David Lean is taken that story and directed it in 1957. 14. The Bridge over the River Kwai (French: Le Pont de la rivire Kwa) is a novel by the French novelist Pierre Boulle, published in French in 1952 and English translation by Xan Fielding in 1954. (Lean denied ever wanting Laughton for the role, despite abundant documented evidence to the contrary.). The film won seven Academy Awards (including Best Picture) at the 30th Academy Awards. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) is an epic World War II adventure/action, anti-war drama. Please note the delivery estimate is greater than 10 business days. But the unusual move paid off for ABCthe telecast drew huge ratings with a record audience of 72 million[60] and a Nielsen rating of 38.3 and an audience share of 61%. The train crashed into a generator on the other side of the bridge and was wrecked. Log in. Vital equipment that would normally have been shipped through the canal had to be flown out to the location instead. In early 1943, a contingent of British prisoners of war, led by Lt. The cast includes William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and . Tooseys men stated this never happened. During WW II, Japan constructed the meter-gauge railway line from Ban Pong, Thailand to Thanbyuzayat, Burma. "[52] 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. 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. As Ashton explained, it was so cheap because "we used local labor and elephants; and the timber was cut nearby.". Find the latest updates on the work of the Special Committee. From iconic memorials to local churchyards, there is unique heritage to explore across Great Britain. Reviews There are no reviews yet. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). The film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Guinness), not to mention a handful of Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and even a Grammy nomination for its soundtrack. US Navy Commander Shears tells of the horrific conditions. Train crossing the wooden bridge which spanned the Mae Klong River (renamed Kwai Yai River in 1960). The bridge, several museums, and cemeteries have respectfully preserved the history and memorialized the dead. A sketch of that bridge was used as the basis for the fictional one. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Alec Guiness overseeing men working on the tracks in a scene from the film 'The Bridge On The River Kwai', 1957. The River Kwai, also known as Khwae Noi or Khwae Sai Yok is a river located in the western region of Thailand. Japanese guards were known for their cruelty and would frequently torture and assault their prisoners. 7. He succumbed to malaria, dysentery, and malnutrition at Camp Kilo 101 in Thailand. Shears, who is a British commando officer like Warden in the novel, became an American sailor who escapes from the POW camp. In 1942 Japan seized Myanmar from British control and quickly decided to build a rail link to Thailand in order to maintain a secure supply route to their forces. Lean insisted that Laughton could lose weight before shooting began, but Columbia Pictures' insurance underwriters refused to cover him, saying he was too unhealthy to endure several months on location in the jungles of Ceylon. The United States Army Air Force (USAAF) was the first to conduct air raids on the bridges over the River Kwai between November 1944 and January 1945. The conditions to which POW and civilian labourers were subjected were far worse than the film depicted. Check here to see our open positions and volunteer roles. But he'd never made anything on an epic scale, wasn't well known outside of England, and wouldn't have been considered for The Bridge on the River Kwai if it weren't for Katharine Hepburn, the star of his 1955 film Summertime. The Kanchanaburi Memorial sits with the cemetery grounds. The movie, based on the novel Le Pont de la rivire Kwa (1952) by French novelist Pierre Boulle, was adapted for the screen by Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman, who were both at the time on the Hollywood blacklist. David Lean, director of such landmark epics as Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, didn't always make giant movies. Lets examine the history behind the film and the men who made it. While the story is fiction, the broader setting--including the construction of the Burmese railway--is based on historical events. Mortally wounded, he falls onto the plunger, the bridge is blown up, and the train with the dignitaries falls into the river. Rather than start building at two ends and meet in the middle, as per normal railway construction, the Japanese created hundreds of camps across its lengths. 