Latest / All The Right Movies / The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Ep. 59 - Part 1

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The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Ep. 59 - Part 1 · All The Right Movies

0:04
All the right movies. It has been called one of the
0:08
greatest films in motion picture history.
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Don't you realize how important it is to show these people that
0:13
they can't break as in body or in spirit?
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From Sir David Lean, one of the most acclaimed directors of all
0:20
time. Must we build them a better
0:21
bridge than they could have built for themselves?
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Comes the motion picture event. This is just a game.
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This war, you've got to do it, boy, you've got to do it now.
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British officer here to pull off the bridge.
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Go. Off the bridge, The bridge on
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the River Kwai. What have I done?
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The Bridge on the River Kwai was released in 1957 and quickly
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became a war movie classic. Telling the story of British PO
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WS building a railway bridge for their World War 2 captors, The
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film is an exploration of obsession, duty and the madness
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of war. My name is John and the
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whistling collaborators with me are Matt.
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That man's the worst commanding officer I've ever come across.
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Actually, I think he's mad and Westy.
1:05
Madness. Madness.
1:08
Attention, everyone. All the right movies are in the
1:10
Burmese jungle to talk. David Lean, Alec Guinness and
1:13
the film's so epic, we might be asking, what have we done?
1:37
Hello and welcome to All the Right Movies, Madness, Jolly
1:41
Good Show and a podcast on classic and hit films.
1:44
Yep, so one. This is ATRM classic where we
1:48
tell the story of Hollywood 1 movie at a time, and this
1:51
episode we're on a trek through the jungle.
1:53
Yep. We certainly are.
1:55
It's directing heavyweight David Lean at the height of his powers
1:59
as we discuss him and his World War 2 epic The Bridge on the
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River Kwai. Indeed.
2:04
Big one, right? Yeah, big, heavy.
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Almost too big, yeah. Let's see every time for UST.
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I know I'm like, I always get really intimidated at the start
2:13
of like 3 hour films. I'm like, and we cut this back a
2:16
little bit. I know it's classic.
2:17
Well, before we whistle our way into camp, let's talk about the
2:19
ATRM community. Yeah, let's do that.
2:22
That'll settle us down. It will.
2:24
So if you're a regular listener to our ATRM Classic podcast, you
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can help us keep marching by becoming an ATRM patron.
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Patrons get access to our bonus podcast episode called Double
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Feature, where we talk films that aren't instant entries into
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ATRM Classic. That's right.
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And the Watch List, our monthly film review show.
2:42
Yeah, and you'll get access to our whole podcast archive full
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of bonus episodes and archived ATRM Classic episodes.
2:48
There's more films in there now than Colonel Nicholson's Bridge
2:51
could take. Absolutely, yeah.
2:53
Yeah, so if you're a war film fan, The Great Escape,
2:56
Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jackets are in there.
2:59
Yeah, yeah, loads of other stuff as well.
3:01
So to find out more, visit patreon.com/all the Right Movies
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or subscribe directly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.
3:09
Nice, that easy. Better than a stint in the oven,
3:12
surely. Surely.
3:13
Fuck. Definitely.
3:13
Everything is. Or maybe take us to listen to if
3:17
you ever find yourself in the. Yeah, that's a better idea.
3:19
The time will sail by. Yeah, keep us in here.
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I'm fine. Today, though, it is the bridge
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in the River Kwai. It was your choice, Matt.
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Yep. So come on, what have you done?
3:31
What have I done? I don't know how we're going to
3:32
show all that in. Oh, it's not going to stop
3:35
endless times. This is the kind of film, the
3:37
way if you've not seen it before, you've not seen it for a
3:40
long time, you could be forgiven for thinking, ah, is this one
3:43
not a bit old fashioned and a bit fusty, Like the kind of
3:46
thing that stick on TV in the middle of a Sunday?
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But it's really not. And you mentioned that, John,
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we've covered The Great Escape, another POW World War 2 drama.
3:54
These could not be more different.
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The Great Escape is a big old romping adventure, and while
3:59
there's elements of that too quiet, there's so much more
4:02
depth to this one. It does have this epic sweep to
4:04
it, but at the same time, it talks about things like
4:07
patriotism, following orders, and ask the questions.
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What happens when you push that too far?
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And we'll obviously talk about Alec Guinness throughout this,
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but all those themes are funneled through this central
4:17
character of Colonel Nicholson, one of the most flawed and
4:21
morally complex and ambiguous figures I've ever seen in the
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film. So this one, it might not be
4:26
what you think it is if you've not seen it.
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And I'm just really interested to hear your takes on it.
4:31
Yeah, not as much romping in this one.
4:32
Is there not much romping? No.
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There's a bit. A little bit.
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She is definitely ROMs from Oh He loves her romp.
4:40
Definitely. Well, yeah, it was released way
4:43
before I was born, obviously, The Bridge and the River Kwai,
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but it's one of those films I think I've always been aware of.
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It's always been significant, I think, hasn't it?
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Yeah. And I mean, David Leans
4:51
reputation alone makes it worth watching.
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And the first thing I've talked about him, which we obviously
4:56
have to, but there's something about this particular story that
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kind of fascinates me, Amanda, just to be a prisoner of war
5:02
drama, an action film and a character study all in one go,
5:06
with exploration to some huge themes thrown in as well.
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So we'll talk about all that. And we also have a big cast,
5:12
Alec Kinson, William Holden, both funny for different
5:15
reasons. Yeah.
5:16
Yeah. And let's talk about both of
5:17
them. So an important film leaves
5:19
direction, massive acting performances and a huge and at
5:23
times hilarious behind the scenes story that's full of
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modernist, obviously, Yeah. Shoehorn and funny in there.
5:31
There'll be jokes in this one, promise.
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So Well, yeah, In other words, this is right about street.
5:35
So a matter of time before we got here.
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Yeah. I'm not entirely sure why he
5:38
didn't call the film Cry Me a River, but let's get in there
5:42
anywhere. Lovely.
5:44
Timberlake missed the trick there, didn't he?
5:46
And Speaking of madness, yeah. Westie.
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Hello, why the bridge in the river cry?
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This came to me really late. You know, this is one that you
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would expect me to have checked out since I was a kid.
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And it's like I've religiously watched it, like with my love
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for these epics, Lawrence of Arabia came before this did for
6:01
me. Zulu came before this did.
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And then I went on to, you know, Tower Inferno and then big kind
6:05
of more up to I'm not going to really spend it on anything half
6:13
decent and HMV had that three for 20 August.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, I mean, how many can I
6:19
get? And I got this with Spartacus
6:20
and High Noon. That's what kind of a mood I was
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in. Wow.
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And I got it and I watched it and I just thought I'd seen it
6:25
100 times, but in a really good way.
6:28
Yeah. It's kind of like, I've
6:29
definitely seen this before, but not like this.
6:31
It's it's explored completely differently.
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It's shot the way I expected it to be shot because it's David
6:36
Lean and I was used to Lawrence of Arabia at that point.
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But seeing this before he'd done that, it's like him finding his
6:41
feet almost and finding the grandeur and the use of cinema
6:44
scope and everything that's going into that.
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I mean, this really kind of influenced me visually that I
6:48
didn't wasn't really aware of. It's a wonderful, wonderful
6:50
story. And it's the mix of stories
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here, the mix of morality, the mix of outlooks and people's
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real life ethics and codes and what they believe in and his
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having a code the right thing to do.
