 Our Columnists Reflect on Oscar's Best Films |
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(1957) |
 Alec Guinness in his Oscar role |
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Frymer was a G.I. when he saw
this classic film about war
By
MURRY FRYMER
of TheColumnists.com
I WAS a soldier in 1957, visiting Los Angeles when "The Bridge on the River Kwai" opened to considerable fanfare. I stood in a long line at the Egyptian Theater and managed to get a single ticket for a front row seat. It was not the best place to view a Cinemascope epic and I guess I was uncomfortable for about five minutes until I became deeply engrossed in the story unfolding in front of me.
"Bridge" is still a story that deeply engrosses me. And while I recognize the magnificent production, the taut, spare direction by David Lean (for which he won the Oscar), the enormous Oscar-winning performance by Alec Guinness, and remarkable supporting performances by Sessue Hayakawa, Jack Hawkins and William Holden, it is the tale that tantalized me.
Back then, the "Bridge" screenplay was credited to Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original novel. Only later did we learn that the script was really the work of Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, who both were imprisoned by Hollywood's McCarthyist "blacklist" at the time and, of course, therein lies another story of deep emotional impact.
"Bridge" is about Col. Nicholson, a rigid British officer, imprisoned by the Japanese in Siam (now Thailand) during World War II, along with a contingent of British and American soldiers. Japanese Col. Saito wants the prisoners to build a railway bridge over the river Kwai for Japanese troop trains to use. Nicholson, who carries a copy of the Geneva Convention rules, fights Saito on grounds prisoners should not be required to do manual labor, until, ironically, he decides to build the bridge -- if his own troops have full command. It will be a British bridge and a work of art, showing British superiority.
Meanwhile, British intelligence is determined the troop movements never will take place. They're shocked to find their "enemy" is one of their own, Col. Nicholson, whose pride in British achievement has apparently caused him to lose sight of the purpose of the bridge.
British Major Warden enlists Shears (Holden), the cynical American who has escaped from the POW camp, to go back on a mission of destruction. And so, as the tension builds overwhelmingly, the secret party of British and Americans try to destroy a Japanese bridge that an English colonel is blindly determined to construct.
Great plot. Great drama. But most of all, the greatest of ironies, which, I felt at the time as a GI, was the emotion most appropriate for Army stories. The military I had found was so often its own worst enemy. This story told it all.
MY HEAD swam as I walked out of the theater. Our pride, our egos so often displace the purpose we seek to pursue. We lose direction, lose understanding, imprisoned not always by our foes, but our own vanity. Ego does confuse us, bedevil us, and goals take a back seat to the recognition we seek. We do it to ourselves.
Col. Nicholson's pride and concern for military honor would appear to make him an indomitable foe to the bedeviled Col. Saito. He endures great hardship and wins admiration from his troops. But in this film's twist, that search for military honor above all, turns him into Saito's greatest ally, a reversal that Saito finds remarkable. And, in the end, Nicholson battles the British troops who have come to blow up the bridge until, in a climactic self-revelation, he finally understands: "My God, what have I done?" These may be the most riveting, powerful last words spoken by any film character.
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One other speech is spoken, a weary summation after virtually all the characters are dead, some shot by their own troops. Says a survivor: "It's madness…just madness."
The film's screenplay also won an Academy Award - one of seven Oscars the film won that night. But Foreman and Wilson were hidden somewhere far from the awards' stage. Boulle took the prize to hide their work from a witch-hunting political committee, one which found allies in the Hollywood community supposedly dedicated to art and integrity. In other words, Foreman and Wilson, were for the moment seen as this nation's foes.
I can imagine Foreman and Wilson somewhere, watching Boulle take their prizes, uttering the very words that concluded the film, "It's madness…just madness."
© 2000 by Murry Frymer
OTHER NOMINEES THAT YEAR:
"Peyton Place," "Sayonara," "12 Angry
Men," "Witness for the Prosecution."
OSCAR TRIVIA: Charles Laughton of "Witness for the Prosecution," who competed against winner Alec Guinness in the best actor category that year, was the original choice to play Col. Nicholson in "The Bridge on the River Kwai," but withdrew from the film due to illness.
You can
contact Murry Frymer with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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