The Bridge on the River Kwai Facts for Kids. Image: Bridge 277 aka the real Bridge over the River Kwai, Image: The iconic poster of the 1957 classic. The Kanchanaburi Memorial sits with the cemetery grounds. The Bridge on the River Kwai, commonly referred to as the Railroad of Death or Death Railway, which stands in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, was one of only eight steel bridges of the estimated 688 that were built. as soon as he signed, Lean borrowed $2,000 from Columbia Pictures to get his teeth fixed. Has two but they are small. British English: The Top 50 Most Beautiful British Insults, British Slang: Your Guide to British Police Slang for the Telly Watcher, British Slang: Tea Time British Words for Tea and Tea Related Culture, ltimate List of Funny British Place Names, 101 Budget Britain Travel Tips 2nd Edition, Great Britons Book: Top 50 Greatest Brits Who Ever Lived, Anglotopias Grand Adventure Lands End to John OGroats. Be the first one to write a review. 18. You can also take a boat down the Kwai River . 15- "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.". Nevertheless, the leeches in the recreated swamps were real. 7. The film was based on the 1952 novel Bridge over the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle. Camps were set up at 100-metre intervals. [14][15], The film was an international co-production between companies in Britain and the United States. [49] Mike Kaplan, reviewing for Variety, described it as "a gripping drama, expertly put together and handled with skill in all departments. Work on the bridge proceeds badly, due to both the faulty Japanese engineering plans and the prisoners' slow pace and deliberate sabotage. The adventure war film The Bridge on the River Kwai may have swept the board of awards and attracted acclaim as one best films of the 20th century, but the War Office was very nervous "it would . When he asks for Saitos help in cutting the wires, the hidden commando, Lieutenant Joyce (Geoffrey Horne), leaps up and kills Saito. Before the US began rolling up Japanese possessions throughout the Pacific, and the British really started gaining momentum in Burma, Japan had carved out a large empire. What is it that makes the film 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' such an Lean shouted at them, 'For God's sake, whistle a march to keep time to.' The Bridge on the River Kwai Facts for Kids - Kiddle The Bridge on the River Kwai Movie Review | Common Sense Media Toosey later defended him in his war crimes trial after the war, and the two became friends. 13 Fascinating Facts About 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' | Mental Floss British and American intelligence officers conspire . Though he'd already earned five Oscar nominations (three for directing, two for adapting the Dickens novels) and would soon be widely celebrated for Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965), at this stage, Lean was in trouble. Spiegel had it refurbished completely and then had one mile of railway track laid for it. Toosey would provide the inspiration for Lt. Col Nicholson portrayed by Alec Guinness in the 1957 film. The Bridge On The River Kwai Film Facts. The movie won seven Academy Awards, one for Best Picture. Just a stone's throw from the Menin Gate, visit our Information Centre to learn more about the CWGC. The Bridge on the River Kwai, British-American war film, released in 1957 and directed by David Lean, that was both a critical and popular success and became an enduring classic. [44], The film was re-released in 1964 and earned a further estimated $2.6 million at the box office in the United States and Canada[45] but the following year its revised total US and Canadian revenues were reported by Variety as $17,195,000. All but a small section of the route was built in dense, malarial jungles, in sweltering heat and monsoon rains. He'd just been through a costly divorce from actress Ann Todd. 7. Why visit the Bridge on the River Kwai | Audley Travel The telecast of the film lasted more than three hours because of the commercial breaks. 17. Bridge over the River Kwai, Kanchanaburi, Thailand. Leadership Analysis: The Bridge On The River Kwai. Japanese engineers had been surveying and planning the route of the railway since 1937, and they had demonstrated considerable skill during their construction efforts across South-East Asia. Return trains are 12.55 and 15.15. [16], Director David Lean clashed repeatedly with his cast members, particularly Guinness and James Donald, who thought the novel was anti-British. Allied bombers struck the wooden bridge and its concrete counterpart in February 1945 with one of the earliest uses of guided bombs in history. 3. The Bridge on the River Kwai - filming locations - SCEEN IT Nicholson will not cooperate and finally insists that the bridge can be built only under his command. Following the raids, Thanbyuzayat was evacuated. The bridge depicted in the film is most definitely real. This Week's Toybox is . Although the Death Railway has never again reached the Myanmar border, a shorter stretch was reopened by Thailand's railway authorities between 1949 and 1958, and trains on this modern-day line cross the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai. The Bridge on the River Kwai was actually one of the reasons movies started becoming prime-time television programming. Recognising Shears, Nicholson exclaims, "What have I done? The Bridge Over the River Kwai. [31], On a BBC Timewatch programme, a former prisoner at the camp states that it is unlikely that a man like the fictional Nicholson could have risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and, if he had, due to his collaboration he would have been "quietly eliminated" by the other prisoners. Last survivor of the Bridge On The River Kwai Japanese railway The Bridge on the River Kwai, Kanchanaburi, Thailand - Travel The movie starring William Holden, Alec Guinness and Jack Hawkins was shot at more than 1 locations. 