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So that's what we'll explore talking about this film.
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And I'm, you know, I'm looking forward to getting into it.
7:04
I think it's going to be a really interesting discussion.
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So The Bridge on the River Kwai was produced by Horizon
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Pictures, distributed by Columbia Pictures and released
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on October the 11th, 1957, filmed on location in Sri Lanka,
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then known as Sail On. So that's what we'll be calling
7:18
it mostly, yeah. The film was directed by David
7:21
Lean, written by Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, though
7:24
credited to Pierre Bull for reasons we'll discuss.
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It was it. And it stars Alec in This is
7:30
Colonel Nicholson, William Horton as commander.
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She has Jack Hawkins, Major Warden and Sesu Hayakawa as
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Colonel Saito. Lovely, yeah.
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Let's March on into the jungle then, shall we?
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Let's do it. We're.
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Heading to Burma in 1943 as we talk the beginning of the bridge
7:46
on the River Kwai. The beginning.
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The Bridge in the River Kwai opens with some British and US
7:57
prisoner of war action that sets up the main narrative.
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We'll be talking about the moments where Nicholson goes
8:02
into the oven and she has makes an escape from camp.
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But first, it's a tale of two kernels and a battle of wills.
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It is. So we open in a Japanese POW
8:11
camp, Burma 1943 to be precise, where a British band of brothers
8:15
have been captured by the Axis. We see them make their way into
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camp, and the opening brings us introductions of Nicholson and
8:21
Saito and their point of contention.
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Nicholson refusing to build a bridge.
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Yeah, not the last time I mentioned that bridge.
8:28
No, Bit of an understatement. Yeah, it's going to be mentioned
8:30
quite a bit I think, isn't it? So when it's different from
8:33
Nicholson and we've got one to match here.
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So Matt, yeah. How was the opening for you?
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Matt, before you start yellow credits, I'm just putting that
8:40
in there just so we know. Yes, just in case anyone's
8:42
looking for it, that's fine. You can go now.
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I just wanted to have that 10. Out of 10 first here, it's like.
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There it is. Boom.
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After the credits thought it's got such a grim bleak taunt to
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it because the camera moved from past all those graves.
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So there's no mistake and what it diet plays.
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This is to be captured. Yeah.
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So when you hear the British approaching in the whistle and
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Colonel Borgie first impression is, well, this is great.
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This is so defiant. It's such a typically British
9:06
thing to do. Stiff upper lip like you
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mentioned, John, the captured with the thumb and the nose of
9:10
the Japanese all the same. And then when they get into
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come, something really interesting happens, which I
9:15
didn't quite get when I was younger because they arrive and
9:17
the marching on the spot. Nicholson's looking at them and
9:21
then the music comes in over the top of it, which is so jaundy
9:24
and upbeat. And I used to think that's 4/2
9:26
OTT, but then I realized what that music is.
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It's essentially only in Nicholson's head, and it's
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representing what he's seeing. Yeah, because he thinks he's
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seeing something great. The British Army keep in
9:37
discipline perfectly in time with one another, but the
9:40
visuals tell you something else and they tell you the truth.
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All those shots of their feet stamping up and down, they tell
9:45
you their shoes are falling a bit.
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All these men are physically shot, the suffering in the heat.
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But Nicholson sees something completely different, which he
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wants to see because he's blinded by devotion to duties.
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And that is him for the entirety of the film.
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And it's set up in this incredibly iconic opening.
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Yeah, He's taking triumph in defeat, isn't he?
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As always, Yeah. Yeah.
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Yeah. I mean, it means business has no
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opening. Yeah, absolutely massive.
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Straight away, yeah. Huge.
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That opening shot of what I think's an eagle looking down on
10:12
the jungle. Yeah, I'd take that signifying
10:14
the futility of war. Maybe looking down from that
10:17
high, everything looks a bit pointless.
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I think so. Great cinematography, which
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we'll talk about more later. And the men whistling Colonel
10:23
Bogey is the end of the camp is iconic nowadays.
10:26
Yeah, it is really loud as well. Yeah, yeah.
10:29
The seven dwarfs have turned up. 7000 dwarfs.
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But the production design instantly impressive as well.
10:37
The jungle setting in all the wooden huts of the camp had
10:39
created how Authentic saw that look.
10:41
Yeah, take the walk straight into one, yeah.
10:43
Yeah, exactly. And first thing, we see
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Nicholson leg up on that log, massive stance, that peak
10:49
Harrison for that. Maybe you've got that Guinness
10:53
later on. Very possibly.
10:54
You never know. But it's the moment that
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follows. This always stands out for me.
10:57
The first face off between Nicholson and Saito, when
10:59
Nicholson refuses to let the men work on the bridge to Saito, has
11:02
them all stand in the heat for hours.
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Two guys who both think the right, but I'm not sure either
11:07
of them are. But the point is, it kind of
11:09
sets up their rivalry, the powers.
11:10
The first half of the film really well sets up Saito as the
11:13
main antagonist, sets up Nicholson as a man of like
11:16
dignity whose story we're going to follow, and sets up the fact
11:18
that it's going to look about as epic as any war movie of the
11:21
decade did were a few. So a great intro for what's to
11:24
come. Yeah, massively.
11:26
Yeah. I mean, we've both mentioned
11:27
that. Did any of you guys used to sing
11:28
this in school as that just how old I am.
11:31
I actually knew the lyrics to this in school.
11:33
It's like, yeah. Yeah, I think everyone did,
11:34
Yeah. Absolutely crazy, but the tune
11:36
the men were sold, which you've mentioned was Colonel Bogey.
11:38
When the comment of the cab was written by British Army Band
11:41
Master called Lieutenant FJ Ricketts in 1914.
11:44
It wasn't in the original script and it was Lean's idea to
11:47
include it. The producer was Sam Spiegel and
11:49
he didn't want it in, but Lean got his way, as always.
11:52
Yeah, well, that's you did become better known as the
11:54
Hitler's when he got one ball. So yeah.
11:56
Yeah, Goering has two, but very small.
11:58
And apparently, at first, Liam didn't want the men to be
12:01
whistling. He wanted to be singing that
12:03
song. Wow.
12:03
Amazing. And that was where Sam Spiegel
12:05
drew the line. Not quite as much Dignity of the
12:07
belly now, I don't think. And Sam Spiegel, the producer,
12:10
we're going to be talking about him quite a bit as we go as
12:12
well. The madman.
12:13
Quite a character, yeah. Sammy panic attack.
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He's a producer. Had to be.
12:19
Constantly just on the edge. And the Colonel Bogey March went
12:23
on to be pretty influential, and it's been whistled in lots of
12:26
films since. As a homage to The Bridge on the
12:28
River Kwai, it's in The Parent Trap, The Breakfast Club, Short
12:31
Circuit and Space Balls. Yeah, it's in The Simpsons as
12:35
well, isn't it? Of course it.
12:36
Is. Yeah, of course it is.
12:37
Yeah. I mean, it shows how good an
12:39
idea it was when it turns up in that film was it became iconic
12:42
in their own right and The Simpsons as well.
