Malcolm Arnold: The Bridge on the River Kwai - Classic FM Classic FM Become a VIP Malcolm Arnold: The Bridge on the River Kwai The epic World War II film won 7 Oscars including Best Actor for Alec Guinness and Best Director for David Lean. Released: 1957 Directed by: David Lean Cast: Alec Guinness, William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa The Film: After settling his differences with a Japanese PoW camp commander, a British colonel co-operates to oversee his men's construction of a railway bridge for their captors - while oblivious to a plan by the Allies to destroy it. Composer: British composer Sir Malcolm Arnold . (1921-2006) won an Academy Award and a Grammy for his score for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Other notable film works include The Sound Barrier (1952), The Roots of Heaven (1958), The Key (1958) and Whistle down the Wind (1961).

The Bridge on the River Kwai | Film Score Click Track November 12, 2009 The Bridge on the River Kwai Over 50 years later, David Lean’s THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI still stands as one of the all-time great antiwar films. Alec Guinness stars as Colonel Nicholson, the commander of a group of British soldiers held in a Japanese POW camp in Burma in 1943. Forced to build a bridge on the Bangkok-Rangoon railway, a battle of wills ensues between Nicholson and the camp commandant, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa). Seeing the bridge as a morale-boosting project for his troops, Nicholson becomes obsessed with completing it to perfection, losing all sight of the bridge’s actual purpose of transporting Japanese munitions. The film won a well-deserved seven Oscar, including Best Picture, Guinness, and the screenplay, adapted from Pierre Boulle’s short novel. Boulle took home the Oscar, though the actual screenwriters were Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, who were blacklisted at the time and unable to be listed on the credits.

In 1984, the Academy remedied the situation and now records show Foreman and Wilson as the actual winners. Everything in this film is first rate, including the “lean” direction, cinematography, and editing. But the film belongs to Guinness, tops among the many excellent performances. Another asset to the film is Malcolm Arnold‘s evocative score, which was written in just ten days, but is as well-constructed as the composer’s many concert works. Arnold’s score focuses more on atmosphere, abandoning the long melodic themes that were common for the period. Much of the score is given over to flights of woodwinds and violins which convey the wild jungle locale. One memorable motif has a muted brass fanfare over the trilling woodwinds, conveying Nicholson’s character who is “crazy with courage.” Softer moments in the jungle occur as Commander Shear (William Holden) successfully escapes, and at sunset as Saito and Nicholson look out on the finished bridge. Throughout the score, piccolo, gong and xylophones give subtle hints of Burmese flavor. Because of the militaristic bent of the story, brass fanfares and marches were necessary.

The fanfares are usually played in the muted brass. But it is the marches that arguably won Arnold the Oscar. And even though Arnold wrote a very fine march for Nicholson’s victory in the battle of wills, the most famous melody from the score was not written by him. Kenneth Alford’s World War I tune, “Colonel Bogey March,” is memorably whistled by the soldiers as the arrive and leave the camp. Copyright issues prevented the two marches from being played together except on the film’s soundtrack album. Popular bandleader Mitch Miller had a hit record that combined Alford’s “Colonel Bogey” with Arnold’s “River Kwai March” as counterpoint. Though Arnold would be an Oscar finalist for two of his other scores (1954’s HOBSON’S CHOICE and THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS in 1958), THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI would be his only official nomination. But it’s a well-deserved Oscar that is crucial to the success of the film. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed . Thanks for visiting!

Filmophone: The Bridge on the River Kwai \ The Key (Original Soundtrack Recording)- Malcolm Arnold - CD 2:12 Description Sir Malcolm Arnold was a prolific film composer, writing music for over 120 documentaries and feature films between 1947 and 1969, including The Belles of St. Trinian's, Trapeze, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness and Whistle Down The Wind. This was in addition to numerous symphonies, concertos, ballets, chamber music, orchestral suites, choral music, solo songs, and works for wind and brass bands. He wrote his first film score in 1947 for the documentary Avalanche Patrol. He was advised to send his score for Beckus the Dandipratt to the Rank Organisationâs Denham Film Studios by his colleague Sidney Twinn, who was one of the violinists in the LPO. Conductor John Hollingsworth, who was the assistant music director at Denham Studios, had previously heard some of Arnold compositions and within a week he was asked to write his first film score. Arnold claimed that his love of film made writing film music easy for him.

Also he would write music that he would want to hear if he was in the audience. His most popular score and the one that made him a household name was for The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1957. This epic film was shot in Ceylon in Cinemascope and based upon the Pierre Boulle novel The Bridge Over the River Kwai. It tells the fictional account of the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway by Allied prisoners of war under the supervision of the Imperial Japanese Army. It concentrates on the battle of wills between Colonel Nicholson, the British commander and the camp commandant Colonel Saito over the construction of the bridge.Meanwhile Allied commandos were determined to destroy the bridge. This was his third and final score for a David Lean film (the others were Hobson's Choice and The Sound Barrier). Malcolm Arnold turned down the opportunity to write for David Leanâs next film Lawrence of Arabia and never worked on another Lean film. One of the reasons for Malcolm Arnoldâs success in film composing was his ability to work fast.

But for Arnold, the music for The Bridge on the River Kwai was the worst job he had in his life, with only ten days to write 45 minutes of music. The filmâs producer Sam Spiegel, wanted the film to be ready for the propsed release date. While Lean left Arnold to his own devices, Spiegel was a hands on producer and wanted a theme to illustrate Nicholsonâs increasing obsession to complete the bridge. There was a row between them and Arnold walked out, but he had to acquiesce. In a letter to Malcolm Arnold from David Lean dated 4 February 1958 he wrote" I thought your score was simply brilliantâ¦. You didnât miss a bloody pointâ¦ The way you sneak in the march theme when old Nicholson wins and starts to do up that button on his tunic is sort of miraculousâ¦"(Track 4: Nicholsonâs Victory). "I like the kite scene very muchâ¦the sheer attack of the music saved that awful dummy shot of Holden falling into the river"(Track 3: Shearâs Escape).

The score was not a typical Hollywood score, with the use of exotic sounding instruments (Track 7: Trek to The Bridge) and "spiky rhythms and jagged orchestral flourishes impart a sharply realistic almost noir-ish edge"(Gramophone Film Music Guide, 1998). One of the memorable highlights was the entry of the prisoners of war whistling of the Colonel Bogey March, to illustrate the British stiff upper lip. It was written in 1914 by Lieutenant F. J. Ricketts under the pseudonym Kenneth Alford. Arnold wrote the River Kwai March as an orchestral counter-march to it. The soundtrack became a major success, due in part to the pop arrangement of the Colonel Bogey March and the River Kwai March by Mitch Miller & His Orchestra (Track 2), which sold over a million copies throughout the world. Although due to copyright issues, the Colonel Bogey March and the River Kwai March have been seldom recorded together since the release of the film, Chandosâ 1992 CD release of Sir Malcolm Arnoldâs film music needed to have two separate pieces.

