The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Written by Carl Foreman & Michael Wilson

Directed by David Lean

30 films! One-third of the way through the list! It’s crazy!

As usual, I want to spend a bit of time discussing this milestone before diving into the film proper.

The biggest impact on the last ten films, like the ten preceding it, has been World War II. I don’t mean that from a topic point of view (only two of the past ten winners have been “about” the war), but more in a shifting maturity. Where characters were more black and white before, now there’s shades of grey. Topics that audiences would have thought unthinkable to see on screen 30 years before now are touched on maturely, and this trend will continue on. From manipulation in All About Eve, corruption in All the King’s Men or On the Waterfront, or infidelity in From Here to Eternity, the loss of innocence that the two World Wars introduced is still reverberating more than ten years after their conclusion.

The 30th Academy Awards, at which The Bridge on the River Kwai won Best Picture

My color analogy also points out that this decade really begins the shift from black and white to color. Where the previous decade had only one color film (Gone With the Wind), this decade has four (An American in Paris, The Greatest Show on Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, and The Bridge on the River Kwai). In fact, there’s just one more black and white film to win Best Picture (1960’s The Apartment) until 1993’s Schindler’s List. With the country recovering from the Great Depression and the war, Studios could finally begin spending money on color film, taking the form in a big leap forward towards how we know it today.

Let’s talk about The Bridge on the River Kwai, shall we?

This film is not the kind of film I usually like, but I’ll admit I found myself enjoying it more than I thought I would. The performances, the story, the technical elements...it all came together into a movie that, while I may not jump at the chance to watch again, was remarkably well made.

Building the bridge

I want to start with the cinematography. From the onset, the film uses techniques that, while this film may not have invented, certainly seem outside the norm from what’s come before on this list. It’s difficult to describe, but the way the camera moves, the angles it uses...the film felt much more modern than the time it came out. I remarked during the film that, had I seen the film out of context, I’d have guessed that the film came out sometime during the 70’s, not in the late 50’s. There’s still an “old film” visual aspect about the picture itself, but it FEELS ahead of its time. The film DOES stumble in its incessant use of “day-for-night” shooting, where sequences that take place at night are shot during the day, then corrected during the film development to appear to happen at night. It’s an uncommon technique (at least, today it is), but this film features A LOT of it. So much so, that it begins to feel distracting. It’s hard to take things seriously when you’re laughing that there’s yet ANOTHER day-for-night sequence.

Alec Guiness

Sessue Hayakawa

I’ve known Sir Alec Guinness only as Obi-Wan, so it was a delight to watch him in this film, in a role that earned him his only Best Actor award. It’s a finely crafted performance, chock full of nuance and subtlety. In a strange sense, I relate him to the character of Willie Stark from All the King’s Men, in that here is a character on a morally dubious slide, although Col. Nicholson is by no means as bad as Stark. Here, Nicholson slowly ends up cooperating with his Japanese captors...he does this for admittedly sensible reasons, but the fact remains that there’s a strong argument that he’s committed some sort of treason. There’s a cast of excellent performances surrounding him, but I want to point out Sessue Hayakawa’s Col. Saito, who becomes a much more sympathetic character as the film goes on. His life-and-death stakes are much more personal to him, as he will have to commit ritual suicide if the bridge is not completed in time. The scene where Nicholson achieves a victory for his company within their camp is underscored with Saito’s sobs as he brings dishonor on himself for allowing it to happen. The audience begins to feel torn: who is the enemy here?

The completed bridge at the climax of the film

One of the best things about the film is the final sequence, as a mixed-nationality group of soldiers attempts to blow up the bridge as a train full of enemy diplomats and soldiers crosses over it. All the major characters of the film come into play, and director David Lean expertly ratchets the tension, underscoring the entire sequence with sounds of the train’s whistle and engine growing louder and closer. It’s almost subliminal, but it works incredibly well. It’s a great lesson in something Hitchcock would talk about when discussing suspense, in that showing the audience the danger puts them on the edge of their seats (in this case, we know the bridge is wired with explosives, and we hear the train quickly approaching: will the people on the bridge discover it and stop the train? What will happen if they do find it? What happens to the people who wired the explosives if they’re discovered?). There’s also a dilemma within the audience: who do we want to succeed? The actual finale comes off as a little bit staged, but I don’t want to spoil it here. Just watch, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Overall, I feel the same about this film as I do about, weirdly enough, Fiddler on the Roof: it’s great, but I don’t feel the need to watch it again. It’s a fine bit of filmmaking, with really great technical aspects and performances, but it’s still just not my kind of movie. I don’t feel that I have a “type” of movie I like best, but suffice it to say that, as good as The Bridge on the River Kwai is, this isn’t it.

FINAL GRADE: B+