12:44
Yeah. I'll go on to the scene that
12:45
you've touched on there, John, where who have had this
12:48
introduction of the characters and now Silo's coming out and he
12:50
means business because Nicholson's just, I'll have a
12:52
word with this chap. Who does he think he is at the
12:54
end of that match? Show some respect at least.
12:57
There's dignity and then there's stupidity.
12:58
There's a fine line that Nicholson draws all the way
13:00
through this film. So Silo comes out on a platform
13:03
that's twice as big this time to kind of show that he's grandeur
13:07
and he speaks to everybody and he just immediately berates
13:10
them, just says you're English prisoners, not soldiers.
13:12
He tries to beat them down into the ground, but the bravery of
13:16
it and the genius of it is, like I say, it's really close to
13:18
stupidity. Either way.
13:19
They're all just stood there and there's a guy in the background
13:21
which is lean all the way through.
13:23
This film shows that depth, and they're all just really defiant
13:26
of what's going on, but it's sight or who just looks at the
13:29
sun and kind of walks away and he knows how dangerous that is.
13:33
So the scene just goes on. There's an incredibly iconic
13:36
shot of Guinness from that low angle with the sun there, and
13:38
you see, is he given? Where is he not?
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What's going to happen? But there's nobody like David
13:43
Lean who can put an emotion and there's that sense of like, you
13:46
can reach out and really touch these environments and he really
13:48
soaks it onto the film. And you get that from this whole
13:51
sequence. But they're all still stood in
13:53
the background of that shot. So there must have been somebody
13:55
else. There must have been a runner
13:56
off screen to them. When he says the kind of guts
13:59
that are going to get us killed and a guy just falls exactly
14:02
when he should, yeah, that's amazing.
14:04
And it's just one thing after the other with these guys.
14:07
It's just, you know, his officers are standing by him.
14:09
They've got this absolute amount of respect for him.
14:11
I don't think the fear Nicholson, I think they respect
14:13
him. And then there's the whole he's
14:15
a jolly good fellow that's going to carry him through.
14:18
It is, it's just madness. It's craziness from the start.
14:21
There's this jewel of morality between the two of them and none
14:25
of them are moving. It's like 2 trains literally
14:27
coming at each other on the bridge to collide themselves and
14:30
that's what this whole scene sets up.
14:32
I think it's fantastic from the start of the film.
14:33
It really puts you in the tone and really makes you pick a side
14:37
and you can't choose anyone but Nicholson, obviously.
14:40
It does. I mean, Saito wastes no time
14:42
laying down the law, does he? No, and the film wastes no time
14:45
getting narrative moving. We get the fact that Saito wants
14:47
the bridge to be built set up really quickly, and the kind of
14:50
conflict between Nicholson and Saito when Nicholson says no.
14:52
I mean, it's obvious immediately that both Nicholson and Saito
14:55
are pretty crazy. Nicholson cites the Geneva
14:58
Convention and has the papers with them.
15:01
Saito takes them, looks at them, and slaps them across the face
15:04
of them. George Blood as well.
15:07
Yeah, I'll have a paper quote. Stan Baston, Ryan, it's great.
15:09
That bit never just don't know, don't react.
15:11
He thinks he's got control of it.
15:12
That's the way he picks it up and just dusts it off.
15:14
Yeah, yeah, it's great. You know, it's so defiant.
15:17
Yeah. Does that have a relationship
15:18
and conflict that I'll drive the first half of the film?
15:20
I think it all works really well, yeah.
15:22
And Colonel Seidel was played by Sasu Hayakawa, a Japanese actor.
15:26
He'd first came to Hollywood in 1914, when he appeared in a
15:29
short drama called The Typhoon. This made him a matinee idol,
15:33
and he was a big star for a few years.
15:35
But he'd retired for movies by the time Kwai came around.
15:38
But Lane had remembered him from his head in Hollywood and
15:40
approached him to play a site out.
15:42
Yeah, he'd be big. In the 1920s.
15:44
He was signed by famous players Lasky, now known as Paramount
15:47
Pictures, and his salary was apparently $5000 a week, which
15:50
is about $150,000 a week today. Wow, massive heartthrob wasn't
15:55
he was a good looking son of a bitch, but he.
15:56
Was yeah, you think? Apparently was playing like
15:58
exotic villains. Obviously 1920s.
16:01
Yeah, wonderful. And.
16:03
I think his career was kind of ended when the talkies came
16:05
along. I guess his Japanese accent
16:07
maybe didn't go down so well with Western audiences at the
16:09
time. Right.
16:10
Maybe. Yeah.
16:11
Yeah, maybe. Hayako was 68 when he was cast
16:14
as sight. Or he didn't speak great
16:16
English, so when he was given the script, he tore all of the
16:18
pages that didn't have any dialogue with him.
16:21
He later said Lean didn't mind at all and they had a great
16:23
relationship. I love that.
16:25
Yeah, I'm not there. So just get rid of it.
16:27
Yeah, that's. Exactly what I would.
16:28
Do to be so don't need that. Also decide to remind anyone
16:33
else of Lao Shay from India as you went in the Temple of Doom.
16:36
Obviously he. Looks just like him.
16:38
Yeah, the guy who goes the poison you just drank, Doctor
16:41
Jones. He's even got the little Tash.
16:43
Yeah, and he owns club Obi Wan. Yeah, there's links all over the
16:46
place. Might be under something here.
16:50
And then after Bridge on the River, Quiet Higher Cover pretty
16:52
much retired from acting again apart from a few small TV roles.
16:56
But he later said his appearances Colonel Saito was
16:58
the highlight of his career and he was nominated for an Oscar
17:00
for Best Supporting Actor. Yeah, right.
17:03
Not bad for someone who only read 5% of the script, yeah.
17:06
That was not the only Oscar that didn't win for it was his
17:09
performance. Yeah, I think it was.
17:10
Yeah, we'll see him that because he's amazing.
17:11
Yeah, he's great. He's very good.
17:13
Yeah. And that's our opening moments.
17:15
Colonel Nicholson, Colonel Bogey and a Colonel who was a silent
17:18
era heartthrob turned Oscar nominee.
17:21
An eventful start, really. A very eventful.
17:26
With Nicholson refusing to budget on the officer work
17:28
detail, Saito throws him in the oven, which is basically a
17:31
corrugated iron box, which looks pleasant.
17:34
Awful. Meanwhile, some American
17:35
prisoners, led by Commander Shares, see their chance and
17:38
make a break for it. They do.
17:40
Westie, is it the great or not so great escape?
17:43
It's a terrible escape, isn't it?
17:47
There's nothing real great about it.
17:49
Holden's got the real push, and you've seen it from his
17:52
character that he doesn't really care about anybody else.
17:54
You know, from giving the guy the lighter and just being that
17:56
whatever, it can get him forward.
17:57
Then you learn later he's not really in command at all.
18:00
He's just full of shit. I just absolutely love this
18:02
character. He's amazing.
18:03
But even this escape shot there for night, as well as all of the
18:06
night scenes are in this. And I mean, you can really tell
18:08
not as much as you can tell in Deliverance, let's be honest.
18:11
There's a big influence, but this man dead, dead nature comes
18:16
out of nowhere. Boom, done.
18:18
And the one thing that I don't really get from this whole scene
18:21
is the dummy falling into the water.
18:24
Oh yeah, yeah. It's not that big a jump.
