The Bridge on the River Kwai

David Lean began his epic period with The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), a stellar adaptation of a so-so Pierre Boulle novel about the madness of war. Lean refines Boulle's story, creating a film that mixes conventional heroics and character drama into a painfully ironic satire. Although not quite as technically refined as Lawrence of Arabia or Lean's later epics, and in spite of a few minor story flaws, Kwai remains a classic war movie and one of Lean's best works.

Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) and his battalion of British soldiers, having surrendered to the Japanese at Singapore, are force-marched into Camp 36 in the Burmese jungle. Under the command of the brutal Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), the camp's previous occupants have died working on a Japanese railway - and Nicholson's men are to construct a railway bridge across the Kwai River. Nicholson refuses to collaborate when Saito orders officers to work, and after a lengthy battle of wills Saito backs down - but medical officer Clipton (James Donald) is appalled when Nicholson decides to build a better bridge than the Japanese could have. Meanwhile, Commander Shears (William Holden), an American POW at the same camp, escapes into the jungle and somehow reaches Ceylon, only to be sent back with a commando team led by gung-ho Major Warden (Jack Hawkins), with orders to blow up the bridge.

Working with leftist screenwriters Carl Foreman (The Guns of Navarone) and Michael Wilson (his later Lawrence of Arabia collaborator), Lean crafts a potent anti-war tale. As a realistic depiction of POW life and war, it's not up to snuff; the film is constructed, rather, as an ironic, multi-layered commentary on war. Kwai is set up as a straightforward adventure film, full of commandos, heroic prisoners of war and brutal prison guards, then shows them to be lingering malcontents, hand-wringing neurotics and borderline psychopaths. Lean provides a story that's briskly-paced and fascinating, mixing action with character, adventure with drama, appealing to both the art house crowd and the average movie-goer.

Kwai is full of wonderful ambiguities, subtleties and contradictions. Nicholson's seemingly noble stand against Saito is belied when he enthusiastically constructs an excellent bridge. Nicholson has a fair point - his men are better served working together than wasting away under Japanese bayonets - but the fact that he's helping the enemy completely escapes him. Warden, the man of action, is crippled early in the mission and forced to play a passive role in the attack on the bridge. Shears escapes from the camp only to be brought back into the jungle after his true identity is revealed. Saito is set up as a brutal commandant, but is portrayed as a stubborn, unhappy man haunted by indecision - if anything, I'd say he is the most sympathetic character. The film isn't exactly subtle - its final line is "Madness!", after all - but Lean presents it so well that one can't really complain.

That's not to say the film is flawless. One could complain about the lack of historical accuracy (though it is based on a novel) or believability; it's hard to buy that the POWs would accept Nicholson's shenanigans in real life, and certain set pieces (namely the vaudeville act towards the end of the film) ring false. Realism isn't a big issue, though. The commando side of the story isn't quite as compelling as the Nicholson-Saito conflict, though changing Shears from British to American probably helps the film. Producer Sam Spiegel, wanting to provide a "romantic" angle, shoehorns in a lame scene with a flirtatious nurse (Ann Shears), along with a cadre of attractive Siamese women who accompany the commando mission. These bows to commercialism are certainly forgivable, though.

Lean adapts himself to the epic format with little difficulty. Although Jack Hildyard's cinematography is a bit more stuffy and conventional than Freddie Young's later work, Lean and Hildyard, making extensive use of the Sri Lankan jungle, capture many striking images - most notably, the huge "stampede" of fruit bats during the commando's first skirmish with the Japanese. The incredible final set piece - with the horribly tense build-up, the blunt anti-heroic shootout, and the explosive, wonderfully ambiguous finale - remains among the best endings in movie history. Malcolm Arnold's score is a mixed bag: he makes fine use of the infamous Colonel Bogey March and composes a nice march theme of his own, but the rest of the score is fairly conventional epic music, nothing like what Maurice Jarre would provide for Lean's later works.

Alec Guinness won a well-deserved Oscar as Nicholson, capturing the full breadth of his difficult character. Guinness makes Nicholson neither a conventional hero nor a demented madman, but an officer trapped by his own destructive, short-sighted sense of honor and pride. It's Guinness's very best performance, with the possible exception of The Horse's Mouth. Sessue Hayakawa (who was Oscar-nominated) does nearly as well, playing Saito as a conflicted, man, developing from conventionally villainous to sympathetic and pitiable. William Holden is at his swaggering, cynical best, and Jack Hawkins ably mixes humor and heroics as Warden. Geoffrey Horne is a bit stiff as Joyce, the greenhorn commando, and Ann Sears does nothing with a useless character, but James Donald, Andre Morrel and Percy Herbert acquit themselves well in small parts.

Bridge on the River Kwai is an excellent war film, successful as both a fun adventure film and an ironic allegory. Filled with ambiguity and subtlety, it reveals further layers upon repeat viewings, and provides an unforgettable cinematic experience.