Facts > Films > The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Facts
| Director(s) | David Lean |
| Producer(s) | Sam Spiegel |
| Featured Cast | William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa, James Donald |
| Total Facts | 81 |
Production manager Cecil F. Ford transformed a local tea plantation house into the production unit headquarters. Located two miles from the bridge set, it consisted of one large main house and surrounding bungalows.
Screenwriters Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman were on the blacklist of people with accused Communist ties at the time the film was made, and went uncredited. The sole writing credit, and therefore the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, went to Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original French novel but did not speak English. Clearly Pierre had not written the English script and this became a long-running controversy between the Academy and the actual authors to achieve recognition for their work. In 1984 the Academy retrospectively awarded the Oscar to Wilson and Foreman. Sadly Wilson did not live to see this; Foreman died the day after it was announced. When the film was restored, their names were added to the credits.
Shooting in the jungles of Ceylon was not always a happy experience for cast and crew. Living conditions were uncomfortable due to intense heat and humidity. The unit also had to co-exist with snakes, leeches and other indigenous creatures of the area. Illness was rampant. Adding to the discomfort was David Lean's tendency to take many hours or even days to get a single shot.
The actual Major Saito, unlike the character portrayed in the film by Sessue Hayakawa, was said by some to be one of the most reasonable and humane of all of the Japanese officers, usually willing to negotiate with the POWs in return for their labor. Such was the respect between Saito and the real-life Lieutenant-Colonel Toosey that Toosey spoke up on Saito's behalf at the war-crimes tribunal after the war, saving him from the gallows. Ten years after Toosey's 1975 death, Saito made a pilgrimage to England to visit his grave.
The bridge cost $250,000 to build; construction began before anyone had been cast.
The construction of the bridge itself for the film was rumored to have cost $250,000 although the real figure was more likely to be in the region of $53,000 (producer Sam Spiegel was prone to some inventive figures).
The destruction of the bridge as depicted in the film 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.
The elephants employed in helping build the bridge would take breaks every 4 hours and lie around in the water - whether the crew wanted them to or not.
The film was edited in Paris as David Lean was facing punitive divorce costs from the dissolution of his marriage to Ann Todd at the time in his native England.
The film's eight months of shooting began in October 1956. A scouting expedition of the real river Kwai had shown that it was an unsuitable location for filming, as it appeared to be nothing more than a trickling stream. The production finally settled on a tiny village called Kitulgula in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The site was remote, so a compound of bungalows had to be built for the film crew.
The film's story was loosely based on a true World War II incident, and the real-life character of Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. One of a number of Allied POW's, Toosey was in charge of his men from late 1942 through May 1943 when they were ordered to build two Kwai River bridges in Burma (one of steel, one of wood), to help move Japanese supplies and troops from Bangkok to Rangoon. In reality, the actual bridge took 8 months to build (rather than two months), and they were actually used for two years, and were only destroyed two years after their construction - in late June 1945. The memoirs of the 'real' Colonel Nicholson were compiled into a 1991 book by Peter Davies entitled The Man Behind the Bridge.
The first film David Lean shot in CinemaScope format.
The first screenwriter to take a stab at adapting Pierre Boulle's novel was Carl Foreman. He had come across Boulle's book when he moved to England, after being blacklisted in his native America.
The real bridge on the River Kwai was bombed by future actor Paul Picerni while serving as a bombardier for the US Army Air Forces. Mr. Picerni co-starred in The Untouchables, appeared in dozens of TV shows and films, including Miracle in the Rain, and Twelve O'Clock High, in the latter having played a bombardier.
The real life construction of the bridge over the River Kwai used about 100,000 conscripted Asian laborers. 12,000 prisoners of war died on the project.
The Suez crisis of 1956 badly affected production, too. Vital equipment that would normally have been shipped through the canal had to be flown out to the location instead.
The title of the English translation of the French novel "Le pont de la rivière Kwai" was "The Bridge Over the River Kwai".
The train had a small diesel engine at the rear to make sure all four coaches went off the bridge after the steam locomotive.
There are many rumors about the casting of the film, but most sources claim that Charles Laughton was the original choice of to play the role of Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Laughton turned down the part as he did not know how to play it convincingly as he did not understand the motivations of the character. He said he only understood the character after seeing the completed film and Alec Guinness' performance as Colonel Nicholson.
There were no facilities on the island of Ceylon to process film rushes so the day's filming had to be flown to London to be processed and then flown back out to Ceylon.
To keep costs down, producer Sam Spiegel decided not to hire any extras, using crew members and Ceylon locals instead. This meant that some of the British prisoners were actually natives of the region wearing make-up to appear Caucausian.
When David Lean agreed to the project, he took on the task of reworking Carl Foreman's script. Lean felt that Foreman's script had discarded the best elements of the book in favor of heavy-handed melodrama and action/adventure. Lean noted that the conflict between Colonel Nicholson and Saito became apparent far too late in the narrative, and that Saito was written like a stock B-picture villain. In terms of message, it was important to Lean that Colonel Nicholson's minor folly of building the bridge mirror the greater folly of the war itself.
When Geoffrey Horne came to Ceylon he was amazed by the entire production. One of the most memorable details for him was his living accommodation in a tin shack shared with the film's English technical advisor, Major General Perowne. The military man wore a monocle and read letters by his wife about the flowers in their garden back in England.
When William Holden first arrived on the set, he was greeted with crew complaints regarding David Lean's attitude. Holden immediately responded like a sports coach corralling his team and gave a rousing speech about how they all knew the quality of the script and director.
When Columbia read the script for "Kwai", the studio was concerned that the story was too much about men and had no love interest. At their behest, Sam Spiegel asked David Lean to incorporate a love scene. Although unconvinced of its merits, Lean agreed to include Shears's affair with a British nurse.
When the film was first released in theaters, Alec Guinness's name was misspelled in the opening credits, using only one 'n' in his surname. The error has since been corrected.
When this film was first aired on commercial TV in the USA, on Sunday night, Sept. 25, 1966, ABC-TV pre-empted its entire evening's schedule so the film could be aired in one night, as opposed to two parts on consecutive nights. This was considered a bold move at the time. It was the longest single network telecast of a film up to then (three hours and 10 minutes with commercials; Ford Motor Co. was the lone sponsor), beating the previous record set by Laurence Olivier's Richard III, which was telecast by NBC over three hours on March 11, 1956. An estimated 60 million viewers watched the program.
While David Lean didn't always get along with everyone in his cast, he was very fond of William Holden. Lean found Holden to be extremely professional. He felt that Holden's considerable talent often went unnoticed, in part because the actor made everything look so effortless.
While the bridge in the story was constructed by prisoners in two months, the actual one built in Ceylon by a British company for the filming (425 feet long and 50 feet above the water) took eight months, with the use of 500 workers and 35 elephants. It was demolished in a matter of seconds, and the total cost was 85,000 pounds (equivalent to about 1.2 million pounds in 2002).
By age 16, Esther Williams had won three U.S. National championships in breaststroke and freestyle swimming.[17] Williams planned to compete in the 1940 Summer Olympics but it was canceled due to the outbreak of World War II.
In 1969 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored George Jessel for his charity work by awarding him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, a Special Academy Award.