Top ten films of all time material, maybe top five.

Rating: 10/10 (31 July 2019)

The Bridge on the River Kwai is as great a film as any, a lifelong rewatch movie, an epic well performed, across the board: there is no bad acting in it, I suppose, in all categories, it's as flawless a production as they come. It's among those movies that, if you've not seen it, your film arts education is incomplete and lacking, at a basic level. Nothing much more needs be said. Just watch it, or suffer deprivation.
I would only like to add a few comments on one matter, what is a miscarriage of justice. Though it's easy to see how the Oscar award was a tough choice, I have seen this movie many times. It would be obtuse to state Alec Guinness didn't deserve Best Actor, for anything lacking in his performance, but it was Sessue Hayakawa that delivered something extraordinary. From what I've always seen, this sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. I'm not sure I could think of a more powerfully performed, and convincingly so, complicated scene, in any film, than the night scene, where Sessue Hayakawa, playing the camp commander, Colonel Saito, brings Alec Guinness, Colonel Nicholson, to his office, on the sly, to try and reason with him, from a Japanese perspective, really to save face. To avoid spoilers, let's just say you can feel the temperature rising, can see Sessue Hayakawa as if channeling Colonel Saito, like you're a fly on the wall of something really happening in a war documentary. Sessue Hayakawa had every nervous twitch and turn of the voice down, one of the most convincing acting jobs, ever, but Sessue received no Oscar award. He was also as convincing, as his character developed into a different Colonel Saito. Sessue Hayakawa was the Best Actor in this film, and the Academy could, therefore, bite me, except they did have the sense to at least nominate Sessue as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, though he lost that. Come to think of it, on that basis, bite me then, anyway. Sessue rules!
But seriously, a super movie. Films were perhaps at about their best, during those Lean years... alright, alright... I know... don't quit your day job...