Prior to 1956, Arnoldâs film scores were conducted usually by Muir Matheson or John Hollingsworth. Afterwards he was allowed to conduct them, meaning not just more money, but also the ability to select whichever musicians he wanted. According to Anthony Meredith and Paul Harris biography of Malcolm Arnold, he earned about Â£10,000 for each of his Anglo-American films, Â£250,000 to Â£300,000 in current prices. The film was a major success at numerous awards including the BAFTAs and Golden Globes. At the Academy Awards it won seven awards including Best Picture, Best Director (David Lean), Best Actor (Alec Guinness) and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Film. Due to the filmâs success, according to Malcolm Arnold he was offered "â¦every bloody war movie that there was!". He was unable to collect his Oscar as he was busy working on the soundtrack for The Key. Although he did have an Oscar lunch at Shepperton Studios. The Key is based upon the novel Stella written by Jan de Hartog.

Set in early years of the Second World War about the Salvage Service ocean going tugs which played a major part in maintaining the Atlantic convoys. Each mission to rescue a torpedoed ship was considered to be suicidal, but the tugs being inadequately armed and virtually defenceless against attack by plane or submarine. The location scenes were shot off the Dorset Coast and the Royal Naval Dockyard at Portland. The story concerns an American called David Ross (William Holden) who recently became tugboat captain and meets an old friend Chris Ford (Trevor Howard), also a tugboat captain. They go back to Chrisâ flat, which he shares with a woman called Stella (Sophia Loren) who is distant. It transpires that she was a fiancée of a tugboat captain who died on the eve of their wedding. Due to the shortage of accommodation, another captain moved in. Prior to his death, he gives a copy of the key to Chris, so he can move into the flat when he dies. Chris gives a copy of the key to David, who accepts it against his better judgement. Chris dies during a mission, the day after proposing to Stella. David moves in and starts a relationship with Stella.

The film was a mixture of action, romance and supernatural and this is reflected in the music composed by Malcolm Arnold. The Key (To Your Heart) (Track 11) was recorded by Mitch Miller & His Orchestra and included on the Columbiaâs Original Soundtrack Album, although it does not features in the film. American lyricist Al Stillman wrote the lyrics. It is based upon one of Malcolm Arnoldâs source music cues, which was used twice in the film, firstly in the dancehall and also played on the flatâs radio. We can only assume The Key (To Your Heart) was recorded by Columbia to help sales of the soundtrack album, of which Mitch Miller was the head of A&R. The other source music cue was Chop Suey Polka (track 15) and also played in a dancehall. While U Boat Alley (Track 12) and Stella (track 14) are combinations of various cues throughout the film. Producer Notes The source for these transfers were three copies of both The Bridge On The River Kwai (American Columbia CL1100) and The Key (American Columbia CL1185). The best portions were used to preserve the tonal range of the recordings.

Both recordings feature distortions during loud passages, electronic clicks, squeaking floorboards and chairs. These are inherent to the original master tapes and not the LP pressings. The same problems can be heard on both the Sony 1995 CD re-release of The Bridge on the River Kwai and the DVD releases of both films. When Sony re-released The Bridge On The River Kwai on CD in 1995, in the notes it is described as having "â¦ a booming, raw quality to it â somewhat distant and distorted, with some studio noises amplified by the mono sound". Due to advances in audio restoration software a number of the problems have been resolved. Although other noises can not be easily erased without affecting the dynamic range, if you listen to Sunset (Track 5) you can hear someoneâs breathing. This track was also cut at the wrong speed for the original album and has been corrected. Although both soundtracks still have a "booming raw quality" due to the recordings being taken directly from the film recording sessions rather than a regular recording studio session. The problems with the recording of The Bridge on the River Kwai are small compared to that of The Key.

During most of the tracks, there were sudden changes in the background hiss, indicating different takes had been cut together. Although most of background noise has been reduced or erased without affecting the dynamics of the music, at certain points the background hiss can still be heard. The upper dynamic range of The Key (Track 13) for some unknown reason is lower than other tracks on the record. While on Chop Suey Polka (Track 15) it has been impossible to reduce the hiss on, without it compromising the music dynamics. Track 10 is taken from HMV CLP1312, a studio recording made in the 1959 by HM Marines Band and is one of the numerous recordings of Colonel Bogey made due to the success of The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Links The Bridge on The River Kwai The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | The Film Spectrum The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Producer: Sam Spiegel (Columbia, Horizon) Writers: Pierre Boulle (novel), Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson (screenplay) Photography: Jack Hildyard Music: Malcolm Arnold Cast: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa, James Donald, Geoffrey Horne, Andre Morell, Peter Williams, John Boxer, Percy Herbert, Harold Goodwin, Ann Sears, Heihachiro Okawa, Kelichiro Katsumoto Internationally, 1957 may be remembered as the year of Federico Fellini’s The Nights of Cabria (It./Fr.) or the year Ingmar Bergman brought both The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries (Sw.). But in the English language, 1957 was the year of The Bridge on the River Kwai, British director David Lean’s second American collaboration and the smash hit that would prove the turning point in Lean’s career.

It was the one that convinced him to think big and never look back, infecting him with what scholar David Thomson called “The Selznick Syndrome” and leading to such grand-scale pictures as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Passage to India (1984). It was a formula for both a decade of dominance and a gradual slip into full-blown excess. In Lean’s defense, the hardware Kwai received was more than enough to convince anyone that big was the way to go. The film totaled seven Oscars, including Best Picture (Sam Spiegel), Director (Lean), Actor (Sir Alec Guinness) and Screenplay (Carl Foreman, Michael Wilson), a sweep of all the major categories except Best Actress, and that only because there were no lead actresses in the film. Another convincer for Lean was the film’s extraordinary box office showing, to the tune of $30 million on initial release, the equivalent of $385 million today, making it the #1 film of the year. In fact, the film was so popular that its ABC television debut on Sept.

25, 1966, was dubbed “Black Sunday” because of all the lost business it created for movie theaters (A). An exceptional hit indeed. The film opens in a WWII Japanese prison camp located in the 1943 Burmese jungle. It’s here that Japanese officer Col. Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) holds a collection of captured British soldiers and their leader, Colonel Nicholson (Guinness), along with shipwrecked American naval officer, Commander Shears (William Holden). Saito has been ordered by the Japanese Army to use the captured soldiers to build a bridge across the Kwai River, providing for a connector railroad to run supplies between Bangkok and Rangoon. But his building process is stuck in the mud as Col. Nicholson continues to protest Saito’s insistence on having officers perform manual labor, an act he argues violates the Geneva Conventions. Through various means, Saito tries to break the defiant British officer, locking him inside a sweat box, nicknamed “the oven,” where the brutal sun cooks him for days on end.

Through it all, Nicholson remains the stubborn, principled leader he is and eventually scores a moral victory when Saito announces that officers will only oversee the bridge construction. Jubilated at their leader’s triumph, the men become happy in their work and build the best damn bridge possible, while Nicholson grows mightily attached to the project, even if it is collaboration with the enemy, as pointed out by fellow officer Major Clipton (James Donald). Even so, Nicholson argues that the project builds morale, maintains discipline and ensures good treatment of his men. He also thinks it will be a fine legacy to his men, that they could do such fine work even while in captivity. But by this point the wheels of irony are already chugging along. Amidst Nicholson’s defiant demands and bridge-building precision, Shears orchestrates a successful escape and, with the help of some Pacific natives, makes it back to British intelligence headquarters. While frollicking with a bosomy blonde nurse (Ann Sears) and awaiting his return to the States, he runs into Major Warden (Jack Hawkins), a gungho British officer who asks Shears to return to the camp on a covert mission to blow up the bridge.

