You make me sick with your heroics! There’s a stench of death about you. You carry it in your pack like the plague…This is just a game, this war! You and Colonel Nicholson, you’re two of a kind, crazy with courage. For what? How to die like a gentleman, how to die by the rules – when the only important thing is how to live like a human being! – Major Shears (William Holden), Bridge on the River Kwai
The original poster showcased the stunning visuals and exotic locales of the film
1957 saw another big budget, blockbuster epic take home the Best Picture prize as the Academy made a 180 degree turn from the small pictures that won in the middle of the decade. The Bridge on the River Kwai is fondly remembered as a loud, big-explosion-style World War II drama, and while it does end with a very literal bang, it is also a sharp satire of war and the perceived “code of conduct” that is supposed to govern the butchery and depravity of war. In fact, I was shocked at the subversive of this movie, coming in a decade where Hollywood is generally remembered for its conformity.
…while the 2000s DVD highlighted the Beefcake aspect
The Bridge on the River Kwai takes place at a Japanese Prisoner of War camp in Burma. A large group of British POWs, led by career military man Colonel Nicholson (Alex Guinness – yes Obi Wan Kenobi!), arrive at the camp, marching in formation and whistling in tune. The camp’s commander, the cruel and corrupt Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), orders all the men to work on building a railroad bridge over the Kwai River for transporting Japanese Army supplies. Nicholson enters into a lengthy battle of wills with Saito over whether or not officers should be forced to work on the bright, on the grounds that the Geneva Convention prohibits manual labor from officers (Nicholson helpfully has a written copy of the Geneva Convention codes to present to Saito). Nicholson is Nicholson tortured and imprisoned in a hot box for days on end but eventually Saito acquiesces to Nicholson’s demands, in large part because construction on the bridge is being sabotaged, and failure to complete it will result in his death.
In order to restore order among his men, Nicholson does an about face and begins taking construction of the bridge seriously, eventually ordering even officers and the wounded to help in its construction. Nicholson believes that constructing a proper bridge will prove the superiority of the civilized British army and leave his own lasting legacy, oblivious to the fact that he is abetting his country’s enemy.
Best Actor and eventual Jedi Alec Guinness plays the proud, deluded Colonel Nicholson
Meanwhile, an American POW at the camp, Commander Shears (William Holden), escapes, and after several trials, ends up at a British base in Ceylon. Shears is no hero. He stole a dead officer’s identity in an attempt to receive better treatment from the Japanese and had a habit of robbing corpses to provide bribes for the POW commanders. The British use his falsified officer credentials to blackmail him into going back to Burma (only after the officers are astonished he wouldn’t volunteer for such a heroic mission) and destroy the bridge Nicholson is building. And thus we build to the final conflict.
The Bridge on the River Kwai is a pretty strange movie. There are no real heroes. The closest to a traditional hero is the tough-talking Shears, but he denounces heroics (as in the above quote), shows cowardice, steals, lies and is actually fairly unpleasant. Nicholson stands up for his beliefs, but he does so to such a ridiculous degree that he loses sight of the bigger picture and succumbs to his own hubris. Saito shifts from villain to comic relief as he loses control of his camp to the harsher treatment and plans of Nicholson, his supposed prisoner. I enjoyed all these subversive aspects of the film. It kind of shifts into a straight action movie towards the end as Shears leads a march towards the bridge but also keeps track of the follies of the leaders of war, who expect men to behave in an orderly fashion at the height of chaos. And the movie is filled with delightful ironies – Shears is the only man who can successfully complete the mission, but is the only man who doesn’t want to do it; Shears kicks a broken radio out of frustration only to fix it and make his mission 10 times harder; Nicholson puts a plaque with his own name on the bridge he helped the Japanese to build to fight the army Nicholson is serving.
Just one example of the stunning visuals of the movie (and the titular Bridge)
And my god, this movie is beautiful to look at. Shot by legendary director David Lean, who specialized in beautiful big shots of exotic locales, Lean found his wheelhouse in the shots of brutal heat beating down in the jungles of Burma (if you want to see shirtless men sweating profusely in sweltering environments, this is the movie for you!). Like in Around the World in 80 Days, part of Bridge’s appeal is to showcase the epic panoramas and amazing visuals television could not yet capture, and Lean more than succeeds. The final climax on the and around the bridge is one stunning visual after another.
The Bridge on the River Kwai feels too long – the battle of wills between Nicholson and Saito takes up the first hour of the movie and feels like it could have been cut by a quarter and still had the desired effect. But the movie still provides a surprisingly tense and funny, but not flippant, look at war and the “rules” that govern it (and ultimately condemn those who fight in it).
Trivia: Because the writers of the screenplay for Bridge on the River Kwai , Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman, were on the notorious Blacklist, the author of the original book, Pierre Boulle, initially received the Oscar for Best Screenplay, even though he had nothing to do with the movie. Wilson and Foreman were eventually given Oscars for the movie nearly 30 years later.
Other Oscars: Best Director, David Lean; Best Actor: Alec Guinness; Best Writing Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium; Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Film; Best Film Editing; Best Cinematography
Box Office: $17.1 Million (#1 for the year)
Other Notable Films of 1957: Peyton Place*; Jailhouse Rock (First Elvis Movie); Old Yeller; The Prince and the Showgirl; An Affair to Remember; Witness for the Prosecution*; 12 Angry Men*; Sayonara*; The Three Faces of Eve;
*Best Picture Nominee
Operation: Oscar 