18:28
No, they've. Spent all this money building an
18:30
actual bridge that that actually blow up with an actual train.
18:32
Just get an actual stuntman to jump into some actual water.
18:37
Kind of pulls me out of it, but it's really funny.
18:39
It's really great. And then there's a little bit of
18:42
time passes between that. But you can see how dedicated
18:45
Bill Holden is to this performance.
18:47
He looks absolutely fucked. We could spot him in the sun and
18:51
he's just sat there and he's like David Lean's just turned up
18:53
with the camera and he's like, oh, you're back.
18:55
Oh, let's just do the scene then.
18:57
But the use of sound design here, which we'll go and do with
18:59
David Lean as well, is absolutely next level because
19:01
he's just terrified by it. Terrified by his dragon, his
19:04
canteen, He's out of water. He's absolutely done for.
19:06
And then he just stumbles upon this village and you just think,
19:09
oh, thank God, that is how terrifying it is to try to
19:13
escape from this place. You're not going to get out.
19:15
Basically. You are going to die.
19:16
And he's so close to not making it, which again, I think makes
19:20
his return journey, as we're going to talk about later on,
19:22
all the more heartbreaking and that he's been through this once
19:25
and now he has to go back and do it again.
19:27
I mean, it could be like the rock, like he goes back and
19:29
teaches. I want to have to escape from
19:30
there. Really long hair.
19:35
First of all, you go back and everyone that you go with dies,
19:38
and then you throw a dummy in the river and fuck off to a
19:40
village. It'll be absolutely fine.
19:42
That's the way to do it. But yeah, it's a great setup for
19:44
his character and you actually think he's just going to have
19:47
Intel. You don't quite know where he's
19:48
going, but it just kick starts this whole other narrative, this
19:51
whole other story within a story.
19:53
I think it's really, really pivotal and brilliant to set up.
19:56
It is, yeah. It's a little action moment,
19:58
kind of sets the tone a little bit for some of the action that
20:00
comes later on as well. Yeah.
20:02
But I think Nicholson in the oven.
20:04
Such a great beast from a storytelling perspective,
20:06
represents, like, the brutality of a POW camp.
20:09
And there's also a huge plot device pushing Nicholson down,
20:11
like, a particular path for the narrative.
20:13
Yeah. And it looks like hell in that
20:16
box. You see, it's the Clipton when
20:17
he's in there. Don't you see how important it
20:19
is to show they can't break or somebody or in spirit.
20:21
And they haven't broken his body or spirit, but they're
20:24
definitely breaking his mind. He's going crackers.
20:26
Nicholson. Yeah.
20:27
I think it's a great showcase for the character.
20:29
He's tough. He's stubborn as hell.
20:32
I miss some nice dark humor as well.
20:34
Always laugh when Nichols was talking to Clifton about Sido
20:37
and he says that man's the worst commanding officer I've ever
20:39
come across. Actually I think he's mad.
20:42
Then cut to Sido watching him through binoculars.
20:45
Peeping Tom. Rear window.
20:47
George McFly, though, while Nicholson is going through hell,
20:53
she has having escaped having a wonderful time in that Thai
20:57
village. The locals love him, the girls
20:59
love him, obviously, obviously, but again, they're defining the
21:02
character. Then the contrast between she
21:04
has Nicholson, it's like a a visual representation of what
21:07
she has said. Later, the warden, you know how
21:09
to die like a gentleman when the only important thing is to live
21:11
like a human being. Yeah.
21:13
Great line. And one of the themes of the
21:14
film to get set up here. Yeah, and they'll hold that
21:17
shave his chest every single day.
21:19
He was that hairy. Ouch.
21:21
He's that much of a man. To get that look.
21:23
Like Steve Krill in The 40 Year Old Virgin.
21:25
Like Robin Williams knuckle. You know, it's great to be fair.
21:30
It's fantastic. Yeah.
21:31
It looks amazing. Well oiled.
21:33
Wonderful, man. So Nicholas being tortured by
21:36
being placed in the oven is in the original novel, but wasn't
21:39
entirely made-up by Pierre Boyle.
21:41
Japanese power camps used to use iron boxes stood in the heat as
21:45
a form of torture against Allied soldiers.
21:47
Do you know what this always reminds me of?
21:48
You know the hot box and stir crazy when Gene Wilder crawls
21:51
out and say, can I have a little bit more time?
21:56
I mean, that's just absolutely disgusting.
21:58
Imagine that like that's. Awful.
21:59
That's awful. Yeah, against the Geneva
22:01
Convention. So cycles committing a war
22:02
crime? You should probably read them
22:04
rather than stopping people in the face with them.
22:08
I'm going for this really great character moment when Nicholson
22:11
is LED out-of-the-box so he can have supper with Sidewall.
22:14
And I know other one. Russians, right?
22:16
So biggest can't be choosers, but a big slab of greasy corned
22:19
beef for supper with some rice doesn't look appetizing to me
22:23
that at all. Lovely that that's what I'm
22:25
having tonight. A big slab as well A.
22:30
Big slab. What are the tins you still need
22:32
a fucking keyed over? Apart from that, though, this is
22:37
such a great scene of the shift of power between these two, and
22:41
it's done with such subtly. Because Sido holds all the cards
22:44
here, there's no reason on the face that he should give any
22:47
kind of leniency to Nicholson, particularly the condition he's
22:50
in. And I think the physicality
22:52
Guinness brings here is so effective that stagger.
22:55
And when he sits down and he has to put his fists on the table to
22:57
support himself, and Despite that, he still refuses the food.
23:01
He refuses to back down over anything.
23:03
And the one thing they've got in common is that both want to
23:06
adhere to the rules, Nicholson's rules about how he and his
23:10
officers should be treated side or about how he has the deadline
23:13
for the completion of the bridge.
23:15
And you can feel that balance of power between them.
23:17
Start a shift because Seidel was the one who gets exasperated
23:20
while Nicholson just keeps his cool throughout.
23:22
You know, Seidel says let us not get excited, but he's the one
23:25
getting excited and frustrated. And that's just the slightest
23:29
budget of authority that Nicholson needs because point
23:32
blank refusal on everything. You won't even take a cigar, not
23:36
even the offer of saying, well, I wasn't going to make you work.
23:39
But the other officers, even that, Nah, Nah.
23:41
He's not used to confrontation side or as a character as he's
23:44
like this. Any any human being would take
23:46
this like this is everything you need.
23:47
What's the matter with you, He. Doesn't know how to deal with it
23:49
so and it is actually funny when side or results to plead and
23:53
then says he'll have to kill himself if the bridge isn't
23:55
completed. What would Nicholson do?
23:57
And he just goes, well, I suppose if I were you, I'd have
24:00
to kill myself. She is.
24:02
Cold as fuck that. Yeah, no compromise at all.
24:05
And that's when he takes the drink, because that's the moment
24:07
Nicholson knows I've won. I've got him now.
24:10
It's brilliant. He's overshared, Yeah.
24:13
He's very much overshared. Yeah, Nicholson finally gets out
24:16
of the oven inside, who invites him for this corned beef dinner
24:18
as if like, nothing's happened and you can't get there quick
24:21
enough. But his legs won't take him.
24:23
Will these all over the place. And he's white as a ghost.
24:25
Looks like a walking corpse. Yeah.