Apparently the location is too far for bombers to carry an adequate load, and the only mission that will do is to parachute in and carry demolition equipment by foot through the dangerous jungle. Obviously, Shears despises the idea of going back, but is coerced to do so in a mid-movie twist (“hot potato”). With Nicholson and company celebrating the completion of the very bridge Shears and Warden are on their way to destroy, The Bridge on the River Kwai concludes with one of the most exciting climaxes in movie history. When it came to casting the picture, Lean and Spiegel originally thought Charles Laughton for the part of Col. Nicholson. But when he left to take part in a Broadway revival of Major Barbara, the filmmakers settled on Guinness, a trusted player for Lean in a pair of British Dickens adaptations, as Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946) and Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948). What a break Kwai was. The performance is perhaps the best in Guinness’s career, essential to his British knighthood and deserving of the sole Oscar of his career.

For proof, look no further than his emergence from the sweat box, talking in horse voice and walking on wobbly legs in an acting feat so convincing that Ben Kingsley said, “I don’t know how he did it.” Commanding the screen right with him was Holden, the #1 box office draw at the time, thanks to the success of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), George Cukor’s Born Yesterday (1950) and Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953), in which he won an Oscar as a Nazi POW and cemented that famous image of him, rising up from his barracks cot with a shiner on his eye. Rounding out the cast was Hawkins a familiar chiseled face from the ’50s (seen in Ben-Hur) and former silent actor Hayakawa, whom many will recognize as the Pirate Chief from Swiss Family Robinson (1960). Hayakawa, too, earned an Oscar nomination and was the only nominated category that did not win.

If Lean and Spiegel had scored big in the casting, their biggest coup came in signing blacklisted screenwriters Carl Foreman (High Noon) and Michael Wilson, who secretly wrote the picture but whose names were left off the film to avoid McCarthyist punishment. Instead, novelist Pierre Boulle, who wrote the film’s source book as a partial reflection of his own POW experience in Thailand, received sole writing credit and the Oscar for Best Screenplay, an award given posthumously to Foreman and Wilson in 1984. One doesn’t have to look hard to see the work of two left-leaning screenwriters. Their anti-war message is hardly concealed beneath the film’s superficial patriotic fervor; it is presented out in the open through Holden’s character, who at seperate points says “all you need is love” and delivers a cynical gravesite speech while burying a man whose name he’s already forgotten. “What did he die for? … I don’t mock the grave or the men (he mocks the idea of war). May he rest in peace. He found little enough of it while he was alive.” The film’s final line — Clipton’s “Madness.

Madness!” — was a predecessor to Coppola’s “The horror, the horror” in Apocalypse Now (1979). What the finale appears to suggest is that war is madness, physically destroying mankind’s hard work (the bridge, our buildings, our built civilization) and stunting our potential to live peacefully with the rest of the world (symbolized in the growing understanding between Guinness and Saito). And though any definite statement is surrendered to ambiguity, the script remains one of the best ever done, voted #48 in the Writers Guilds’ 101 Greatest Screenplays of All Time. Yet amidst the superb story pacing, biting dialogue and complex character renderings, the film is at least partially flawed. The main complaint most have with the film is its somewhat flagrant disregard for historical accuracy. To say that it is loosely based on a true story is generous. There was a real WWII incident where British bombers blew up two railway bridges built by Allied POWS over the Kwai river. But Lean and his two screenwriters take plenty of liberties with the details, fictionalizing the idea that a former prisoner would come back to blow up the bridge, as well as the necessity to blow it up with dynamite.

The real bridge also took eight months to build, as opposed to the two months allotted in the film, and was also accompanied by a second temporary wooden bridge until the main steel structure was completed (A). As for Col. Nicholson, the character is thought to be more a mixture of Boulle’s memories of various French officers rather than any true reflection of the real-life bridge builder, Lt. Col. Philip Toosey. (B) Unlike his film portrayal, Toosey tried sabotaging the bridge building for the Allied cause (D). Check out Peter Davies’s novel The Man Behind the Bridge (1991) for more information on the real colonel. This air of inaccuracy followed Lean and Spiegel in their selection of location site.

Due to logistical and political conflicts, they decided not to shoot in the actual Burma/Siam locations and instead set up camp in Ceylon, Sri Lanka, which, according to Spiegel, “not only possessed the ideal tropical scenery for a picture of this sort, but has the best climatic, working and health conditions.” (C) Once there, however, the moviemakers strove for complete physical accuracy, building a 360′ X 50′ bridge across a river, sticking to the design details of the actual bridge that had been smuggled out of the real-life camp and brought to Lord Louis Mountbatteris headquarters in Ceylon (C). The bridge recreation took four months to complete, jacking up the film’s overall budget to $3 million. The big budget territory was a perfect match for Lean, using his first widescreen Cinemascope production to orchestrate the climatic explosion of the bridge and simultaneous derailing of an actual locomotive down into the river. “That wasn’t a computerized train, that was a real train,” Spike Lee told the AFI. “Whew, boy.

That knocked me out!” (E) A further credit to Lean is the fact that such grandiosity never does become boring, even at two hours and 40 minutes. The film earned Lean his fourth nomination for Best Director, but it was the first ever to win him the award, and for good reason. First, Lean shows understanding as to when a long take will be most effective, like in Nicholson’s first confrontation with Saito. After Saito takes Nicholson’s Geneva codebook, smacks him with it and tosses it on the ground, Lean holds his shot as Nicholson slowly retrieves his book and dusts it off, the long-take itself accenting Nicholson’s steadfast conviction amidst the tension. Lean also knows how to most effectively position his camera, taking it into places that will give the viewer the maximum effect of the situation. Take for instance the low-angle shot looking up at Nicholson as he is forced to stand erect all day in the sun, the very angle of the shot making us feel the overpowering heat of the sun above, its light shining against the camera lens.

Look also at Lean’s camera set-up inside the sweat box with Nicholson, capturing the claustrophobia and the blinding light as the door is opened — clearly influential on scenes in Cool Hand Luke (1967) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Thirdly, Lean shows mastery of the jump cut. As in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), he uses the sun as a transition between scenes, here in Kwai, starting with a shot of Clipton looking up at the sun and cutting to a shot of the sun itself, seemingly from Clipton’s POV, but in reality, it’s the sun above Shears, who enters the frame. Finally, Lean effectively implements character voyeurism as a means of audience participation. In addition to binocular POVS, Lean uses subjective shots to really tell his entire bridge-blowing climax. We get subjective shots of Shears from the base of the bridge looking up at the Japanese guards above. We get subjective shots from Warden’s POV as he sits off in the jungle brush, looking on at the bridge from afar. We get subjective shots of Nicholson and Saito’s POVs as they slowly figure out that their bridge is wired.

