jungle, the heat shows on the faces of the characters. There's a pleasing mix of medium-distance tracking shots and close-ups and some breathtaking panoramas. The destruction of the bridge and the train was a one-chance kind of circumstance. The bridge was built, at a cost of $250,000, and then duly destroyed, complete with the sixty-five year old train purchased from the Ceylon government, which had bought it from an Indian maharajah. Fifteen thousand giant trees had been cut to make the bridge and forty-eight elephants had been required to haul the timber. Six cameras were placed in various ground locations plus aerial shots from a helicopter to capture the blast, which was produced with 1,000 tons of dynamite. There could be no retake. All to provide, in the words of Sam Spiegel, "authenticity." Further augmenting Hildyard's visual masterpiece was the soundtrack by Malcolm Arnold, which also won an Oscar. Ironically, however, what viewers went away whistling was not what Arnold composed. It was the revamped World War I ditty, The Colonel Bogey March. The reason why the march was whistled and not sung is that the new lyrics that had been added to it during World War II were considered too risqué. For those interested in reading those lyrics, check out this review's first comment.

The performance by Alec Guinness as Nicholson is really beyond effective description. Guinness doesn't merely play a character, but instead completely absorbs the character's essence and then manifests it. Guinness received his only Oscar for this role but didn’t attend the ceremony. Guinness's great career included appearances in Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in a White Suit (1951), The Ladykillers (1955), Our Man in Havana (1959), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Star Wars (1977), and A Passage to India (1984).

William Holden is superlative in his scenes as well, although he received not even an Oscar nomination for his work here. Holden was nominated thrice, however, in other years, for Sunset Boulevard (1950), Stalag 17 (1953), and Network (1976), winning the trophy on the middle occasion. The droll Jack Hawkins and the stern Sessue Hayakawa gave superior supporting performances in the third and fourth most important roles.

DVD Presentation and Extras: This awe-inspiring classic is given tender loving care by the Columbia DVD. You can purchase the film on a single disc with a few extras or as the double disc special edition stuffed to the gills with special features. Included in the double disc set is an interactive quiz game, an historical feature (Maps and Military Strategy) contrasting fact with the film's fiction, a new 50-minute documentary with interviews, a theatrical trailer for the film itself and three others, a short film from USC narrated by Holden, a featurette on the building and demolition of the bridge, and talent files. Inside the case, there's a reproduction of the original 1957 booklet for the film, which is excellent reading. The film has been beautifully remastered and is presented in exceptionally wide anamorphic format (2.55:1) with multiple audio options, subtitles in seven languages, and dialog in three.

Bottom-Line: I saw this film when I was just a kid and later on television. Watching it again today, it was as fresh and engaging as ever. If you're wondering about the significance of the title that I gave this review, the answer to the riddle is the same as what you need to go out and do immediately, if you haven't done so already: to see the River Kwai.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older