24:27
But it's great. I think Guinness is fantastic.
24:30
Yeah. Yeah.
24:31
I mean, the whole scene of a dinner is really good sight of
24:33
trying to get Nicholson on side, but he saw, like, ham fisted
24:37
with it. Johnny Walker Scotch says that
24:39
he studied the London Polytechnic.
24:41
Yeah. Kind of let himself down by
24:42
throwing a hissy fit and shouting I hate the British.
24:44
Yeah, he does a bit, yeah. What's interesting though, which
24:47
is obviously one of the points they're making, is how similar
24:50
sighted when Nicholson are both driven by duty, they have their
24:53
cords of honour, they're both still with his mules.
24:55
And this is the scene where we see that kind of parallel drawn
24:57
out the most strongly, I think. Yeah.
25:00
And Guinness called the moment he staggers out of the oven his
25:02
best ever acting. And he said he bases the walk on
25:06
his 11 year old son Matthew, who was recovering from polio.
25:09
Wow. It's a great moment.
25:11
He fights Star Theatre though. Did he forget that?
25:14
I mean, there's no words. It's only a few seconds, but it
25:17
reveals so much about Nicholson's character.
25:19
He does have his dignity. He will literally die before he
25:22
does something that goes against his code, it looks like.
25:24
Yeah, Yeah. It feels like Saito's kind of
25:26
going, I could kill this guy, he would just come back.
25:29
Yeah, just like Obi Wan can only be 1.
25:32
He would. Just come back, the second Blue
25:33
Ghost with the Geneva Convention Jedi Neva Convention waving in
25:38
his face. And that's the beginning of the
25:42
bridge in the River Kwai. 2 colonels battling it out, and
25:44
Nicholson comes out on top. For now.
25:46
Yeah, more on that later. Should we talk a bit about the
25:49
night of the realm that was behind what we're watching?
25:51
Well, let's do it. I think you should.
25:56
The director. The director of The Bridge in
26:00
the River Kwai was Sir David Lean.
26:03
This was his 12th feature film, having established himself with
26:06
adaptations of Dickens classics like All of Our Twists and Great
26:08
Expectations, as well as a Stone cold movie classic in 1945's
26:13
Brief Encounter. Yeah, bit of a step up in scale
26:16
with the vision of the river Cry though, Matt, Just a bit.
26:18
So how was David Lean's work here?
26:21
I mean, Spielberg's always said Lean is a huge influence on him
26:24
and you can see why because. Well, yeah, just a bit, just a
26:27
bit. Left, right and centre.
26:29
All over the place is because this is filmmaking on such a
26:32
grand canvas, but he never gets lost in that canvas.
26:35
And, and you said it there, John, it's worth remembering his
26:37
breakthrough film was Brief Encounter, which is such a
26:40
small, intimate film. Like everything in that film
26:42
just takes place in living rooms, in cafes.
26:45
This is something else entirely, but it still works because Lane
26:50
nails the emotion. And with Bridge, he combines the
26:52
2. So he can have epic scenes like
26:54
the trek through the jungle to get back to the bridge or the
26:57
countdown to the explosives going off as the train of
26:59
portraits. But then he can have scenes like
27:01
we've just talked about the Super with Sidewall or Sidewall
27:04
having that warm to himself where he breaks down in tears
27:06
because he he thinks he's failed.
27:08
And if you look at Lane's filmography, it shouldn't be any
27:11
surprise that he's great at getting performance because
27:13
that's what his reputation was as a director at the time, I
27:15
think. But to then go on to make a film
27:17
with this huge scope entirely on location, He'd literally done
27:21
nothing like this before, and yet somehow it feels like second
27:24
nature, like he'd been doing it all his life.
27:26
So that ability to juggle the epic and the intimate, to go
27:30
back to Spielberg, I think he said Lawrence of Arabia is one
27:33
of his favorite films, if not his all time favorite, and he
27:35
always watches it before he makes anything.
27:38
But everything Lean does in Lawrence of Arabia, he does here
27:41
first. I think you're right.
27:43
I think he does. I mean, I watched the film
27:45
several times in advance of this episode, like we always do.
27:48
Yeah. And something that struck me
27:49
more strongly each time about David Lean was that he's not in
27:52
a hurry. Is he a man of great patience?
27:55
Clearly, yeah. I mean, in a Hollywood film, the
27:57
first act is typically 30 minutes ish, give or take.
28:01
Yeah. He had the first act ends when
28:02
Nicholson slay out of the oven and was 70 minutes in.
28:05
Absolutely massive. Yeah.
28:07
Ridiculous. That's one of his trademarks as
28:09
a director. I think he won't wish for
28:11
anybody. And it's kind of is genius.
28:14
You let the narrative unfold gently.
28:15
He builds the tension. He does do the same thing in the
28:18
legendary film a few years later.
28:20
And I think you're right, Mark, quite definitely your forward at
28:22
Lawrence of Arabia. Yeah, absolutely.
28:24
It's not just the careful plotting.
28:26
Every shot feels meticulously planned.
28:28
The aerial view to the jungle that we talked about, the way
28:30
that he frames characters against huge backdrops, which
28:33
we're going to do later when we talk about the DP.
28:35
But nothing feels like ad hoc, off the cuff.
28:38
How the film looks feels very deliberate, yeah, but never,
28:40
like, lifeless either. Never robotic, I think the
28:43
control that lead has over the whole production just jumps off
28:46
the screen. To me, he's juggling this
28:48
massive cast with big names, shooting in the jungle, dealing
28:51
with a mod management producer like Sam Spiegel, breathing down
28:53
his neck, and it still feels like every frame looks just how
28:56
you wanted it to when he planted months before.
28:58
Yeah, I mean, that's impressive, but there's also a great
29:00
handling of tones. We'll go from psychological
29:02
drama in the camp to the outrageous boys Own style escape
29:06
adventure with She Has that's Boys Own, not Boys Own,
29:10
obviously. Yeah, Ronan Keaton's not.
29:11
Forgot that's that's fine I. Mean they could have felt like
29:14
different films, but lean we used it all together kind of
29:16
like the master that he's known as yeah.
29:18
So great director and this is where we see him, I think
29:20
transitioning from that kind of intimate filmmaker I brief
29:23
encounter to the epic storyteller of Lawrence of
29:26
Arabia. Yeah.
29:27
And he makes that shift look kind of effortless I think as
29:29
well. Yeah.
29:30
Yeah, I mean, bizarrely enough, lean on me.
29:34
I think this is an intimate film.
29:36
Yeah, bizarrely enough, it is very, very intimate.
29:38
It's a really intimate story between people and it's very
29:41
internal. And I think without them
29:42
intimate films, you wouldn't be able to have this grandeur.
29:45
But even he's framing feels intimate.
29:47
Every small detail has a real place.
29:50
Yeah, it's his camera. Movements on this, any scale,
29:53
that camera doesn't move. I've said recently that we
29:56
should just bring back tripods. And if you need to move the
29:58
camera, you need to pay more money in which to move it
30:01
because it needs to be motivated by the story.
30:03
And watch this film because that is exactly what he does.
30:05
If he pans that camera, there's a reason he's revealing
30:08
something. If it tilts down, there's a
30:09
reason he's revealing something. Everything else is just like
30:12
watching a photograph with movement in it.