And we even get subjetive shots from the eyes of Lt. Joyce (Geoffrey Horne), the young soldier assigned to detonate he explosives, as he peers up above a rock to assess the situation. The cutting of multiple POVS against the building tension and sounds of an ever-approaching train constitute one of the most brilliantly-paced suspense sequences ever done. If there is any fault in Lean’s direction it’s that it often dips into the overly dramatic, summed up by Nicholson’s final, balletic flop onto the dynamite trigger. Some viewers may see such dramatism as indicative of an entire far-fetched approach — that captured troops could ever be so hunky dorey, treated so well by the Japanese guards, splashing around in the water and whistling along with their captured commander. In essence, Lean made joy out of a POW picture, something that could only be done in the ’50s. Perhaps this is what has caused the film to drop from #13 to #36 between AFI’s two Top 100 lists. Perhaps it is a recognition that film is undeniably great, but definitely flawed.

Still, it is a spectacular achievement for a film to not only be one of the Top 10 highest-voted war films on IMDB, but also #58 on AFI’s 100 Thrills and #14 on AFI’s 100 Cheers. What a special film if it can indeed thrill and inspire at the same time! I guess that’s what happens when one takes such an approach to a war picture, grabbing all the gunfire and explosions of a warzone and adding the inspiration of a Colonel that simply won’t conform to his captor’s requests. Much of this tone is captured in the film’s unforgetable theme song, the Colonel Bogey March (you know it even if you think you don’t). First written in 1914 by WWI British Lt. F.J. Ricketts (under the pseudonym Kenneth Alford), the piece was adapted into an Oscar-winning orchestrated score by Malcom Arnold for The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Since then, it has been engrained into popular culture, thanks partially to the Tom Hanks-John Candy Kwai spoof Volunteers (1985), in which the Washington State University Fight Song is sang in replace of the Colonel Bogey March. Similarly, in an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Carlton sings his own fight song to the tune. But few actually know the hilarious secret to the tune, a hidden anti-Nazi conotation given to the song by Allied servicemen during WWII. Though the lyrics certainly were not featured in the film, veterans sitting in the theaters in 1957 could amusingly sing the defiant words in their heads: “Hitler has only got one ball! / Goering has two, but very small! / Himmler has something sim’ler / But poor old Goebbels, has no balls at all.” You’ll never think of The Bridge on the River Kwai the same way again.

Citations: Deep Focus Review - The Definitives - The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Director: David Lean Cast: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Sessue Hayakawa Rated: Not Rated Original Release Date: 10/02/1957 On the surface, Sir David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai amounts to a superb epic filled with themes of bravery, valor, and idealism, all set against a grandiose backdrop of powerful images captured by virtuoso camerawork. Beneath the Hollywood exterior, however, resides a daring picture that both confronts and entertains. It tells the story of men who refuse to accept defeat; and while striving for their own narrow definitions of honor, their demise in the film’s climactic finale illustrates the lunacy of war. Through the enormity of its human drama, the picture became an immediate and distinctive piece of cinema history, not only for its preeminent standing as a classic, but for bringing international recognition to David Lean as a master filmmaker.

It would become the first, and perhaps the greatest, of Lean’s signature late-career epics in which he places involved relationships between a few complex characters within vistas of uncommon splendor. Lean did not always make epics. He built his name in the modest film industry of postwar Britain, where he could savor his artistic freedom making small romantic pictures like Brief Encounter and Oliver Twist. In Britain he was considered a major player, whereas internationally he was a minor filmmaker and certainly not seen as an auteur. From humble and strict Quaker beginnings, Lean broke into the industry in 1927 by way of a gopher position, fetching tea and delivering messages in a small British film studio. He moved up through the ranks until he became an editor, earning a reputation as a notorious yet efficient cutter. Serving as editor on a number of high profile British releases, including Anthony Asquith’s Pygmalion and Powell and Pressburger’s ‘…one of our aircraft is missing’, he stepped into the director’s chair in 1942 on In Which We Serve, which gave way to a number of pointedly British releases. Still, from a worldwide perspective, Lean’s influence was confined to an audience of British majority.

By 1956, after more than a decade of experience and his most recent Oscar-nominated work on Summertime the year before, Lean was finally approached by Hollywood with a project seemingly designed to gather him international recognition. Like Alfred Hitchcock before him, Lean’s talent would require a true Hollywood visionary to identify and lure overseas. Sam Spiegel had been an independent producer mostly in France and Germany until he fled a growing Nazi presence in Europe in 1933. Relocating in the Untied States, he quickly made a name for himself on profitable and bold releases, Orson Welles’ The Stranger and Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront among them. After shooting on location for John Huston’s The African Queen, Spiegel’s reputation for authenticity was at its peak. He approached Columbia Pictures’ boss Harry Cohn to begin work on adapting French author Pierre Boulle’s novel The Bridge on the River Kwai, another proposed location shoot. Fred Zinneman had turned down Spiegel’s offer to direct; likewise, Howard Hawks and John Ford rejected the material altogether. Cohn, despite his David O.

Selznick-esque temperament, had also taken risks on audacious projects, and put his faith in Spiegel when the producer’s attention shifted to David Lean as director. When the offer was made to Lean, the director, who had never before worked with Spiegel, took the job on the advice of Katherine Hepburn, who had worked with Lean (on Summertime) and Spiegel (on The African Queen), and wryly believed the pairing would be a learning experience for both men. Boulle’s book came from a place of personal experience, having trained during World War II as a resistance fighter in Britain’s Force 136 and General de Gaulle’s Free French Forces in Singapore. In the Far East, he learned about explosives, sabotage techniques, and how to blow bridges. When Japan overran Singapore in 1942, it forced Boulle’s group into Indochina, which was ruled by Vichy France. Boulle was soon captured and put into a POW camp; after two years he escaped.

As he began writing a fictionalized account of his experiences after the war, he changed the story to a Japanese camp to shed light on the infamous “Death Railway”, a 300-mile long stretch of track from Burma to Thailand built between 1942 and 1943, whose construction took the lives of over 14,000 Allied soldiers. Given the cruelty of their overseers, prisoners could not help but almost collaborate with the Japanese simply to survive; yet, it was said that British Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey, the real-life figure on which Boulle based his protagonist Colonel Nicholson, did no such collaborating. Col. Toosey’s men later took insult to Boulle’s suggestion when the author revealed the source of his inspiration. Much like the film, the book earned much acclaim, but it lacked the natural and pointedly cinematic conclusion—something even Boulle himself would admit. The film begins with a rundown unit of British soldiers slogging toward a Japanese prison camp deep in the jungles of Thailand, led by their commander, Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness).

As they arrive in Camp 16, Nicholson presumably orders a tighter appearance to convey the resilience of the British army, having them fall into lines and march, despite their condition. Lean resolved that the soldiers would whistle a pointedly British tune, one whose meaning is lost on American audiences. “The Colonel Bogey March” was written by Kenneth Alford in 1914. During WWII, British servicemen had devised their own bawdy lyrics for some good-spirited lampooning. The revised lyrics went: “Hitler has only one right ball/Georing has two but they are small/Himler has something sim’lar/but Goebbels has no balls at all”. Whistling the melody was an easier solution than trying to pass the lyrics by any censor board. And while the scene itself has become one of the most iconic in all of cinema, few U.S. audiences grasp its humor, reading the march as a dignified demonstration versus a mocking protest. Composer Malcolm Arnold worked the tune into his score and earned an Oscar in the process.

