Great film from a year of great movies.

Rating: 10/10 (14 March 2008)

Man, 1957! What a year of great films: 12 ANGRY MEN, PATHS OF GLORY, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL, and this film, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. Sometimes, I think that 1957 gets forgotten as being one of the great years of films and that's a shame. BRIDGE won Best Picture in this year, one of the very few in film history that I think is at least deserving. That said, PATHS OF GLORY is amongst the top 10 films of all time as far as I'm concerned, but I don't think it was released immediately in the U.S. in 1957, so I can forgive the Academy that one!
This film is about a band of British POWs at a Japanese internment camp in the Burmese jungle during mid-WWII. They are led by career military man Colonel Nicholson (Best Actor Oscar winner Sir Alec Guiness) and the camp's Commander Saito forces Nicholson and his men to build a railroad bridge which trains will be able to cross to transport enemy troops and dignitaries, and to get supplies to enemy forces. Nicholson, ever the 'loyal' British officer, agrees to build a quality bridge in exchange for Saito treating his men in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Some of his officers question Nicholson's collusion with Saito and wonder about his patriotism. Also questioning Nicholson's motives are an American POW Shears (William Holden, who actually has top billing in this film and gives a terrific performance in his own right). Shears escapes the camp, only to be drafted by Major Warden (2nd billed Jack Hawkins) to be part of a team of Allied soldiers to return to the camp to destroy the bridge. Shears is necessary to lead the expedition since he was at the camp and could lead them the quickest route to get there.
The film speaks a lot about the duality of man: on the one hand as 'prisoners' of war, Nicholson wanted he and his men to be treated accordingly to the Geneva convention, but he knew that to get this treatment, he had to make compromises with Saito; on the other hand, they were prisoners of 'war' and Saito is the enemy and it is unspoken rule that you should never collude with the enemy, even if it means mistreatment and taking uncalled for punishment. Nicholson is very prideful, prim, and proper and let these properties shine through. In his mind, he was doing his duty as a 'British' soldier, but in the end realized that what he was really doing was betraying the core values of what it really meant to be a British 'soldier'.
The film is also very watchable, even today. You get completely enthralled by the story and characters. It never seems dated. The climactic bridge-destroying scene at the end always blows me away (no pun intended). And the last line in the film is one I've never forgotten and sums up the point of the whole film. A true classic.