30:14
And that's what Lean learned I think on the on the smaller
30:16
films and how to frame. And then all of a sudden you
30:18
have someone like that cinema scope and he still frames it in
30:21
a really intimate way. And that's where he gets the
30:23
depth in the distance and using 2 lenses, basically uses a wide
30:28
prime to establish the scene. And then he just says who's
30:31
important, this guy. So he uses then a long lens to
30:34
punch in on that guy, blur the background out and really single
30:37
that character. You can see it in the opening
30:39
speech, you can see where they all walk in and then it's on
30:41
nickels, it's on site. Or you know, we're talking about
30:44
that machine gun at the start. When that reverses into the
30:46
frame, he knows exactly where that's stopping, because that's
30:49
perfectly done. Oh yeah, yeah.
30:51
Like you said, it is. It's meticulous, but doesn't
30:53
feel overworked. It doesn't feel like Kubrick
30:56
overworked. No, it doesn't.
30:57
There's improvisation here. There's room for that
31:00
improvisation, there's room for the camera to go another two
31:03
inches to the right if it needs to.
31:05
But he needs a good fucking reason to do it.
31:07
And that's why I love David Lean as a filmmaker, because he needs
31:10
a reason. You'll listen to anybody I
31:11
think, but he needs a really good reason to move away from
31:14
his blueprint of what he wants to do and what he wants to make.
31:17
And the scale that he makes this film on is absolutely ludicrous.
31:21
He shot a lot of stuff himself on 16 mil.
31:23
I think a lot of the externals, you see bats fly in trees, all
31:27
these kind of cutaways. He just went off and did them
31:30
and it was just, he took a crew with them and it was come hell
31:32
or high water getting to the top of that waterfall and we're
31:33
shooting this with that one person behind.
31:36
It's not like the African Queen where they went out and shot a
31:38
lot of the stuff. Well, nowadays you do I
31:40
digitally probably wouldn't. You well, you did on the African
31:42
We're going to just shoot these Rapids and we're just going to
31:44
put some special effects in there.
31:45
Every single thing is in camera and I think that's why a lot of
31:48
people twisted rhythm on the film that didn't see that level
31:50
of integrity. He's Nicholson.
31:52
He's just got that level of integrity towards filmmaker.
31:55
This is the code here. This is my shortlist.
31:58
It is my shortlist, right? But should we pan to the right?
32:00
Is it in the code? And I love that confidence in a
32:03
film maker, and I don't really think there's been anyone like
32:06
him. And there's so many things in
32:08
this film. He's practicing for Lawrence of
32:10
Arabia, where he's just got the confidence again to go higher.
32:13
The scale in River Kwai is absolutely unprecedented.
32:16
And from a photographic point of view, just a photographic point
32:19
of view, just from a composition point of view, it's a
32:23
masterpiece. Well, we said earlier that we'd
32:26
be talking more about the producer of the film as well,
32:27
Sam Spiegel. Yeah, and that's because he
32:29
played a major role in getting the film made.
32:32
It's a fairly outrageous story, so we have a fairly outrageous
32:35
guy to tell it. Could that be Matt?
32:37
Oh, it's me. Yeah, you turn at the Sam Gollum
32:40
by the end of it. That's Sam Smeagle.
32:43
Sorry. No one was getting that if you
32:46
hadn't explained there. Wow.
32:51
Well, yeah, who Wells novel The Bridge on the River Quite that
32:54
was published in 1952 and the rights were snapped up by
32:57
British Hungarian producer Alexander Corder, who said he
33:01
saw just having huge cinematic potential.
33:02
Yeah, he produced the Lord. Just stuff Alexander Corder, his
33:06
biggest, probably the third man with Carol.
33:08
Read. Oh yeah, lovely.
33:09
Another classic. A lot of you, right?
33:10
Yeah. But Corder passed away in 1956
33:13
saw Spiegel, who warned Horizon Pictures stepped in.
33:16
He bought the rice to Kwai from Corder's estate for $200,000 and
33:20
struck a deal with Colombia to distribute and they put up a
33:23
budget of $2.8 million. Right.
33:26
Yeah, a big budget then. And Horizon, they had produced
33:29
the African Queen a few years earlier, obviously a huge hit
33:32
with an exotic setting. So Spiegel must have thought,
33:34
hang on, this bridge in the jungle story looks right on my
33:37
street. Yeah, we can do that, yeah.
33:39
And then, after he had the right, Spiegel hired Cole
33:41
Foreman. Then Michael Wilson tried the
33:43
screenplay before he started approaching directors.
33:47
Yeah, well, the writing's a story all of its own as well.
33:49
We'll get into that more when we discuss the crew.
33:51
It's probably bigger than the film itself.
33:54
Absolutely crazy, yeah. The production of the film was
33:56
mad madness, obviously. Madness, yeah.
33:58
Yeah. So Spiegel first asked Carol
34:01
Reed to direct, but he said no. He asked Howard Hawks, but he
34:04
said no. He asked Fred Cinnamon, who said
34:07
he didn't understand the book, so he said no John Ford said he
34:10
didn't like Colonel Nicholson, so he said no.
34:12
And apparently Siegel approached Orson Welles to direct and star
34:16
in the film, but he just didn't like the script.
34:18
Oh, really? Star as who, though?
34:21
Seidel. Imagine massive on the bridge.
34:27
You could have done that back then, would have been
34:29
outrageous. A John Wayne is Genghis God.
34:33
Exactly the same as that Wells screaming that he hates the
34:37
British. So Spiegel was running out of
34:41
options, and that's when David Lean came in.
34:43
Katherine Hepburn, who starred in The African Queen, like we
34:45
just mentioned, had just worked with Lean on a romantic comedy
34:48
called Summertime, and she recommended him to Spiegel.
34:51
Lean said he'd do it, and Spiegel said he'd hired him in
34:53
absence of anybody else, which I'll love.
34:57
That's flattering. Yeah.
34:59
Not even any other director, just anybody else.
35:02
Yeah, you'll. Do.
35:04
Exactly. Dean wasn't keen on making the
35:07
film either, but at the time he was getting divorced from his
35:10
third wife and Todd. As soon as he signed, he asked
35:12
Columbia for an advance on his salary.
35:14
They weren't happy when he was used it to fix his teeth.
35:20
Going through a divorce? Back on the market?
35:21
Better get the Nasher sorted out.
35:23
Smiling yourself up. Couple of fillings.
35:26
And Spiegel sent a scouting team out to the real River Quay in
35:30
Berman to check it out before filming, and they said the river
35:32
was now nothing more than a trickling stream.
35:35
They then came across a village called Kittlegula in Ceylon, now
35:37
Sri Lanka, and production began there in 1956.
35:41
Right. Well, yeah, tripling stream
35:42
would have been a bit unimpressive.
35:44
Yeah, what have I done? I've built a massive bridge.
35:46
You can just walk through it. Yeah, there were some issues
35:51
though. The sewers canal crisis of 1956
35:53
meant that equipment had to be flown out to Ceylon rather than
35:56
shipped and there was an incident where the finished film
35:59
foot it didn't turn up in London for post production.
36:01
After a week long search it was found sitting on a boiling hot
36:04
runway in the Cairo airport. Well, somehow it was undamaged,
36:08
amazingly. Imagine it was all ruined.
