This movie is a British production, yet the AFI included it on its list of top American movies. When we watched Lawrence of Arabia eight weeks ago, I sent an email to the AFI inquiring about this, as LoA was a British production as well.
They promptly replied, “Lawrence of Arabia was made by a British film company called Horizon Pictures, however, most of the financial contributions were made by American investors. To qualify for our lists, the film must be either backed financially by a substantial amount of American money, or be made by American filmmakers with a mostly American cast.” I’ll make the safe assumption that Bridge on the River Kwai fits the same criteria.
I shamefully admit that I’ve never seen this movie; however, I do have the DVD in my grubby little hands. Hopefully I’ll have something witty and insightful to say tomorrow morning after I watch this.
Huh, just wrote a review of BOTRK for the IMDB. I think it’s a classic, and actually prefer it to Lawrence of Arabia; some of the best cinematography and use of ambient sound ever, IMO, and Guinness’ portrayal of Nicholson is freakin’ amazing. Hard to imagine that Charles Laughton was the original choice for the part.
Allow me to slip in a quick rant, however:
What’s up with the morons on the IMDB who pile on to this movie for its supposed infidelity to the facts of the prisoner labor used to build the Burma railway? The general line seems to be “Lean sugar-coats the brutality of the work, hardly anyone gets killed on-camera, where are the locals, the scenery isn’t right, blah blah blah”. Can these people not visualize that 1) Lean was making a study of two cultures in conflict, not a documentary 2) late '50’s audiences would never have stood for a movie in which the majority of the cast die in the most gruesome way 3) the scenery fits most people’s image of what the jumgles of Indo-China might look like, so what’s the problem? Sheesh.
I think part of the genius of the film is the way that Lean shows the human toll without endless shots of diseased corpses. The opening shot of a railway lined with crosses, the gaunt wounded hobbling into the camp behind the main body of prisoners, and Nicholson’s walk across the compound after Saito summons him from the ‘oven’, make the suffering of the allied prisoners clear enough, to me at least.
That is a catchy piece of music. Unfortunately, when I was a kid, my step-father taught it to one of our cockatiels. That took some of the charm out of it.
I finally got around to seeing BotRK last winter, during a DVD-renting binge. Great movie, and I really can’t find any faults in it.
Well, except two. The sole female character would never make it past the second draft these days, and William Holden’s character was a little too rah-rah-USA-rules for my (American) tastes.