The Bridge On The River Kwai was directed by David Lean and released in 1957. That sounds simple enough but that is not how the whole situation behind the filming of The Bridge On The River Kwai started out. Movie producer Sam Spiegel originally wanted Oscar nominated director Nicholas Ray to direct the movie but he declined. Then Spiegel asked director Howard Hawks to take the job but Hawks was still hurting from the financial and critical flop of his 1955 movie Land Of The Pharaohs and while Hawks thought that The Bridge On The River Kwai would be a critical hit it would more than likely be a financial failure because almost all of the lead roles in the movie were male. Humphrey Bogart was supposed to star in the movie but his studio would not let him as he was tied up in another production. Charles Laughton was then announced as the star of The Bridge On The River Kwai but he pulled out claiming that he would not be able to handle the heat of the filming location which was in the heat of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in India. In the end Alec Guinness wound up with the lead and a director he despised, David Lean, was tapped to direct. So much for the negative energy that the movie started off with as it was nominated for eight Oscars winning seven of them. Oddly enough Alec Guinness won best actor and David Lean won best director along with the movie itself winning best picture. There is something to be said about persistence.

The Bridge On the River Kwai is about an Allied POW camp under the control of Japan in World War II. The prisoners are asked to build a bridge over the river Kwai so that the Japanese can use it to transport war needs back and forth over the river. Initially the Allied troops are against the idea but Colonel Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness, speaks up and appeals to their sensibilities and British men and convinces then soldiers that the best way to go about this task is to complete it as organized and effectively as possible to show themselves, and their Japanese captors, that they cannot break the will of the British soldiers. This initially goes over very well and the British soldiers buy into it and hail Nicholson as a hero. But after a while it becomes apparent that Nicholson sees the bridge as more of his accomplishment and a monument to him and it is even feared that he is voluntarily cooperating with the enemy as well. In the end some of the Allied POWs decide that the bridge needs to be destroyed while at the same time outside Allied forces have already started to act on that same idea.

The Bridge On The River Kwai was a huge financial and critical success and did more for the careers of many of those involved in it than almost any other project they were part of. To think that the movie almost didn’t make it to release as it was discovered that the ending of the movie had not been shipped back to the studio after filming and a frantic search was begun to find the irreplaceable rolls of film. They were found on the runway of an Egyptian airport and the movie went on to make motion picture history.