The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)


William Holden          Shears
Alec Guinness           Colonel Nicholson
Jack Hawkins            Major Warden
Sessue Hayakawa         Colonel Saito
James Donald            Major Clipton
Geoffrey Horne          Lieutenant Joyce
Andre Morell            Colonel Green
Peter Williams          Captain Reeves
John Boxer              Major Hughes
Percy Herbert           Grogan
Harold Goodwin          Baker
Ann Sears               Nurse
Henry Okawa             Captain Kanematsu
K. Katsumoto            Lieutenant Miura
M. R B Chakrabandhu     Yai
Vilaiwan Seeboonreaung  Siamese Girl

Directed by:            David Lean
Produced by:            Sam Spiegel, Jim Painten


British POWs in Burma are employed by the Japanese to build a bridge; meanwhile, British agents seek to 
destroy it. After surrendering his unit to the Japanese. Colonel Nicholson demands his men behave by the 
book, and refuses to cooperate with the equally dutiful Japanese commander. When the Japapese insist that 
the POWs build a bridge, they decide to build the best one possible, thereby restoring morale. But after 
one of the men escapes to Australia and lets the British commander there know of the operation, he is 
sent back to the jungle to destroy the tactically-crucial bridge that his comrades are desperately trying 
to complete. 

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The film deals with the situation of British prisoners of war during World War II who are ordered to build 
a bridge to accommodate the Burma-Siam railway. Their instinct is to sabotage the bridge but, under the 
leadership of Colonel Nicholson, they are persuaded that the bridge should be constructed as a symbol of 
British morale, spirit and dignity in adverse circumstances. At first, the prisoners admire Nicholson when 
he bravely endures torture rather than compromise his principles for the benefit of the Japanese commandant 
Saito. He is an honorable but arrogant man, who is slowly revealed to be a deluded obsessive. He convinces 
himself that the bridge is a monument to British character, but actually is a monument to himself, and his 
insistence on its construction becomes a subtle form of collaboration with the enemy. Unknown to him, the 
Allies have sent a mission into the jungle, led by Warden and an American, Shears, to blow up the bridge.