13. The film was based on the 1952 novel Bridge over the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle. Take a look below for 28 more fun and interesting facts about The Bridge on the . At its behest, Sam Spiegel asked David Lean to incorporate a love scene. The Burma-Siam Railways construction necessitated construction of over 670 bridges and numerous cuttings. In a 1988 interview with Barry Norman, Lean confirmed that Columbia almost stopped filming after three weeks because there was no white woman in the film, forcing him to add what he called "a very terrible scene" between Holden and a nurse on the beach. Those who were there did not think much of the novel or film of the Bridge of the River Kwai. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) is an epic World War II adventure/action, anti-war drama. But I am writing a factual account, and in justice to these menliving and deadwho worked on that bridge, I must make it clear that we never did so willingly. The cemetery itself is located just outside the town of Kanchanaburi at the point where the Kwai splits into the Mae Khlong and Kwai Noi rivers. The Bridge on the River Kwai poses complex interpretive issues about the vagaries of war and military behavior as conveyed by the Japanese soldiers, Commander Saito, Lt. Col. Nicholson, and the British captives. Both bridges were used for two years, until they were destroyed by Allied bombing. Kanchanaburi is served by a rail service from Bangkok Noi . Instead, the Lt. Col would stand up for his men when necessary to try to alleviate some of their hardships. You carry it in your pack like the plague. Starring Alec Guinness, it depicts the struggles and defiance of Japanese prisoners of war building the fictional Burma railway between 1943-44. Also, in the novel, the bridge is not destroyed: the train plummets into the river from a secondary charge placed by Warden, but Nicholson (never realising "what have I done?") Use our postcode search tool to discover more about the war dead from your local area. By this time, the United States and its naval and industrial might had entered the war. Find out how you can apply to become a CWGC Volunteer. There's a stench of death about you. Interested in advertising on the world's largest website dedicated to all things Britain? The Colonel Bogey March" was composed in 1914 by Kenneth Alford, a military band conductor. Alec Guiness overseeing men working on the tracks in a scene from the film 'The Bridge On The River Kwai', 1957. It was initially scripted by screenwriter Carl Foreman, who was later replaced by Michael Wilson. Lean wanted Charles Laughton (who'd starred in his 1954 film Hobson's Choice) to play Colonel Nicholson, the role that ultimately went to Alec Guinness. But the unusual move paid off for ABCthe telecast drew huge ratings with a record audience of 72 million[60] and a Nielsen rating of 38.3 and an audience share of 61%. 14. In early 1943, a contingent of British prisoners of war, led by Lt. Just as in Love is a Many Splendored Thing, normally hairy chested William Holden had to have a full body wax for his many shirtless scenes in the movie. Clipton objects, believing this to be collaboration with the enemy. [51] Time magazine praised Lean's directing, noting he demonstrates "a dazzlingly musical sense and control of the many and involving rhythms of a vast composition. Part of this project was building bridges over Thailand's Kwai Yai, at a place named Tamarkan, which is near a town named Kanchanaburi. 2023 Commonwealth War Graves Commission. 6. The movie garnered seven Academy Awards, including that for best picture, as well as three Golden Globe Awards and four BAFTA awards. The site's critical consensus reads, "This complex war epic asks hard questions, resists easy answers, and boasts career-defining work from star Alec Guinness and director David Lean. Moreover, Kanchanaburi has an annual "Bridge Over the River Kwai" week, which has a sound show to relive the moments of World War II. In fact, the cemetery is the original burial ground started by the prisoners themselves. Everywhere in the jungle, the graveyards made their appearance; starting in a small way they gradually grew bigger, until when the railway was completed at the end of the year, thousands of bodies lay in the jungle from one end to the other.. (Lean denied ever wanting Laughton for the role, despite abundant documented evidence to the contrary.). It was not long before the Japanese army overrunning Java captured Lieutenant Lamb and his men. The steel bridge was repaired and is still in use today. The Bridge on the River Kwai is a British 1957 movie from Columbia Pictures, based on Pierre Boulle's 1952 book The Bridge over the River Kwai (French: Le Pont de la Rivire Kwai). Toosey was very different from Nicholson and was certainly not a collaborator who felt obliged to work with the Japanese. Since it first graced the silver screen