When the British soldiers arrive in formation, the prison commandant, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), announces they will construct a bridge over the River Kwai, and that everyone will work. Nicholson reminds Saito that the Geneva Convention states no officer shall be subject to manual labor. Saito later confirms that even officers will be forced to work. When Nicholson refuses, Saito orders the enlisted men to work, then damns Nicholson and his officers to suffer under the tropical sun inside metal “punishment huts”. With the officers in captivity, progress on the bridge’s construction wanes. Saito has a strict deadline in which to complete the bridge, but his pride and honor refuse to permit Nicholson the minor victory, and Nicholson refuses to withdraw his legal precedent. The two men engage in a battle of wills, each driven by strict principles and personal codes of honor. Nicholson follows military law to the letter, whereas Saito adheres to a samurai’s bushido—both soldier’s codes. Both men consider the other man mad, and their mutual madness reveals itself slowly over the course of the film.

Saito’s paranoia and desperation, coupled by hysterical pettiness, communicates his madness early on. When he orders the officers gunned down after they refuse to work, it takes the British medical officer, Major Clipton (James Donald), intervening before Saito changes his mind. Later, Saito eagerly watches through binoculars as Clipton appeals to Nicholson, but then quickly returns to a casual sitting position when his quarters are approached, so as not to seem fraught. Saito must always appear in control, always composed; every decision must be his. Though, his attempts at false confidence are transparent. Saito tries to bribe a starved Nicholson out of his stance by offering “English corned beef” and cigars at his table, which just so happens to have two place settings. Eventually, Saito has no choice but to release Nicholson, if only so the officers will prompt their men to better their efforts. When he finally gives in to Nicholson’s demands, he makes an excuse to announce the release of the officers, who will not have to work, claiming he came to the decision as a tribute to the end of the Japanese-Russian war in 1905.

In a major victory, Nicholson returns to his men who cheer their commander and raise him up, while Saito weeps for his loss of face. Both Saito and Nicholson are tragic, almost comic figures whose unyielding ways grow progressively skewed. Nicholson’s adherence to military law comes into question early in the film when he announces any escape plans, usually a soldier’s duty while in captivity, are to be cancelled, as the British army in Singapore were ordered to surrender, thus making any attempt at escape a possible breach in military law. After being detained in Saito’s “punishment hut”, Nicholson’s devotion to principle nearly proves fatal. And his decisive victory over Saito in the matter of principle seems to vindicate his adherence to military law even further. Released from the hut, Nicholson has gone mad with law, and Arnold’s music plays eerie, winding strings that reverberate the character’s spiraling madness. Nicholson begins with the orderliness of his men. He resolves to restore discipline among the ranks by concentrating their energies on a single goal: building the bridge over the River Kwai. Nicholson hopes the bridge will be a monument to British ingenuity, even as prisoners—a symbol that will outlast the war.

His vision proposes an awareness of a bigger picture than the politics of war. Perhaps too big a picture. For the sake of lasting British pride, Nicholson sacrifices his compatriots; he forgets, or simply ignores that his actions help the enemy. Saito, meanwhile, quietly accepts that the British officers will oversee the rebuilding of the bridge from scratch, as the Japanese engineer has demonstrated technical incompetence. While Nicholson suffers the jungle heat in detainment, an American in Saito’s prison, Naval Commander Shears (William Holden), planned a getaway. Barely escaping the jungle alive, he finds rescue in a Siamese village and recovers from his ordeal in a Ceylon hospital, where he enjoys the peaceful beaches and the company of an affectionate nurse. While mending, Shears is approached by Major Warden (Jack Hawkins) of the shrewdly renamed Force 316 to accompany a commando mission back into the jungle, where they will sabotage the bridge over the River Kwai. Shears refuses, until Warden reminds him that he is not Shears, but an enlisted man that switched identities with the real Commander Shears to get better treatment after their ship sank.

Now reactivated with the “simulated rank of Major” and under British control, “Shears” has no choice but to join. The commandos parachute into the jungle and, along with a Siamese guide and several porters, make their way to the bridge. Warden makes the film’s third madman, driven by duty no matter the cost. After taking a bullet in the foot saving his green comrade Lieutenant Joyce (Geoffrey Horne), Warden pushes himself to limp through rough terrain, continuously losing blood, to reach the location before the bridge’s first train arrives carrying Japanese soldiers and VIPs. Taking out both the train and the bridge together would make a ‘jolly good show’, and Warden refuses to miss the opportunity. Warden’s devotion to the target is another case of military madness, and Sheers does not hesitate to confront his self-destructive militarism: “With you it's just one thing or the other: destroy a bridge or destroy yourself. This is just a game, this war. You and Colonel Nicholson, you’re two of a kind. Crazy with courage. For what? How to die like a gentleman. How to die by the rules.

When the only important thing is how to live like a human being.” By this time, Nicholson has pushed his men to extremes to complete the bridge on time. It has become his obsession to erect this symbol of the British spirit; all other concerns are nonexistent. He even asks that some of the capable wounded and officers work alongside their men, despite his earlier victory over Saito on this very point. Only Clipton questions Nicholson’s intentions to no avail. As the bridge nears completion, the commandos covertly place charges about the structure in the night and intend to detonate with the arrival of the inaugural train the next day. In the morning, Nicholson makes a final inspection and, as the water level on the river has dropped overnight, he sees the exposed wires of the explosives. Time is short, as the Japanese train approaches in the distance. Nicholson calls Saito’s attention to the wires and together they follow them down river to the detonator box. The commandos are spotted, inciting Japanese gunfire. Joyce kills Saito with his knife. Nicholson attacks Joyce, in fear of his precious bridge being destroyed. Warden responds with mortars. Shears makes his way to Nicholson, who recognizes the American and realizes his own folly.

“What have I done?” says Nicholson, and makes approaches the detonator, only to die from the impact of a mortar shell and falls on the plunger. When he falls, the bridge explodes, sending the train and the structure into the river. Surveying the bodies, Clipton observes with incredulous dread, “Madness! …Madness!” and encapsulates the meaning of the entire film. Given his disconnection with reality up to this point, much conjecture exists over Nicholson’s behavior in the finale. Did Nicholson fall on purpose? Or was it merely an accident that landed him on the plunger? Lean’s intentional ambiguity allows the viewer to assign their own meaning, and arguments have been made for and against Nicholson’s objective. Certainly his last line of dialogue reinforces the argument that Nicholson deliberately fell on the plunger. On the other hand, if it occurred by accident, then his collapse gives the moment poignant, fatalistic meaning. The most likely solution is that Nicholson makes for the plunger with the intention to push it, then dies suddenly, and in death he falls on the plunger. Lean cuts to the explosive detonator after Nicholson utters “What have I done?”, implying that the Colonel sees the plunger and then progresses toward it.

Doubtless, had Warden’s mortar not exploded behind him, Nicholson would have depressed the plunger and flattened the bridge himself. And yet, not knowing for certain fails to provide the sureness that would otherwise grant Nicholson an absolute redemption, which in turn would diminish the potency of the film’s catastrophic ending. Deciding upon an alternate finale where the bridge explodes was among the first changes made by the script’s initial writer. Boulle spoke almost no English, so Spiegel sought an experienced Hollywood scribe for the adaptation. Screenwriter Carl Foreman (High Noon) was hired in secret and would not receive screen credit due to Columbia’s policy of not employing blacklisted writers, but then his draft was not the version used. Foreman’s script lost the “spirit of the book” according to Lean, as it opened with an absurd submarine rescue sequence and contained no end of actionized war movie clichés. Then again, Foreman did have the insight to blow the bridge in the finale. Boulle’s ending offered no explosion; rather, Col. Nicholson saves his precious bridge. Forman realized that the bridge’s destruction further symbolized the insanity of the narrative’s conflict. Years later, Boulle agreed the film’s ending was superior.

