Review of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) by Shane S — 29 Aug 2010

What can I say? It's a gripping epic about British solders, through the power of the glorious Geneva convention, that decide to build the best bridge since bridges were invented (without realizing that it's vital to the Japanese war effort - yeah, Col. Nicholson. You're an idiot.).

Meanwhile, an escapee from this torture (the always wonderful William Holden) decides, because of some problems concerning his actual armed forces rank (he impersonated an officer out of his own selfishness), to help a few British bombers blow the bridge up.

One can wonder what's gonna happen here. It all cumulates on the bridge's opening day, which ends in a pretty horrible and quite possibly the most disturbing slaughter of innocent people, villains, and heroes ever to be caught on film. Kudos to Sam Spiegel (the stalwart producer) and David Lean (the even-more-of-a-stalwart director for Columbia) for giving me some proto-high octane nightmare fuel.

As noted in most David Lean films, the cinematography looks almost newish, seeming as if the film was shot yesterday. And that's not in frame-interpolated Blu-ray. The acting's quite well, better than most epics where you have one or two bad performances to balance out the amazing ones (e.g. "Gone with the Wind" when you compare Vivian Leigh and Hattie McDaniel to George Reeves and Butterfly McQueen). Oh, and the script's superb, with occasional wit to help you get through (instead of the constant hammering of plot and more plot that most epics suffer from).

Lean makes the epic a pragmatic experience that even Ray Carney, in his John Cassavetes worshiping glory, can appreciate and really love (instead of making out with his reels of "Ur-Shadows" and the director's cut of "Faces").

Now off to "Lawrence of Arabia".