On TCM. Just finished watching. We’ve had many, many threads on best movies.
Just think it holds up where many don’t.
My top ten.
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My dad was just watching that too (he fought in WWII but not in the Pacific). I’ve seen it before and although it is an example of great, old-style Hollywood film making, the almost completely fictional story wrapped in a non-fiction, recent, and disturbingly horrible real-world setting has always made me uncomfortable. Always wondered, back in the non-social media days when it came out, how much this truly bothered recent veterans.
Considering what we know (and knew when the film was made) about the Imperial Japanese’s savage brutality, I still squirm watching a great English actor like Alec Guinness portray such a bumbling, treasonous, stiff-upper-lip British caricature, even if he did play it to perfection…
He had to do his duty, Old Boy.
You might also enjoy the movie (and especially the book) King Rat.
I did. Haven’t seen it in ages. Great acting.
I personally wouldn’t call that “old style” Hollywood. “Old style” was a typical film 1930-1956. This was out of the box. Lean was cutting edge in changing pictures of that period. With Bridge on the River Kwai(1957), Lawrence of Arabia(1962), and * Dr. Zhivago(1965)*, he leap-frogged ahead of the norm.
Great movie.
And in case an earworm didn’t penetrate your skull upon reading the title of this thread, here you go.
Alec Guinness played the role to perfection, yes; but I wouldn’t call him necessarily bumbling or treasonous.
To me, Colonel Nicholson (Guinness’ character) did what he had to do to save his men. He endured time in the “hot box,” while his men did not. He encouraged the men to build the bridge, but given the way in which the Japanese soldiers held the British prisoners in contempt, did he have a choice? The British POWs would have all been killed, and more slave labour would have been brought in. The bridge would have been built regardless. The film made it very plain that human life meant very little to this group of Japanese guards.
I’ll admit that Nicholson may have lost a few mental faculties with his eventual enthusiasm towards building a safe and solid bridge. But I’d also suggest that it was in the best interests of his men: as long as they build, and are regarded as good bridge builders, they are valuable, and won’t be slaughtered wholesale when their job is done.
It’s been many decades since I watched this movie, but it did make a strong impression on me. Alec Guiness is a favorite.
In the recent thread “How far do you live from train tracks?”, I almost mentioned that the famous Kanchanaburi railway’s terminus is almost the closest train track to me, as the crow flies. From time to time, the Thai government proposes completing the Thai-Burma Railway but there seems to be a strong feeling among many that work on that railroad should never be resumed.
I was in Kanchanaburi where the original bridge was built and where a new one stands today. There is a museum beside it and there are mannequins of emaciated prisoners and Japanese guards. There were a very large number of Japanese tourists there and many of them were taking photos with the mannequins. Arm over the prisoner’s shoulder and huge smile and thumbs up kinda pics. There is a pic of some of the mannequins below. T’was strange to me to see that although I knew that Japan doesn’t have a great history of teaching about their deeds during WWII.
http://www.luxury-thailand-travel.com/images/Kanchanaburi-War-Museum-2.JPG
Oh and fantastic movie 
Excellent movie. It and The Great Escape are probably the best of their era.
I’ve mentioned here before that my grandfather was in the Dutch army. He and his family were captured by the Japanese in Indonesia and spent the war as POW’s. He survived working on the Thai-Burma Railway and post-war spent some time with graves registration teams locating and identifying the bodies of those prisoners who had died.
When Bridge came out he saw it at the movies and it was realistic enough to give him some pretty bad nightmares for weeks after.
I know that he and my grandmother didn’t hold much of grudge against the Japanese as a nation for what happened during the war. Which isn’t to say he wouldn’t have give a few individual guards a good thumping had he the chance 
They were really pissed at the Germans for what was done in Holland - it was one of the reasons they emigrated to Australia.
The bridge metaphor was, to say the least, clunky. Commentary on the irrationality of [military] honour and the British class sytem more interesting but often cringeworthy. Somewhat more naive times, perhaps.
They knew how to write Oscar bait back then. Outstandingly filmed imo - David Lean was always a master of his subect and of the tools at his disposal.
A good movie, but the main character loses it for me at the end. When he discovers the detonation wires, he should have just surpressed a grin and shut the hell up about it. He should have realized that his creation was also a valued target of his own military and not tried to interfere with the demolition.
Normally I can guess the date of most any movie to within a year or two but I’m admittedly shocked to see that this one wasn’t made in the 60s. I well remember our family sitting down after dinner with good friends and watching the show for the first time, this around 1970. I just assumed it was newer at the time but turns out it’s older than I am.
Loved the movie, between Lean’s direction and an absolutely stellar cast it’s hard not to and for the most part it’s aged respectably well.
Yeah, the very first time I actually watched it all the way thru I was kind of shocked at the silliness of the final scene. First Guinness going so far as to yell to the Japanese soldiers for help, then Holden’s character dying a cliched war-movie death, but most of all seeing Guinness go limp and faint like a woman and fall right onto the detonator! It was as though this great spectacle of a film had suddenly turned into a Roadrunner cartoon! 
I have a hard time watching this movie nowadays. After I learned what it was really like for the slave labor, it takes me out of the flick to see the Colonel being so defiant. And succeeding at it! But the directors use of the sound of the train approaching at the end to build tension is masterful.
My earworm is “Madness! Madness!”
I use it all the time around here.
Well Alec Guinness was himself a veteran. Almost a certainty that there were other people involved in the production who were “recent veterans”. The second world war was a total war and that meant that service was not for the a small subset as it is today, but something most everyone did.
So, the sensitivity we show today was not really an issue back then.
But this is the whole point of the story.
I agree with Spoons that the Nicholson character was neither bumbling nor treasonous; his reasoning (in choosing to cooperate with the prison-camp commandant) was sound. His choice did protect his men.
His rationalism failed him at the end when the urge to protect what he’d built at such cost overshadowed the facts (that the existence of the bridge would harm his own side in the war). This is a very human story. We will act rationally up to a point–and then don’t recognize when we’ve crossed over into irrationality. It’s the human tragedy.
Seldom has this been so well dramatized as in this movie.
It’s a great film… one can almost feel the jungle heat and the biting mosquitoes.
I’ve never seen this movie, but I read a book some years ago (can’t remember the name) which was a collection of military lists written by one man (don’t remember the author, either): Greatest Generals in History, Most Significant Battles, Worst Strategic Decisions, etc. So there’s a lot of room for controversy. But according to the author, the single item that upset more people than anything else in the book (his father-in-law stopped speaking to him) was his choice for Worst War Movie of All Time: Bridge on the River Kwai. His favorite? Zulu.
(I haven’t seen that one either. I just like books of lists.)