Among Foreman’s other changes to the novel, the character Major Shears, originally a British commando, became an American, if only to satisfy U.S. audiences with a typical hero type. To clarify what was desired in the screen story, Lean and associate producer Norman Spencer completed a treatment. Calder Willingham (co-writer of Paths of Glory ) replaced Foreman at Lean’s request. Lean believed Willingham would better grasp the story’s pronounced anti-war themes, given his credits, but Willingham proved to be what Lean called a “touchy” writer, and left the production when Lean resisted some of his ideas. For a time, Lean worked on the script himself, while Spiegel enlisted another blacklisted writer, Michael Wilson, who would later adapt another Boulle novel, The Planet of the Apes. The final script materialized largely from Lean and Wilson’s efforts; Lean would later become known for retooling every script that he filmed.

Despite the collaborative efforts on the final screenplay, Spiegel enraged many by giving sole credit for the script to Boulle, who in turn won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; as Boulle could not speak English, he accepted the Oscar, believing it was for his novel. He later learned the truth and condemned the decision. In 1984, the Academy corrected their decision and gave Foreman and Wilson posthumous Oscars; a restoration of The Bridge on the River Kwai in 2000 even placed Foreman and Wilson’s names in the opening credits. Lean’s contributions on the script were never recognized. Preproduction began with plans to shoot in the jungles of Ceylon. While scouting locations, Lean and production designer Donald Ashton were approached by a local man who gave them a tattered bit of rice paper; on it was a sketch of a bridge on the Death Railway, which he planned to pass to commandos for sabotage but never had the chance. Having smuggled the paper out of Burma during the war, he gave it to Lean and Ashton, and Ashton used it as his design for the bridge in the film.

The shoot was set in a valley in the jungle; getting there meant transporting supplies for the film’s bridge across rough terrain, including a small river. Ashton and engineer Keith Best practiced constructing a bridge by building a lesser version over this river. The final bridge stood 425 feet long and 90 feet high and was built several months prior to filming. It cost $52 thousand to complete, a figure which Spiegel inflated to $250 thousand in press interviews. The train that rolls across in the finale was 65-years-old and purchased from the Ceylonese government. In the final scene scheduled to shoot, both the bridge and train would be destroyed; amazingly, no miniatures were discussed. Such Hollywood trickery was never an option for Lean, or the production’s other advocate of authenticity, Spiegel. For the cast, Lean originally wanted Charles Laughton ( Rembrandt ) for Col. Nicholson, although this has been the source of many disputes.

Laughton, who had worked with Lean on Hobson’s Choice in 1954, claimed the director sought him out for the role; whereas Lean insisted he never really wanted Laughton, realizing early on that the robust actor would look absurd leading a troupe of starved soldiers through the jungle. When Alec Guinness was approached, though Lean had worked with him a decade earlier on Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, the actor had since been associated with comedies like The Ladykillers and The Lavender Hill Mob. Nevertheless, Guinness passed on the draft he had read, it being an earlier incarnation from Foreman. Guinness took much convincing from Lean and the latest draft before he would accept the role. Lean’s one misstep in his direction was attempting make Guinness perform the role contrary to the actor’s instincts. Guinness communicates through subtlety over expression, offering audiences an irresistible curiosity in his characters, as they are defined through their internal mechanisms versus external behavior. On the outside, Nicholson appears sensible and logical; he is composed and distinguished, even when tested physically. On the interior, however, is madness. Guinness’ characters often share this quality of internalization, forcing audiences to consider how the minds of his characters work.

Lean attempted to bring Guinness to the occasional emotional outburst to depict the camaraderie between Nicholson and his men, or Nicholson’s irritation with Saito, but Guinness refused and his stubbornness caused many an argument. Guinness played the role with unswerving control toward both his men and the Japanese; and yet, despite this control, in a stroke of genius irony, Nicholson does not consider the impact of his complicity in Saito’s plans. A calm statement of “What have I done?” in the climax implies a sudden realization but does not shatter the character’s impenetrability, rather adds an enigmatic quality to a seemingly straightforward finale. His performance would earn him his first Oscar. For Major Shears, William Holden was the first and only choice for Lean, though Cary Grant had been considered. At the height of his celebrity, the charismatic Holden earned his paycheck through popularity, although his talent was often overlooked in favor of his good looks. But the actor behind Sunset Blvd. and Stalag 17 deserved every cent of his then-unprecedented paycheck of $300 thousand and ten percent of the box office receipts.

Silent film star Sessue Hayakawa was chosen as Nicholson’s political rival yet stubborn spiritual equal, Col. Saito. Lean later believed the Japanese actor had become somewhat senile, having lost much of his English since his acting prime in the Silent Era. As a result, he spoke his lines phonetically and read only the pages of the script where his character had dialogue. When Saito’s death scene was to be filmed, Hayakawa stood motionless, unaware his character was supposed to die because his character had no lines in the scene. Shooting commenced in November 1956 and lasted until May of the next year. In all, 251 days were spent in the jungle, in a valley where winds were infrequent and the torturous heat meant occasional dips in the nearby river. Lean’s obsessive perfectionism incensed his cast and crew in this environment. They balked at the sometimes over-ponderous approach of their director; he brooded over individual shots, much to their annoyance, and worked out his directorial dilemmas while looking upon the bridge, sometimes for hours. Not only was it Lean’s first time using CinemaScope, it was his first Hollywood picture, and an epic one at that.

Pressure from Spiegel only worsened matters, and Lean became aggravated whenever the producer was on set. Spiegel spoke to Lean when the production went considerably over-budget, costing $800 thousand more than planned. But Lean had no concern for budgets or shooting schedules; he cared only about getting the perfect shot, and resolved that no one remembers the broken budget or over-schedule shoot after the film becomes a hit. Spiegel was not so confident. The combination of squalid environmental conditions, an increasingly testy crew that later led a union strike, and Lean’s determination to get the perfect shot manufactured a nightmare production. By the time shooting was over, most of the cast and crew had been stricken with some kind of illness, most commonly dysentery. Watching from an air conditioned limo, Spiegel looked on as Lean and company prepared the final shot: the bridge’s destruction. Explosive experts from Britain’s Imperial Chemical Industries oversaw the blast. The bridge’s eventual obliteration was not merely a special effect, but a controlled demolition.

Five cameramen were to begin rolling their CinemaScope cameras, press a button to indicate they had done so, and then retread to the safety of a bunker that would shield them from debris sent flying in the explosion. A stunt man acting as train operator would leap from the locomotive just before the train reached the bridge. And Lean would press the button to detonate the explosives. When it came time to film the scene, the excitement of the moment caused one cameraman to forget about pressing his button. Fearing the cameraman was not in his bunker, Lean could not trigger the explosion. This false start caused the train to derail off the track, leaving 15 men and several elephants to help get it back into position. The shot was completed the next day and all went smoothly. As principal photography had been completed, Spiegel announced that Cohn wanted production to wrap; the cast and the majority of the crew went home. Upon Lean’s insistence, he and a skeleton crew were allowed to stay behind to capture some establishing shots, such as the opening and closing hawk images which underscore the film’s themes. All of Lean’s perfectionism on the set was subject to his ruthlessness as an editor.

