Great Movies To Stream: The Bridge on the River Kwai
Sir Alec Guinness as Lt. Colonel Nicholson
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Columbia Pictures. Directed by David Lean. Oscars (7): Best Picture, Director (Lean), Actor (Guinness), Screenplay, Cinematography, Music, Editing. With brilliant performances by Sessue Hayakawa and William Holden. Rotten Tomatoes: 94%. AFI 100 #13.
Lt. Colonel Nicholson is the epitome of the stiff-upper-lipped British officer. He finds himself responsible for maintaining the morale and discipline of a group of British soldiers in a hell-on-earth World War II Japanese prison camp along the River Kwai in Burma. The one remaining gap in a Japanese military supply route, the Kwai must be bridged, and the Japanese keep failing at it.
To shore up his men’s spirits, Nicholson takes over construction, and he and the inmates— who are now running the asylum—design and build a stunning span. Obsessed with perfection and taking a fatally misguided pride in the project, Nicholson entirely loses sight of his principal duty.
While the light colonel builds a bridge, an Allied team moves overland through heavy jungle to destroy it. As the team lays explosive charges, they find Nicholson defending a bridge he’s built for the enemy, rather than fighting for the future of Western civilization. Only in the moment before he dies does Nicholson awaken from his obsessional coma and attempt to help.
Gorgeous cinematography, a poignant performance by Sessue Hayakawa, and an unforgettably brilliant, brave, blind, and quintessentially self-deluded military character—make this film an incredible journey of insight.