“One day the war will be over. And I hope that the people that use this bridge in years to come will remember how it was built and who built it. Not a gang of slaves, but soldiers, British soldiers, even in captivity.” – Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness)

The Bridge on the River Kwai was David Lean’s twelfth film and his first epic. The film starred Alec Guinness and William Holden as P.O.W.’s working to build and/or destroy a bridge for the Japanese during World War II and was based on a French-language novel by Pierre Boulle.

Boulle had mixed fact and fiction in his story and it contained many historical inaccuracies. He based his novel, published in 1952, on his own experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and on an infamous construction project that he wasn’t involved with. The Japanese did indeed force British, Dutch, Australian, and American prisoners to build the Burma Railway, resulting in some 13,000 POW deaths and at least 80,000 civilian deaths. The real Kwai River was just a trickle near Burma, where Boulle set his bridge; the actual bridge had been built 200 miles away, near Bangkok. A sketch of that bridge was used as the basis for the fictional one.

Sam Spiegel had founded Horizon Pictures (GB) in 1947 in partnership with John Huston. The company produced The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in 1951, after which Huston left the company. Spiegel wanted a director for the picture he wanted to make from Boulle’s book but had been turned down by Fred Zinnemann, William Wyler, and Carol Reed. Katherine Hepburn recommended David Lean, with whom she had worked on Summertime (1955). Spiegel took on Lean, a director who had made several well-received films in Britain but was unknown internationally and had never directed the kind of epic that Spiegel envisaged.

With a director on board the process of adapting Boulle’s novel began as Boulle himself didn’t speak or read English. Carl Foreman who had been previously blacklisted wrote the screenplay but David Lean didn’t approve it. Calder Willingham was hired and Lean disliked his script too. Michael Wilson, another blacklisted writer, went to Ceylon where Lean was in pre-production and the two worked together to produce a screenplay. Columbia Pictures were the distributors. Lean and Wilson had already diverted from the novel by introducing an American character, Commander Shears (in the novel he was a British commando). Harry Cohn of Columbia demanded Shears be given extra scenes as the script had been written without any love interest. Shears (William Holden) got to romance a nurse (Ann Sears) who was hastily inserted into the screenplay.

David Lean’s choice for the senior British Officer, Colonel Nicholson, was Charles Laughton a fine actor with such credits as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) on his resume. Laughton, however, was in poor physical shape—great for playing the corpulent Henry VIII in Young Bess (1953), not so great for playing a British military officer in a prison camp. Lean insisted that Laughton could lose weight before shooting began, but Columbia Pictures’ insurance underwriters refused to cover him, saying he was too unhealthy to endure several months on location in the jungles of Ceylon.

Lean had worked with Alec Guinness before in his Dickens adaptations(Great Expectations, 1946 and Oliver Twist, 1948) but Guinness had turned to comedies such as Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955). Lean had reservations about Guinness being able to handle drama on an epic scale, Guinness in his turn was unhappy with the screenplay because it reduced Nicholson to secondary status. He didn’t like the next draft of the screenplay, either, because it made Nicholson “a blinkered character.” He also didn’t like hearing that he was Lean’s second choice for the role, a fact made more awkward when he arrived in Ceylon and Lean greeted him with, “Of course, you know I really wanted Charles Laughton.”

Lean and Guinness clashed on set over the role of Nicholson; Guinness wanted to play the part with a sense of humour and sympathy, while Lean thought Nicholson should be “a bore.” On another occasion, they argued over the scene where Nicholson reflects on his career in the army. Lean filmed the scene from behind Guinness and exploded in anger when Guinness asked him why he was doing this. After Guinness was done with the scene, Lean said, “Now you can all fuck off and go home, you English actors. Thank God that I’m starting work tomorrow with an American actor.”

The American actor was William Holden who Lean wanted as he was a big star and recent Oscar winner. Sam Spiegel had wanted Cary Grant but realised Holden’s box office draw and offered him $300,000 (double Lean’s salary) plus ten per cent of the gross. Sessue Hayakawa played the Japanese Commandant; he had been a Hollywood star in silent films earning $5000 a week in 1915 but finding work difficult with the coming of sound and then by increasing anti-Japanese sentiment in America. He had basically retired when Lean approached him to play Colonel Saito in Kwai, a performance that earned Hayakawa an Oscar nomination.

One of the reasons Lean had been in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) for pre-production was to supervise the construction of the title bridge over the river Kelani. It was 425 feet long, 90 feet high, and cost $52,085 out of the film’s $2 million budget. The producer’s press release, though claimed the bridge had cost $250,000 in order to emphasise the epic nature of the movie. As production designer Donald Ashton explained, it was so cheap because “we used local labour and elephants; and the timber was cut nearby.” The elephants would take breaks every four hours and lie around in the water, whether the crew wanted them to or not.

Alec Guinness’ character blew up the bridge but Guinness didn’t see the explosion. He had completed all of his scenes and returned to England when the explosion was filmed. The destruction of the bridge as depicted in the movie is entirely fictional. In reality, two bridges were built, a temporary wooden one and a permanent steel and concrete one a few months later. Both bridges were used for two years until they were destroyed by Allied aerial bombings. The steel bridge was repaired, and is still in use today.

Composer Malcolm Arnold had ten days to write the score for the film as Sam Spiegel wanted to release the film in time for the Academy Award nominations. Arnold incorporated the military march Colonel Bogey, composed in 1914 by Kenneth Alford, a military band conductor. David Lean had become exasperated by the extras being unable to march in time. (Many of the extras were locals made up in whiteface to look caucasian). Lean shouted ‘For God’s sake, whistle a march to keep time to.’ and one of them, George Siegatz, began to whistle Colonel Bogey. Fortunately no words were sung. In the Second World War the most common lyrics were:

Hitler

Has only got one ball

Goering

Has two but they are small.

Himmler

Has something sim’lar

But poor old Goebbels

Has no balls

At all

The film received positive reviews and proved popular at the box office, Variety reported that the film was the No. 1 moneymaker of 1958 in the United States and Canada, By October 1960, the film had earned worldwide rentals of $30 million. Spiegel’s eagerness to finish the film in time for nominations paid off. Malcolm Arnold’s rushed score won him a Grammy. The Golden Globes saw Best Picture for Lean and Spiegel, Best Director for Lean and Best Actor for Guinness. Sessue Hayakawa was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. The BAFTAs repeated wins for Spiegel, Lean and Guinness.

The 30th Academy Awards saw eight nominations. Only Sessue Hayakawa failed to turn his nomination into a win. Malcolm Arnold added an Oscar to his Grammy, JackHilyard picked up a statuette for Best Cinematography, Peter Taylor took Best Editing and Spiegel, Lean and Guinness each took an award in their respective categories. And the Best Adapted Screenplay went to a man who had not adapted it nor could he read it if he had – Pierre Boulle. Such was the power of the blacklist and anti-communist hysteria that Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson were nowhere mentioned.

Nearing the end of his life, Carl Foreman returned from England where he had lived since 1952 to the United States, where he died of a brain tumour in 1984 in Beverly Hills, California. The day before he died he was told he would receive his Oscar for writing The Bridge on the River Kwai. Michael Wilson had also returned to the US in 1964 after nine years in France. He was posthumously awarded his second Academy Award in 1984 for The Bridge on the River Kwai.

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