26. To counter the Allies tightening grip on supply lines, the Japanese army resurrected an old idea first mooted by regional powers in the late 19th century: to build a railway between Myanmar and Siam. A Cholera epidemic swept through Nieke Camp between May-June 1943. It spans crosses the lazily winding Khwae Noi at Kanchanaburi, Thailand. [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. Pitted against the warden, Colonel . In the meantime, Shears manages to escape. The plot and characters of Boulle's novel and the screenplay were almost entirely fictional. POWs and indentured labourers were worked to death while busy constructing the railway simultaneously. But, what about the real men behind the real story of the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway? This Week's Toybox is . True Grit, Sanctum, Green Lantern and Superman. The film originally made thirty million dollars over its three million dollar budget and was rereleased in theaters just after Lean and Spiegel's Lawrence of Arabia came out. The bridge they build will become a symbol of service and survival to one prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, a proud perfectionist. Major Warden of SOE invites Shears to join a commando mission to destroy the bridge just as it is completed. Toosey would provide the inspiration for Lt. Col Nicholson portrayed by Alec Guinness in the 1957 film. Lean liked that draft even less. Despite the discomfort the rest of the crew were experiencing, Lean was thrilled about the shoot and never complained about his living conditions. Saito leaves the officers standing all day in the intense heat. Their roles and characters, however, are fictionalised. Lean wanted to use the tune in Kwai, figured those lyrics wouldn't pass the censors (or the approval of the composer's widow), and opted to have the troops whistle it instead. Roger Ebert focused on the symbolism of the bridge in this 1999 description: "[The war] narrows down to a single task, building a . Supplying it by ship was the only practical solution. What's your favorite? The Bridge of the River kwai It is a tourist attraction of Kanchanaburi. The destruction of the bridge as depicted in the film is also entirely fictional. The Bridge on the River Kwai was actually one of the reasons movies started becoming prime-time television programming. Rather than draw on their own corps of manpower, which was busy fighting an eventual losing battle against encroaching Allied forces, it would put its legions of POWs and local forced labourers to work. Toosey later defended him in his war crimes trial after the war, and the two became friends. Interested in advertising on the world's largest website dedicated to all things Britain? The Bridge On The River Kwai Film Facts. Those who were there did not think much of the novel or film of the Bridge of the River Kwai. After the enlisted men are marched to the bridge site, Saito threatens to have the officers shot, until Major Clipton, the British medical officer, warns Saito there are too many witnesses for him to get away with murder. The Bridge on the River Kwai is a work of fiction, but borrows the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942 to 1943 for its historical setting. "[47] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100 based on 14 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". [5][6] It has been included on the American Film Institute's list of best American films ever made. The story about this bridge has also been made into a Hollywood movie such as "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957), which is based on the novel of the same name and another movie . Weill you be in London for the Coronation in 2023? [65], On 2 November 2010 Columbia Pictures released a newly restored The Bridge on the River Kwai for the first time on Blu-ray. Begun in October 1942, using prisoner of war (POW) labour, it was completed and operational by early February 1943. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Bridge On The River Kwai Trivia: Fun And Interesting . Once Spiegel relented, he realized Holden was a box office draw and offered him a great deal: $300,000 salary (about $2.5 million in 2016 dollars), plus 10 percent of the gross. [14][15], The film was an international co-production between companies in Britain and the United States. This was an entertaining story. 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. The steel bridge was repaired and is still in use today. Prisoners, including the sick, were marched to camps further along Death Railway. This way, he remained oblivious to the real nature of his characters fate. The Bridge Over the River Kwai won seven Academy Awards (including Best Picture) in 1958. 25 March 1995. Unique to this film, in some ways, were other issues related to poorly made optical dissolves, the original camera lens and a malfunctioning camera. [10], Although Lean later denied it, Charles Laughton was his first choice for the role of Nicholson. It was the 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. His first epic was his twelfth film: The Bridge on the River Kwai, starring Alec Guinness and William Holden as P.O.W. Lambs sister received a letter from him in September 1943, saying he was in excellent health and being treated well by his captors. This meant that some of the British prisoners were actually natives of the region wearing make-up to appear Caucasian. 1957 World War II film directed by David Lean, This article is about the film. It is also known as the "River Kwai March". Only minor damage was inflicted. Their taskmasters were relentless. 