Il ponte sul fiume Kwai

The Bridge on the River Kwai – David Lean's first epic, a genre he would later be associated with more than any other. Previously having made his mark as a director of deep and often psychological dramas, Lean's easy transition into bigger pictures reflects the change that was taking place in the genre itself, moving from the grandiose spectacle of De Mille et al, towards the "intimate" epic of the late 50s and early 60s.

We are also here seeing the development of the war, or rather, the anti-war picture. Prior to this most anti-war or anti-military pictures were small-scale dramas, whereas all the big war films were rousing flag wavers. Bridge on the River Kwai ticks both boxes, and is all the more effective for it. It is an anti-war film which prevents itself from becoming static or preachy, and an action film with a humanist edge.

The problem presented to David Lean, aside from the fact that he had never done anything on this scale before, is that Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman's multi-layered screenplay contains many different strands, with stories told from multiple points of view. Lean fortunately had dealt with such fragmentary narratives before – 1952's The Sound Barrier for example – and here he actually uses the trappings of the epic to keep the narrative focused. This was the first time he had used the cinemascope aspect ratio, but rather than employing it purely to show off the stunning landscapes (although he does do a fair bit of that too, and why not?) he also uses the width of the screen to cram varying elements into the frame. For example, in the scene where Nicholson (Alec Guinness) surveys the railway construction with his fellow officers, the figure of Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) can be seen on a hill in the background. This reminds us of his presence, and subtly keeps his story arc going.

Lean's use of colour is also remarkable. Of course, when your film is set in a PoW camp in the middle of a jungle, you have a fairly limited colour palette anyway, but Lean's crafty choice of camera angle and positioning is calculated to show off different tones at different times. In the opening moments, highly reminiscent of The African Queen (which, like Kwai, was produced by Sam Spiegel) he begins with the greens of the jungle – a fairly cold colour. As we descend through the trees, Lean gradually turns up the heat with those dusty yellows and browns. For the middle section of the film, he cools things off again with more lush greens and even some vibrant shades, before returning to the stark hot tones for the tense finale. Again, this is all very subtle director's work, but these touches do create little shifts in mood and influence the way we view each scene.

Lean's handling of the larger canvas was however not yet quite up to best showing off his actors upon it. That's a shame with such a good cast, although Alec Guinness in one of his earliest non-comedic roles shone through enough to garner an Oscar. William Holden was also deserving of at least a nomination, but didn't get one. To my mind though the best performance of the picture was that of Sessue Hayakawa. Hayakawa was an incredibly powerful silent film actor – check him out in De Mille's The Cheat (1915) – and it's great to see him at the top of his game again here.

Bombarded with awards, Bridge on the River Kwai is typical Oscar-winning fare, particularly for the conflicted political climate of the 1950s. It can be read as a damning critique of war, but also enjoyed as a gripping action film. This broad appeal, the depth of the screenplay and Lean's assured direction made it a hit in its day and allowed its popularity to endure in the generations since.

In my opinion, David Lean is one of the cinema's greatest directors, in the highest pantheon along with the likes of Kurosawa, Welles, De Sica, and Bergman. Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" and his vastly underrated "A Passage to India" are unmitigated masterpieces, and some of his 'smaller' films, such as "Summertime," "Great Expectations," and "Brief Encounter" are true gems.

"The Bridge on the River Kwai" should justly be grouped with "Lawrence" and "India," as all three are sweeping in scope, and all three are some of the most thematically ambitious films ever made, reflecting a mature filmmaker at the peak of his craft. Like "Lawrence," "Kwai" does not flinch for a moment while it forces the viewer to gaze deep into the chasm of the human condition, and it is not an easy film to take in, as it presents us with profoundly symbolic (archetypal, you might say) character types, most of whom elicit both admiration and repulsion, sympathy and frustration. And while the film explores these character themes at length, it is ultimately content to leave the conflicts unresolved, happy simply to present us with the Hamlet-like paradoxes that are the human condition in all its glory and stupidity.