36:10
Devastating, yeah. Just in a hot box with some
36:13
corned beef. You're the key to open it.
36:19
I mean, flying stuff about with a massively increased production
36:22
cost, Spiegel would have been having kittens about it, yeah.
36:24
Absolutely. But filming in such a remote
36:27
location brought some dangers as well.
36:29
One of the second assistant directors, John Carrison, he was
36:32
killed in a car crash on the way to 1 of the locations.
36:35
Oh really? And when filming the shootout on
36:37
the bridge in the climax, a stuntman called Frank Howard was
36:39
swept away. He was rescued, but he had to be
36:42
thrown to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London.
36:44
But he sadly died. No way.
36:46
Yeah, ridiculous. I read that David Lane was swept
36:49
away by the river at one point as well.
36:50
He had to be rescued. Wow, dangerous.
36:52
Not by Spiegel, I bet. Well, no, he wasn't bothered.
36:55
Tell me. Run in the other direction, I
36:57
think all the problems led to friction between Lean and
37:00
Spiegel during filming. In terms of the story, Lean was
37:02
interested in the rivalry between Nicholson and Seidel,
37:05
while Spiegel one of the adventure elements to have more
37:07
focus and he was asked to write us to add in more action scenes.
37:11
They were all vetoed by Lean though.
37:12
He was just absolutely insistent on his vision.
37:14
I. Think Yeah, apparently Spiegel
37:16
had the right house put in action scenes that were an
37:18
elephant Stampede, a submarine battle, and an army of ants
37:22
attacking the commandos. Like Kingdom of the Crystal
37:25
Skull. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
37:32
Lean also said that Spiegel cheated him out of credit and
37:34
compensation for the film. He said they agreed to share
37:37
credit equally, but Spiegel promoted the movie as the Sam
37:40
Spiegel production rather than giving Lean equal billing.
37:44
Well, the very first thing we'll say on the screen is the huge
37:46
title as Sam Spiegel. Production, yeah, it's massive.
37:49
Yellow SD for you. Yeah.
37:50
Thank you. Yeah.
37:52
But yeah, there was some friction.
37:53
And that isn't the end of the Spiegel Lean shenanigans either.
37:56
Not by a long way. No, no.
37:57
Well, before we finish on David Lean, we have our first patron
38:00
question. OK.
38:01
So as well as all those many benefits we mentioned at the
38:04
start, if you sign up to become an ATRM patron, we'll answer
38:07
your questions on the show. We have the first of those now.
38:10
It's on Classic Films and it comes from Andrew.
38:13
Hello, Andrew. Hello, Andrew.
38:14
So Andrew says, I've seen a lot of films.
38:18
Self praise, No praise for Andrew.
38:19
Fair enough. But I'm always embarrassed when
38:22
classes come up. I've not seen AG the Bridge and
38:24
the River Kwai. The podcast is getting me to
38:26
watch movies I've never seen. But what classic movies have you
38:29
not got around to watching yourselves?
38:31
Right. Thanks for that, Andrew.
38:33
We all have our blind spots, I think.
38:35
Yep. Well, maybe not you, Matt.
38:36
No, I've seen everything. See, it all just fell off.
38:41
I've seen everything. I've seen everything.
38:42
Are there any for you, Matt? Genuinely, a couple, Yeah, we
38:45
covered maybe poppets not too long ago, but the other 60s
38:49
musical with Julie Andrews? I've never seen The Sound of
38:52
Music. Wow.
38:53
I've seen bits and pieces of it, but I've never felt compelled to
38:56
sit through the whole thing. Might you love it.
38:58
Well, I love musicals, love Julie Andrews, I love
39:00
Christopher Plummer, so I probably should take that one
39:02
off. But yeah, I've not seen that.
39:03
And then the other one, Breakfast at Tiffany's again,
39:05
because I think, yeah, I know it's already Hepburn.
39:07
I know it's just looking for a cat in the rear end at the end.
39:10
I know Moon River, I know outrageously racist Mickey
39:13
Rooney is a Japanese man in that.
39:15
Yeah, Yeah. And I just think I don't feel I
39:17
need to see that. I just know all the bits
39:19
already. You just prefer pepper than the
39:21
A-Team. Exactly.
39:23
A-Team and nothing. Else.
39:25
I want to see him smoking a cigar, not women, Audrey.
39:27
Headphone. Yeah, well, I was feeling to
39:30
think of any of the top of my head.
39:31
So what I. Showed up, man.
39:33
You sure? No.
39:33
No, that's what I did. I was feeling to think that was
39:36
all. Yeah.
39:37
So what I did was I went through the IMDb top 250 and I've got
39:40
the first three films that appear on that list that I've
39:42
not seen. OK.
39:43
OK. So 1st 25th in the IMDb top 250
39:46
right? I've not seen City of God.
39:48
Wow. Oh.
39:49
Really. Really.
39:50
OK. Brazilian classic.
39:51
I'm sure you guys have seen it. Oh.
39:53
Yeah, it's great for him. This is the most John answer to
39:55
a question I've ever fucking heard of.
39:56
Me like #28 I've seen the 1st 27 so in your face really
40:02
backhanded. It's amazing.
40:05
Well, I've not seen #32 either. Which is the pianist.
40:07
Oh really? Wow, Yeah, brilliant.
40:10
A shiri number from what I hear. Yeah, lovely.
40:13
And #40 Japanese classic Harakiwi I've not seen.
40:16
I'd imagine most people haven't seen that, to be honest.
40:18
I've seen that. Of course you have.
40:20
Yeah, but in terms of a massive title like Andrews will be
40:23
looking for, I went back until I reached a huge one, which was
40:25
79, and that is Das Boot. I've not seen that.
40:30
Right. Wow, yeah, it's on for about 5
40:32
days, isn't it? I mean, it is, yeah, to be.
40:34
Good five days. I don't.
40:35
Know if you'll feel great at the end of it, but it's worth taking
40:38
that. Or might you watch Sound of
40:39
Music and I'll watch Das Boot? You've got the best part of that
40:41
deal, but OK. And westy classic films you've
40:46
not seen. There's a few, obviously, but
40:48
there's some that Sunset Blvd. I've still not seen.
40:52
And I've mentioned that because we've had this question before.
40:54
Yeah, I've mentioned earlier on the podcast I've not seen Doctor
40:56
Zhivago, David Lean Classic, but I'd love to get into that.
40:59
But again, I've just, I don't know Cleopatra.
41:02
Right, right. Yeah.
41:03
Another one I'd like to check out but I just keep thinking,
41:06
have I seen that? Burning and Taylor isn't it or
41:08
was a treat. It is, yeah.
41:09
So it'd be great, but I mean, I'd rather see Burning and
41:12
Taylor in different films if I'm on.
41:14
Fair enough. It happened one night I've never
41:16
seen Oh. Yeah, I've not seen that
41:17
actually. And the last one is the 400
41:19
blows, which I've heard a lot about now.
41:21
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've not seen that either. 3434,
41:24
yeah, it happened One night. The first film to win the Big 5
41:27
of the Oscars was it, I think. Yeah, it was.
41:28
Yeah, one of the only three. Why that popped up and said I
41:31
really should be checking out, but I mean you know, Robocops on
41:34
gonna do. I watch out for a 15th time.