won the admiration of audiences everywhere and continues to do so. The Bridge over the River Kwai - Wikipedia During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. [50] William Holden was also credited for his acting for giving a solid characterization that was "easy, credible and always likeable in a role that is the pivot point of the story". The building of Bridge 277, the eponymous bridge that gave Leans film its name, was overseen by 2,000 British and Dutch prisoners of war. Please note the delivery estimate is greater than 10 business days. A regiment of British prisoners arrives, whistling the Colonel Bogey March, under the command of Colonel Nicholson (Sir Alec Guinness). The Bridge on the River Kwai, Kanchanaburi 1942. Once Spiegel relented, he realized Holden was a box office draw and offered him a great deal: $300,000 salary (about $2.5 million in 2016 dollars), plus 10 percent of the gross. In the meantime, Shears manages to escape. It was the highest-grossing film of 1957 and scooped up seven Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor. 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. True Grit, Sanctum, Green Lantern and Superman. At one point during filming, David Lean nearly drowned when he was swept away by a river current. In 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Bridge on the River Kwai the 11th greatest British film of the 20th Century. In 1941 the Japanese Army invaded Thailand. Both writers had to work in secret, as they were on the Hollywood blacklist and had fled to England in order to continue working. Lean and his production designer, Donald Ashton, were in Ceylon months ahead of time to construct the film's title character (the bridge, not the river). The Bridge on the River Kwai was selected in 1997 for preservation in the National Film Registry. It had previously belonged to an Indian maharajah and had seen 65 years of active service. Civilian workmen suffered terribly too, with their casualties far outstripping the military personnel. The region was seized by the Japanese in 1942, and they then set about making preparations . For the scenes where William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Geoffrey Horne and the native girls had to wade through swamps, they were wading through specially created ones. For the scene when Colonel Nicholson emerges from the oven after several days confined there, Alec Guinness based his faltering walk on that of his son Matthew Guinness when he was recovering from polio. Get information about our funding, our Customer Charter and our Strategic Plan. Contact us, Image: Rows of graves at Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, Image: Kanchanaburi Dutch Memorial commemorates Dutch POWs who died building Death Railway, Image: Chungkai War Cemetery's Cross of Sacrifice, Image: The Pavilion at Chungkai War Cemetery, Image: The cemetery's horticulture gives Chungkai a sense of serenity, Image: The Stone of Remembrance at Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery, Image: Headstones and horticulture at Thanbyuzayat, Get the latest CWGC news and see some of our recent work, Report of the Special Committee to review historical inequalities in Commemoration, Discover world war casualties who lived in your area, The True Story of the Bridge over the River Kwai, Why and how were restoring the Menin Gate: What you need to know about this amazing project, A push through the desert: How The Allies Captured Jericho in 1918, Visit Commonwealth war graves in Arras, France. 5. Basically, the bridge was built during World War II when the Japanese occupied Siam (now Thailand) and neighboring Burma (now Myanmar . After Guinness was done with the scene, Lean said, "Now you can all fuck off and go home, you English actors. The real River Kwai, and its bridge, is in what was then Siam, now Thailand.The name 'River Kwai' refers to the Khwae Noi and Khwae Yai rivers in western Thailand, which converge to become the Mae Klong river at Kanchanaburi, about 70 miles northwest of Bangkok, and it was across the Mae Klong that the infamous bridge was built. Two labour forces, one based in Siam and the other in Burma, worked from opposite ends of the line towards the centre. He didn't like the screenplay because it reduced Nicholson to secondary status. Supplying it by ship was the only practical solution. Casualties commemorated at Chungkai are mostly men who died in the field hospital set up by prisoners. Laughton was in his habitually overweight state, and was either denied insurance coverage, or was simply not keen on filming in a tropical location. Lean filmed the scene from behind Guinness and exploded in anger when Guinness asked him why he was doing this. 11. The camp commander, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), informs the prisoners that they will all begin working on the building of a railway bridge the following day. Sessue Hayakawa considered his performance as Saito as the highlight of his career. Although the film uses the historical setting of the construction of the Burma Railway in 19421943, the plot and characters of Boulle's novel and the screenplay are almost entirely fictional. [64] The image was restored by OCS, Freeze Frame, and Pixel Magic with George Hively editing. The Bridge on the River Kwai is a classic 1957 British-American war film based upon the 1952 novel Le Pont de la Rivire Kwai by Pierre Boulle. At all. Nicholson is shocked by the poor job being