If there is any clear, unequivocal message that can be gleaned from "Kwai," it is an ode in praise of stoic virtue and the struggle for dignity and meaning in the face of a hostile universe-- in this case, in the face of an inhuman and absurd war. However, ironically, it is in this very aspect that the film, in my opinion, has its greatest failing. In retrospect, it would seem that in order to distill the film's philosophical elements down to universal themes, and perhaps in order to make the story palatable to 1950s audiences (and more Oscar-worthy?), the film greatly tones down the very inhumanity of the historical situation it portrays. In reality, the Japanese were perfectly capable of engineering their own bridges and, far more importantly, the building of the Burma-Thailand Railroad was an atrocity so vast and inhuman that it can only be rightly compared with the Nazi Holocaust and the Khmer Rouge Genocide. The true "stiff upper lip" displayed by the surviving prisoners-of-war from that hell in the jungle was not an insistence that a bridge be built right if it is to be built at all, etc.; the true "stiff upper lip" was mere survival itself, as thousands upon thousands were dying of starvation, overwork, constant beatings, summary executions, disease and exposure. While it is true that not every film about war needs to be "Shoah," "Schindler's List," or "The Killing Fields," and "Kwai" should be viewed on its own terms, as a film solely about the themes and characters it has chosen to depict; nevertheless, by so greatly downplaying the horrors of the actual historical situation it portrays, the film ultimately does a great disservice to the hundreds of thousands of people of several nationalities who suffered and died in the building of this monstrosity of a railroad. While it seems to me that the intentions of the filmmakers were noble, that Lean sought to explore the struggle of the human spirit under the greatest adversity, the film's light treatment of the still-seldom-discussed topic of Japanese war crimes inadvertently trivializes that very struggle.

Nonetheless, I still feel that "Kwai" is an amazing cinematic achievement in its own right. And while it would only be with heavy reservation that I place it on a list of "greatest films," it does manage to squeak onto my hypothetical Top 100.

About as Oscar-worthy as any film made in the '50s is David Lean's gripping BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. Based loosely on a real-life incident, it tells the story of an imprisoned British officer (Alec Guinness) who loses sight of his mission when forced to build a bridge for the Japanese that will enable the enemy to carry supplies by train through the jungle during World War II. Guinness plays the crisp British officer to perfection, brilliant in all of his scenes but especially in his confrontations with Sessue Hayakawa. William Holden has a pivotal role as one of the prisoners who escapes and enjoys his freedom for awhile before being asked to return with a small squadron to destroy the bridge. Jack Hawkins and Geoffrey Horne have colorful roles too and all are superb under David Lean's direction.

The jungle settings filmed in Ceylon add the necessary realism to the project and there is never a suspension of interest although the story runs well over two-and-a-half hours. The film builds to a tense and magnificent climax with an ending that seems to be deliberately ambiguous and thought provoking. Well worth watching, especially if shown in the restored letterbox version now being shown on TCM.

Some of the best lines go to William Holden and he makes the most of a complex role--a mixture of cynicism and heroism in a character that ranks with his best anti-hero roles in films of the '50s. He brings as much conviction to his role as Alec Guinness does and deserved a Best Actor nomination that he did not get.

It's fair to say you're quite a regimented man, often intransigent, but you have a detailed plan, how to keep soldiers engaged, avoiding idleness and rage, on this occasion, it's a river that you'll span. Although the circumstances seem to be all wrong, for you to band all of your men into a throng, and get them building for the foe, wagers of war won't let you go, it might be questioned where allegiances belong. So just imagine you're surprise upon completion, when endeavours undertaken find deletion, and your world cascades and falls, as detonation trips and calls, and you wish instead of wood, you used concretion.

I have watched this movie several times and it is just getting better and better all the time. Why? Because this movie actually has a message built-in, this isn't a violent story, like "Saving Private Ryan" - also a good movie with a message - but it is still not a slow story.

When I last saw it, I realised that there was something in the movie that I had never understood, this isn't a movie about war, torture or how it was to be a prisoner of war; this is a movie about madness and pride. The pride shows both in Saiko and Colonel Nicholson, they are so full of it that it is almost impossible for them to come to a civil-conclusion with the problems they have with each other. The madness is shown in Colonel Nicholson and Holden's character - here they are, two prisoners of war and they don't want to help each other out, instead they try to reach separate goals, and they are both willing to die for it.

After you have watched this movie one is amazed by the performances made by Alec Guinness and William Holden and I must say that this is therefore one of the best War/Drama movies ever made My vote? 9 out of 10 naturally.