He and editor Peter Taylor, with whom Lean had worked on Summertime, delivered a cut that ran 161 minutes. Spiegel believed too much was cut, whereas Columbia executives like Cohn thought it ran too long. Nevertheless, the approval of both critics and audiences made the film an international blockbuster that earned $22 million at the box office. Many viewers confused The Bridge on the River Kwai as a British production, given its subject, the British director, and a cast of mostly British actors. But Spiegel was an independent Hollywood producer whose production was distributed and paid for by a principal Hollywood studio. The truth is, the meager British film industry of the time could never have handled a production of this magnitude. Only in Hollywood could a story of this size be told, and only Lean could give it such depth. In addition to Lean’s much deserved Oscar for Best Direction, cinematographer Jack Hilyard, editor Peter Taylor, and composer Malcolm Arnold also took home Oscars. Along with the aforementioned win for Guinness and the writers, that made seven statues in all. His talents proven, Lean’s success earned him job offers abound for all manner of epics.

MGM offered him their Mutiny on the Bounty remake; Universal offered Spartacus; William Wyler even asked Lean to shoot the chariot race sequence in Ben Hur, promising the director a separate screen credit for that sequence alone. Generous as these offers may have been, Lean, following his love of India, instead turned toward a biography of Mahatma Gandhi that crumbled after some development. In time, Spiegel suggested another historical epic, this one about T. E. Lawrence, the English officer who organized the Arab uprising against the Turks in World War I. That project would become Lawrence of Arabia, Lean’s most successful and arguably his most popular film, which he followed with other successful historical epics like Doctor Zhivago and Passage to India. Beginning with The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lean’s creation of what Martin Scorsese has called “the intelligent epic”, coupled by his reputation as a god-like and visionary presence on set, has solidified the director’s legacy. His influence has spread to uncountable directors who have paid homage to his work.

Steven Spielberg has acknowledged that he shot Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in Sri Lanka, near where Lean shot The Bridge on the River Kwai, if only to walk in Lean’s cinematic footsteps (Spielberg’s film even contains a visual tribute when thousands of giant fruit bats fill the sky, mirroring a scene in Kwai). Anthony Minghella’s extensive humanist epics, such as The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley , have closely followed Lean’s model. And Hollywood could not have filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, and Ridley Scott without Lean’s influence. Yet, for all its size and brilliance and influence, it remains curious that The Bridge on the River Kwai did so well. Neither a typical crowd-pleaser nor an effortless piece of popcorn entertainment, the film’s themes of madness and fate contain severity that demands a refined audience. The film defies the suggestion that adventure cannot exist in a story fixed by antiwar ideals, as Lean reduces the story’s immensity to a few individuals instead of shallow battles or numbing shootouts.

The explosion in the finale is less a cathartic evocation of violence than a symbolic representation of the characters’ burgeoning madness, which Clipton points out with such disbelief in his final summary of the film’s events. Lean’s power to infuse these themes with striking imagery and skilled storytelling are what set his epics apart, earning them comparisons to great novels and Shakespearian tragedy. The imposing size of David Lean’s films often leads to doubts that a single man could be responsible for such ambitious stories. But Lean’s personal touch, his defining characteristic as an auteur director, resides in his skill for bringing the human question into stories otherwise defined by their majestic scenery and narrative magnitude. As much as his epic pictures are about visual scope, they are about grand personal conflicts intensified by the setting. His characters, such as Colonel Nicholson, or later T. E. Lawrence and Dr. Yuri Zhivago, resist precise and typical hero classifications, demanding that an audience consider the deeper psychological makeup of the narrative, while also enjoying the sweeping majesty of Lean’s presentation. His ability to fashion sophisticated yet universally entertaining motion pictures like The Bridge on the River Kwai grows from his control as an artist and craftsman whose place belongs among the greatest of all directors.

Sources: Anderegg, Michael. David Lean. Boston: Twayne, 1984. Boulle, Pierre. The Bridge on the River Kwai. Translated by Xan Fielding. New York: Time, 1964. Brownlow, Kevin. David Lean: A Biography. New York: St. Martin's, 1997. Maxford, Howard. David Lean. London: Batsford, 2000. O'Connor, Garry. Alec Guinness: Master of Disguise. London: Hodder & Storighton, 1994. Phillips, Gene. Beyond the Epic: The Life & Films of David Lean. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 2006. Pratley, Gerald. The Cinema of David Lean. New York: Barnes, 1974.

THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI – Malcolm Arnold | MOVIE MUSIC UK Home > Reviews > THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI – Malcolm Arnold THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI – Malcolm Arnold Original Review by Craig Lysy One day, out of curiosity, producer Sam Spiegel happened to purchase the novel “Le Pont de la Rivière Kwaï” by Pierre Boulle, which was, at the time, the talk of the day. He read the novel on a plane flight and by the time he arrived in London, he was determined to bring the story to the big screen. Complications arose immediately as his trusted screenwriters, Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman, were on the infamous McCarthy blacklist of people accused of Communist sympathies, and were forced to ghost-write, while Boulle, who could not speak, let alone write in English, was assigned the sole writing credit. Spiegel brought in David Lean to direct the film and they assembled a stellar cast for the project, including Alec Guinness as Colonel Nicholson, Jack Hawkins as Major Warden, William Holden as Captain Shears and Sessue Hayakawa as the brutal Colonel Saito.

The story is drawn from real events in WWII where British prisoners of war were ordered to build a bridge to connect a rail line connecting Burma and Siam. Nicholson, on principle and citing the Geneva Convention, refuses Saito’s order for his officers to join in manual labor. Saito tortures him, yet he refuses to succumb. Faced with a deadline, Saito acquiesces and releases Nicholson, who agrees to organize his men for the effort. Nicholson believes that this endeavor will offer enduring testimony to the strength, dignity and indomitable spirit of British soldiers under harsh circumstances. Although Nicholson is an honorable man, he becomes obsessed and we slowly begin to see the bridge shift from a testament to the courage of British soldiers to a monument that edifies his ego. A Special Forces team is sent to destroy the bridge on the day of its inauguration during a Japanese supply train’s transit. Charges are set, which Nicholson discovers and, remarkably, he alerts Saito to the danger. As they inspect the bridge a firefight ensues, killing Saito and some of the Special Forces.

A shell shocked Nicholson experiences an epiphany when viewing the dead British soldiers and utters “what have I done?”, realizing that he has been collaborating with the enemy. The film ends poetically as we see Nicholson collapse from his wounds on to the dynamite plunger, thus destroying the bridge as the train passes. The film was an enormous commercial and critical success, earning eight Academy Award nominations, and winning seven, among them, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Film Score. As fate would have it, Boulle also ended up winning the Oscar for his ‘screenplay’, which precipitated great controversy. In 1984 all was made right when the Academy retrospectively awarded the Oscar to Wilson and Foreman. Spiegel had wanted to release his film by December 31, 1957, the deadline for it to be eligible for Academy Award consideration, but by early December 1957, he had still not hired a composer to score the film!

