"Do not speak to me of rules. This is war! This is not a game of cricket!"
Col. Saito (Sessue Hayakawa)
Not all battles in a war are fought on a battlefield.
Set in World War II, director David Lean's "The Bridge on the River Kwai," which made its American debut on this date in 1957, was about one of the smaller battles that was fought during that war. And while there are legitimate doubts about the historical accuracy of the story, the message was unmistakable.
Alec Guinness took home Best Actor for his performance as the senior British officer at a Japanese prison camp who kept insisting that the Geneva Conventions excused officers from manual labor. The commandant of the camp (Sessue Hayakawa) was under a great deal of pressure. He had to build a bridge across the Kwai River in Burma to expedite the movement of Japanese troops and matériel. What is more, this strategic structure had to be completed by a specific date.
Time was of the essence so the commandant pressed every able–bodied prisoner into service, even the officers. The British officer balked and was punished repeatedly but refused to yield.
Thus the two men were locked in another war — a war of wills.
For the commandant it was literally a matter of life and death; failure to complete the bridge on time would force him to take his own life in keeping with his moral code. But the British officer absolutely would not compromise.
Meanwhile a Navy officer (William Holden) and two others attempted an escape from the prison camp. The others were killed, but Holden, although injured, managed to get away. As he was recuperating, he learned that he had been assigned to return and destroy the bridge before it was fully functional.
What Holden's character did not know was that Guinness and his men were now working toward the completion of the bridge, not its destruction — and not because of the benefits the Japanese would derive from it but for their own pride and morale.
How it all played out is something no movie lover should miss.
I heard it said once that there are no "war" movies, only "anti–war" movies, and sometimes I think that is true (although other times I am not so sure). The essence of being anti–war is to expose war's brutality, and the intriguing thing about "The Bridge on the River Kwai" is that it does that — but not in the way you might think.
When one thinks of the brutality of war, one is inclined to think of physical brutality. "The Bridge on the River Kwai" was more about psychological brutality.
It was a classic anti–war movie experience.