done by his men and orders the building of a proper bridge, intending it to stand as a tribute to the British Army's ingenuity for centuries to come. In 1957 the movie, The Bridge on the River Kwai, premiered in London and became the biggest grossing film of 1958, winning seven academy awards in the process, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Musical Score, Best Cinematography and Best Editing.Not bad for a movie that is largely a work of almost entirely fictional characters and a story which . They were soon sent to Thailand to begin labouring on the Death Railway. But Laughton, a fine actor with such credits as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) on his resume, was in poor physical shapegreat for playing the corpulent Henry VIII in Young Bess (1953), not so great for playing a British military officer in a prison camp. See details. He had basically retired when Lean approached him to play Colonel Saito in Kwai, a performance that earned Hayakawa an Oscar nomination. 16. Unlike the other two, it is not located in Thailand. The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 World War II POW film directed by David Lean, about the construction of the bridges over the River Kwai, although it's heavily fictionalised.It's based on the French novel The Bridge over the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle, of Planet of the Apes fame; Boulle, who could neither read nor write English, was also credited for the screenplay adaptation due to . Over a muddy jungle river called Kwai, a Japanese colonel, Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), must complete a railroad bridge vital to Japan's war effort. The Bridge on the River Kwai was a smash hit on release. It was the highest-grossing film of 1957 in the United States and Canada and was also the most popular film at the British box office that year. : 1942: Boldly advancing through Asia, the Japanese need a train route from Burma going north. All the filming locations of The Bridge on the River Kwai are listed below. The Bridge on the River Kwai: The explosive bridge (HD CLIP) The rail link, however, would . Bridge Over The River Kwai Timing: 24-hrs. Written 20 October 2021. The official credit was given to Pierre Boulle (who did not speak English), and the resulting Oscar for Best Screenplay (Adaptation) was awarded to him. [38] Some Japanese viewers also disliked the film for portraying the Allied prisoners of war as more capable of constructing the bridge than the Japanese engineers themselves were, accusing the filmmakers of being unfairly biased and unfamiliar with the realities of the bridge construction, a sentiment echoed by surviving prisoners of war who saw the film in cinemas. [3] Since it was not a documentary, there are many historical inaccuracies in the film, as noted by eyewitnesses to the building of the real Burma Railway by historians.[30][31][32][33]. Is Bridge on River Kwai a true story? - IronSet The railway ran for 250 miles from Ban Pong, Thailand to Thanbyuzayat, Burma and is now known as the Death Railway. For all the death and misery caused by its building, the Burma-Siam Railway only ever carried two Japanese divisions and 500,000 tons of supplies before VJ Day brought the war in Asia to a close. The film originally made thirty million dollars over its three million dollar budget and was rereleased in theaters just after Lean and Spiegel's Lawrence of Arabia came out. THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI: Honor, Duty, and Madness [65], On 2 November 2010 Columbia Pictures released a newly restored The Bridge on the River Kwai for the first time on Blu-ray. 60,000 or so Allied prisoners of war, including British, Australian, Dutch and some US troops, alongside more than 200,000 civilian labourers were pressed into service. Read more. Thanbyuzayat was originally a POW administration headquarters and base camp. 21. American casualties were repatriated back to the United States. The action of the movie takes place in a Japanese prisoner-of-war (POW) camp in . For many, its their first exposure to the horrors prisoners of wars suffered in the Far East. [26], A memorable feature of the film is the tune that is whistled by the POWsthe first strain of the "Colonel Bogey March"when they enter the camp. Ten Interesting Facts about The Bridge on the River Kwai - Anglotopia.net 4. Servicemen who survived the death marches, appalling working conditions, and savage treatment by their guards thought the film nor book reflected the realities of their experience. Lean feared Guinness' public persona had changed so much that audiences wouldn't buy him in this very dramatic role, but came around to the idea when the Laughton plan didn't work. This page was last modified on 6 February 2023, at 06:05. 1. Let's talk about British Food! Has something sim'lar Cafes and tourist spots dot the banks of the Khwae Noi. Mitch Miller had a hit with a recording of both marches. According to Columbia Pictures, they followed an all-new 4K digital restoration from the original negative with newly restored 5.1 audio. Within 16 months the bridge was completed but it took another two years to complete the entire rail line. Unique to this film, in some ways, were other issues related to poorly made optical dissolves, the original camera lens and a malfunctioning camera. Leadership Lessons from The Bridge Over the River Kwai - LinkedIn
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