He sought out British composer Sir Malcolm Arnold, who was at that point best known for his scores for The Sound Barrier (1952), The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954), Hobson’s Choice (1954), and Trapeze (1956), as well as his numerous ballets, symphonies and works for the British theatre. Arnold was tasked with writing the score in a mere ten days, and he rose to the occasion. Originally, Lean wanted the British troops to be introduced singing the “Colonel Bogey March”, a popular tune written in 1914 by Frederick Ricketts, a British Army bandmaster who later became the director of music for the Royal Marines, and used the pseudonym Kenneth J. Alford. However, during WWII, British troops had adapted its melody to accompany bawdy new lyrics – “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball!” – and Spiegel was appalled, refusing to allow this “vulgarity” into his film. However, Lean and Arnold were still able to make their patriotic point as they adapted the march, having the men whistle its melody.

The Colonel Bogey March and Arnold’s River Kwai March serve as the primary thematic identities of the score. The two marches are kindred in construct in that The River Kwai March’s countermelody utilizes the same chord progressions as The Colonel Bogey March. The British Military Theme is rendered in two forms; the first is a classic forthright march carried by strings nobile and horns, in the finest traditions of the British military, but the second variant is a truly twisted rendering by dissonant and eerie tremolo strings, which speak to us of its corruption by Colonel Nicholson’s loss of perspective and egotistical obsession with the bridge. Lastly, for Colonel Saito, Arnold provides a simple motif, a dark and descending low register line, which informs us of his menace. The opening “Overture” is a powerful cue and a score highlight. It is a harsh, brutal and militaristic piece, which opens powerfully with horns bellicoso, informing us of the drama soon to unfold. It begins as the opening credits roll and we see the prisoners arriving by train.

As the beleaguered men march through the sweltering jungle to the camp, Arnold juxtaposes pastoral strings and harp that speak of the jungle’s beauty with martial trumpet calls alluding to the misfortunes of war. Slowly the music evolves into a marcia brutale as they march to their fate. A brief respite with the festive River Kwai March lightens the moment, and ushers in spirited strings and woodwinds, which ends with a vista shot of the camp. “Colonel Bogey March” offers another score highlight. It plays as the men march into camp, and speaks to the indomitable spirit of the British military. The theme is presented in its entirety with it’s A Phrase emoted as a classic march, while its B Phrase is surprisingly lyrical, offering a stylish embellishment. As the men arrive and assume formation, Arnold brings in the full orchestra for a grand finish atop repeated statements of the A Phrase. “Shear’s Escape” is a complex multi-scenic cue. It reveals Shears escape from the camp, his travails and ultimate success in achieving freedom. Arnold weaves the thematic material of the overture into Shear’s trek, which unfolds energetically to support his flight.

We shift scenes to the Japanese guards returning to the camp with the three men that were killed, which unfolds as a grim march. Swirling strings with trumpet counters take us back to the jungle where Shears is seen struggling to crawl ashore from a raging river. As he struggles against the jungle’s oppressive heat a marcia brutale takes form and crescendos as he reaches the sanctuary of a village. We conclude with villagers seeing him off in a boat to celebratory strings, yet the music again becomes dissonant and oppressive as he struggles in the oppressive heat. We conclude his journey to freedom with dissonant horn fare, which inform us of him reaching the ocean, and freedom. “Nicholson’s Victory” is a complex dichotomous cue. It opens on warm strings, which usher in a declaration of the first variant of the British Military Theme. This is short-lived as it mutates into the second more twisted variant on eerie tremolo strings as we witness Colonel Saito’s capitulation with the release of Colonel Nicholson and his officers. This twisted and dissonant rendering of the British Military Theme plagues Saito and reflects his inner torment as he has lost face and is seen crying in solitude in his cabin.

At 2:30 as the men realize Nicholson has triumphed, the music becomes celebratory and Arnold supports the moment with a festive rendering of The River Kwai March. “Sunset” is a score highlight, a delight, and what I believe to be, it’s most beautiful cue. We see a contented Nicholson walking atop the completed bridge with a sense of pride and accomplishment. When Saito joins him, Nicholson lets his guard down and shares a personal moment as he recounts his life. Saito however maintains the veneer of his stoical Japanese bearing and does not respond in kind. Arnold perfectly captures the moment by stripping out the martial nature of the River Kwai March, instead providing a warm, lyrical and extended rendering with gentile strings, harp and pastoral woodwinds. Simply beautiful! “Working on the Bridge” is a similarly complex cue, which features interplay between Arnold’s themes. The scene reveals a now energized, determined and organized British led labor force working on the bridge. A sparkling rendering of the River Kwai March supports the activity. An ominous interlude by Colonel Saito’s motif plays as a stoic Saito looks on.

The second variant of the British Military Theme then joins in interplay with the River Kwai March as Nicholson summarily rejects the doctor’s suggestion that their bridge building activities could be construed as collaboration, or worse, treason. Arnold perfectly attenuates his music to the psychology of this scene. “Trek to the Bridge” features the commando team’s arduous trek through the unforgiving jungle. We open with a forthright expression of the British Military Theme, but its luster fades and dissonance rises as they progress, thus reflecting their travails. Arnold uses nativist-sounding piccolos to reference the local Thai women bearers accompanying the team. The British Military Theme carries the men ever onward, yet it struggles in its expression, mirroring the team’s struggle. In “Camp Concert Dance” we see a drag show as the men entertain and celebrate. Arnold offers campy source music in the spirit of Vaudeville as the men celebrate the completion of the bridge. “Finale” features the aftermath of Nicholson’s death and the bridge’s destruction. It opens with ominous horns, which usher in a festive rendering of the River Kwai March, which celebrates the British victory.

After an interlude of horns nobile the River Kwai March reprises as the end credits roll. “River Kwai March” is a glorious cue, which offers a full and extended rendering of the British march in all its pomp and martial glory. “I Give My Heart To No One But You” is a source song composed by Carl Millocker and Richard Leigh. The singer is uncredited. “Dance Music” plays as background source music for the scene where we see Shears relaxing with his girl on a beach in Ceylon. Lastly we have the Mitch Miller medley of “The River Kwai March/Colonel Bogey March”, which is a wonderful score highlight! It features the two marches presented with orchestral accompaniment and chorus in marvelous contrapuntal interplay! It does not get any better than this. Bravo! While the sound quality on the Legacy/Columbia Records CD does not match current 21st century qualitative standards, the digital editing does manage to present a descent listening experience. This is a classic score well worthy of your exploration. It offers three splendid marches in the finest of military traditions, which perfectly capture the heart of this film.

How Arnold attenuates his music to flesh out the underlying psychology of the film’s narrative is spot on and testimony to his mastery of his craft. I believe this score to be a classic, a fine example of the Golden Age, and one essential for your collection Buy the Bridge on the River Kwai soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store Track Listing: Working on the Bridge (2:58) Trek to the Bridge (8:28) Camp Concert Dance (2:36)

Question: Which composer won an Oscar for the music score in the film 'Bridge on the River Kwai'?
Answer: Malcolm Arnold