's working to build and/or destroy a bridge for the Japanese during World War II. As it opens, two POWs, the American navy commander Shears (William Holden) and an Australian, are digging graves for their companions. The Bridge on the River Kwai: Directed by David Lean. What's happening in this "The Bridge on the River Kwai" movie clip?Warden (Jack Hawkins from Land of the Pharaohs and Ben-Hur) fires a mortar, wounding Nicho. The young soldier from Suffolk was dispatched to work on the bridge over the River Kwai, one of the railway's most daunting engineering projects. We hadn't much breath left for whistling. The railway route, which ran through Burma and Thailand, had been planned by the British. Prior to casting Alec Guinness, Sam Spiegel tried to persuade Spencer Tracy to play the part of Colonel Nicholson. WILLIAM HOLDEN JACK HAWKINS 1957 BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI 8X10 PHOTO. She spent most of the next 42 years working as a copy editor and editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica. The events depicted in the film, of a chaotic Commando raid and Lt. Col Nicholsons wounded body falling dramatically on the detonator and blowing the bridge up, are completely false. British English: The Top 50 Most Beautiful British Insults, British Slang: Your Guide to British Police Slang for the Telly Watcher, British Slang: Tea Time British Words for Tea and Tea Related Culture, ltimate List of Funny British Place Names, 101 Budget Britain Travel Tips 2nd Edition, Great Britons Book: Top 50 Greatest Brits Who Ever Lived, Anglotopias Grand Adventure Lands End to John OGroats. Warden, Shears, and two other commandos parachute into Thailand; one, Chapman, dies after falling into a tree, and Warden is wounded in an encounter with a Japanese patrol and must be carried on a litter. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. The Japanese did indeed force British, Dutch, Australian, and American prisoners to build the Burma Railway, resulting in some 13,000 POW deaths and at least 80,000 civilian deaths. So Spiegel hired another writer, Calder Willingham, to give it a crack. Nevertheless, the leeches in the recreated swamps were real. Did he really want the enemy to come in across it? The movie was mainly filmed in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and also in England. John Coast, a young British officer who went on to become a successful filmmaker who spent three and half years as a Japanese POW, said: As nobody should ever have need telling, the picture is a load of high-toned codswallop.. Geoffrey Horne saved his life. 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Although the obvious link was by sea, Allied submarines controlling the region made it too treacherous. Chandran Rutnam and William Holden while shooting The Bridge on the River Kwai. The Hitchhiker's Guide has this to say about John Rabon: When not pretending to travel in time and space, eating bananas, and claiming that things are "fantastic", John lives in North Carolina. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The curved-shaped truss spans are the originals on the bridge (constructed by the Japanese military during WWII) while the two trapezoidal-shaped bridge spans were provided by Japan as war reparations after the war ended in 1945 (to replace two curved-shaped truss spans that fell into the river after the bridge was attacked and bombed by Allied aircraft. [60] 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. Use our postcode search tool to discover more about the war dead from your local area. California Doubling: The film is set in Thailand, but was filmed in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), a distinction the publicity of the time didn't see fit to make clear.Instead, it raved about the movie being shot in Ceylon in a way which implied the real-life River Kwai was located there. 6. Starring Alec Guinness, it depicts the struggles and defiance of Japanese prisoners of war building the fictional Burma railway between 1943-44. [46], On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 96% based on 93 reviews, with an average rating of 9.4/10. The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British-American epic war movie directed by David Lean and starring William Holden, Jack Hawkins, and Alec Guinness, featuring Sessue Hayakawa. When Joyce is wounded by Japanese fire, Shears swims across, but is himself shot. 14- "Be happy in your work.". Kanburi wasnt a work camp as such. The Bridge On The River Kwai is the World War II Oscar winner about an Army colonel (Alec Guinness) obsessed with proving British superiority over his Japanese captors by showing that his . The Bridge on the River Kwai was selected in 1997 for preservation in the National Film Registry. Nicholson's obsession with the bridge eventually drives him to allow his officers to volunteer to engage in manual labor. In the film, Lt. Col Nicholson is seen collaborating with his captors, even under duress. Lean feared Guinness' public persona had changed so much that audiences wouldn't buy him in this very dramatic role, but came around to the idea when the Laughton plan didn't work. The Bridge On The River Kwai was the first of David Lean's five epic films and the third of six movies that he made with Alec Guinness. Starring Alec Guinness, William Holden, and Sessue Hayakawa, among others, it paints an . Concurrently, Shears, after a harrowing journey in which he nearly loses his life more than once, is rescued by the British and then required to lead a group of commandoes headed by Major Warden (Jack Hawkins) back to the POW camp that he escaped from in order to blow up the bridge. Around the time that he was offered the movie, David Lean had little money, as he was in the middle of a financially ruinous divorce, and was very much in need of a new project. Lean wanted Holden, a big star and recent Oscar winner (for Stalag 17), to play American prisoner Major Shears, over the objections of producer Spiegel, who wanted Cary Grant. The movie was filmed in Ceylon, which is now Sri Lanka. International shipment of items may be subject to customs processing and additional charges. Starring Alec Guinness, it depicts the struggles and defiance of Japanese prisoners of war building the fictional Burma railway between 1943-44. He didn't like the screenplay because it reduced Nicholson to secondary status. Nicholson spots the wire and brings it to Saito's attention. 1. However, in 1943 a railway bridge was built by Allied POWs over the Mae Klong river renamed Khwae Yai in the 1960s as a result of the film at Tha Ma Kham, five kilometres from Kanchanaburi, Thailand. He was listed as missing in action in June 1943. Both the wooden and the adjacent steel bridge were subjected to numerous air raids between January and June 1945. The Bridge on the River Kwai is a British 1957 World War II film by David Lean based on the novel The Bridge Over the River Kwai by French writer Pierre Boulle. Instead of the five year predicted completion, the bridge on river Kwai, was completed in 16 months. Victory over the Japanese navy at Midway in June 1942 had created a turning point in the Far East and Pacific. Walk over the steel bridge at the River Kwai, one of the most famous rivers in the world, which gained international fame in the book and film, "Bridge on the River Kwai". Though he'd already earned five Oscar nominations (three for directing, two for adapting the Dickens novels) and would soon be widely celebrated for Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965), at this stage, Lean was in trouble. When he asks for Saitos help in cutting the wires, the hidden commando, Lieutenant Joyce (Geoffrey Horne), leaps up and kills Saito. Death Railway was bombed heavily by the Allies from 1943 onwards. : 1942: Boldly advancing through Asia, the Japanese need a train route from Burma going north. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. The movie garnered seven Academy Awards, including that for best picture, as well as three Golden Globe Awards and four BAFTA awards. By this time, the United States and its naval and industrial might had entered the war. . The Bridge on the River Kwai poses complex interpretive issues about the vagaries of war and military behavior as conveyed by the Japanese soldiers, Commander Saito, Lt. Col. Nicholson, and the British captives. [41] According to Variety, the film earned estimated domestic box office revenues of $18,000,000[42] 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. By daybreak, however, the river level has dropped, exposing the wire connecting the explosives to the detonator. Thanbyuzayat continued to be used as a POW reception centre to reinforce work parties along the Burma-Siam Railway. The bridges were quickly repaired with the use of POW labour from the camp at Tha . The movie has been included on the American Film Institutes list of best American films ever made. They built a railway to link Bangkok to Rangoon. [Ronald Searle, To the Kwai and Back: War drawings 1939-45, London, Collins, 1986, 104] 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' is now the best-known site on the Burma-Thailand railway but its fame is due more to a fictional film than its significance in World War II. Casualties commemorated at Chungkai are mostly men who died in the field hospital set up by prisoners. Written 20 October 2021. The Bridge on the River Kwai. Image: British troops surrender at Singapore. Lean wanted Charles Laughton (who'd starred in his 1954 film Hobson's Choice) to play Colonel Nicholson, the role that ultimately went to Alec Guinness. In 1984 the Academy Board of Governors voted posthumous Oscars to Foreman and Wilson, and their names were included on prints of the film beginning in the 1990s. A photo of Kitulgala, Sri Lanka in 2004, where the bridge was made for the film. The bridge is still in everyday use as part of the Bangkok-Nam Tok line. They remain standing at attention throughout the day. It begins with British troops being marched into the prison camp after their surrender to the Japanese at Singapore. [44], 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[45] but the following year its revised total US and Canadian revenues were reported by Variety as $17,195,000. Both bridges were used for two years, until they were destroyed by Allied bombing. Only he survives, though he is wounded. Kanchanaburi town is located around 130 kilometres northwest of Bangkok. Return trains are 12.55 and 15.15. Sam Spiegel bought the railroad train from the Ceylonese government. The movie is based on the novel Le Pont de la Riviere Kwai by Pierre Boulle. Although the Death Railway has never again reached the Myanmar border, a shorter stretch was reopened by Thailand's railway authorities between 1949 and 1958, and trains on this modern-day line cross the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai. She recommended Lean to producer Sam Spiegel, who'd been turned down by Fred Zinnemann, William Wyler, and Carol Reed, and offered the directing job to Lean as a last resort. Have a question about us or our work? After Guinness was done with the scene, Lean said, "Now you can all fuck off and go home, you English actors.
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