41:37
What's that again? RoboCop, then Predator, then
41:40
time Cop, then a kebab, then bed, then the crew, then I cry
41:42
myself to sleep. Fuck, it happened one night.
41:44
That happens every Saturday night for Wesley of.
41:46
Course it does. Well, back to David Lean and
41:49
Division. The River Choir was rewarded for
41:51
all the hard work that went into it.
41:52
Yeah, David Lean won the Oscar for Best Director and the film
41:55
won Best Picture, beating out some of that classics in Peyton
41:58
Place, Witness for the Prosecution and 12 Angry Men.
42:02
Yeah. Oh, really?
42:03
Yeah, wow. So major awards for leading the
42:05
film and for us, the work of a huge director finding his epic
42:09
voice. Yeah, very much.
42:11
Definitely the cast. David Lean was on this way to
42:19
becoming one of Hollywood's great epic directors, but he
42:22
needed the right actors to bring the bridge in the river quieter
42:24
life. We've already talked about Ceso
42:27
High, a Coward Saito, and we'll be discussing William Holden.
42:30
This she has, and Jack Hawkins's Warden.
42:32
But there's only one place to start in the cast, surely?
42:35
Absolutely. So Alec Guinness plays Colonel
42:38
Nicholson, a British commander obsessed with military
42:40
discipline. In order, we follow Nicholson as
42:43
he arrives at the Burmese prison camp, sofas in the oven, and
42:46
ultimately becomes so obsessed with the bridge that he loses
42:49
sight of which side he's on. Yeah.
42:50
Yeah. So, Westie, what do you make of
42:52
Alec Guinness as Nicholson? I mean, this is so beautifully
42:56
played. It's a beautiful performance.
42:59
It's so nuanced, it's so theatrical in places, it's so
43:02
focused. It's so tunnel vision that I
43:04
can't believe he wasn't the first choice for this.
43:07
It's almost like he's defy and lean.
43:09
I'm going to show you how good I am.
43:10
I'm going to show you how good this character can be and how
43:14
confusing this character can be because you don't quite know his
43:18
motivation. First time I watched this, you
43:20
know, when he looks down, he sees the wire and you just think
43:22
he's going to play along. He's going to see it and go,
43:25
right, Yeah, I've been playing you the whole time, and it's
43:27
going to spin on that and just be like, yeah, yeah, now I've
43:29
got you. Yeah, I'm a real British after
43:31
I've been putting this on, and it's just beautifully nuanced by
43:33
Guinness because he just absolutely carries you through
43:36
the film and it's so compelling. Where's he coming from?
43:40
What's he doing? What's his motivation?
43:41
You've got no back story for the character.
43:43
He is born in war. That's all.
43:46
He is this robot of a guy. But Guinness brings so much
43:49
humanity to this. So he demands respect.
43:52
You know when it's raining that when they first arrived at the
43:54
company, walks through the hospital for the want of a
43:57
better word. And he looks up and there's a
43:58
leak in the roof and he just looks at the guy and he said,
44:00
yes, Sir, get that fixed. Get that sorted.
44:04
Probably me very, very favorite Alec Guinness performance.
44:07
I'm always. Obviously when I was a kid, I
44:08
knew it was Obi Wan. Yeah, of course.
44:10
But then I thought, you just kind of filled a role in that.
44:13
And I didn't know who he was and what he'd achieved to be Obi Wan
44:17
Kenobi for everyone to go, oh, I'm going to take this guy
44:19
seriously. I remember grand ago was Alec
44:21
Guinness. Wow.
44:23
This has got a bit of credit. This has got credibility.
44:25
And I never really knew where that came from until I saw this
44:29
and I thought that performance there is probably the only
44:32
performance you need to do as an actor to be memorable and for
44:35
anyone to sign you up to do any role whatsoever.
44:38
Because if you can play this character, as nuanced as it is
44:41
and as annoying as it is, and as inspirational as this is, this
44:44
performance, people will be watching this.
44:46
What I want to be an actor. I want to be able to do that.
44:48
And if I can, that's all I need to do.
44:50
It's just a wonderful performance and I'll never get
44:52
enough of it. It's just amazing.
44:53
Covers all the bases for me in this.
44:55
I agree. I think he's pretty
44:56
extraordinary Guinness, isn't he in this.
44:58
He's amazing in the opening. As soon as he starts talking to
45:00
site or about the Geneva Convention, it's like, all
45:03
right, this guy can act. Yeah.
45:05
And I kind of keep saying these words, but he does bring this
45:07
stubborn dignity to Nicholson and it's there in everything the
45:11
way that he talks like when the first start building the bridge
45:13
in Corporal Weaver talking to him, he seems to have some kind
45:16
of tick. And Nicholson's just like have
45:18
you were nervous affliction. If not, stop making those
45:20
phrases at once brutal. He's just a perfect human being
45:24
and he's all eyes. But even the way Nicholson moves
45:29
seems to have been thought through by Guinness.
45:31
The way he carries himself is so specific.
45:33
We talked about the way that he staggers in March it when he
45:35
leaves the oven. But any other time he's always
45:37
like ramrod straight and always got his leg up on something like
45:41
he owns the place. Yeah, brilliant.
45:43
What the character's probably most loaded for, critically is
45:45
his journey. Started as principal officer,
45:48
maintained discipline against all the odds, but by the end,
45:51
he's so obsessive, building that bloody bridge that he's helping
45:54
the enemy. It's such a crazy and huge arc
45:56
that I find it kind of hard to believe they pulled it off.
45:58
Yeah, but they did, and it's in the writing.
46:01
But I think it's more so down to Guinness, to be honest.
46:03
Yeah. By Nicholson as a character,
46:05
every second is on the screen, and he's mental, so maybe I
46:08
shouldn't. I think one of the most
46:10
impressive things that's maybe lost now is that when Choir was
46:13
released, Alegans was very much 3rd on the bill behind William
46:17
Hold Nanjack Hawkins. Yeah, he is.
46:18
Yeah, He's earning the credits, isn't he?
46:20
It's there on all the marketing materials from the time.
46:22
Yeah. Now, acting wise, it's his film.
46:24
Yeah. He completely takes you away
46:25
from two big stars. Yeah.
46:27
One of the definitive films dealing performances for me.
46:29
And possibly the greatest tragic character in war movies.
46:32
I mean, there's a few, but Nicholson's right up there.
46:35
Oh, definitely. Well, the interesting thing for
46:37
me is when I was putting the notes together thing about what
46:39
I wanted to see, I kept on thinking the thing about
46:42
Nicholson in this instead of the thing about Guinness in this.
46:46
And that's because this is one of those elite performances
46:48
where the lines between actor and role are just completely
46:51
blurred and they've become one and the same.
46:53
Yeah, I totally agree with that. Yeah.
46:55
Like, I don't see Alec Guinness in this.
46:56
I just see Colonel Nicholson. And, you know, we've mentioned
47:00
it already, but you know, we've covered the original Star Wars
47:02
trilogy and we mentioned it. It's it's pretty well known.
47:05
Guinness was pretty ambivalent at best about getting asked
47:08
about those films again and again and again.
47:10
And to be honest, you and you go.
47:12
I can't really blame him. Like Obi Wan wasn't that much of
47:15
A stretch. Have you seen what I did in
47:17
River Kwai though? Why does no one ask?
47:18
Me about that. Because that journey Nicholson
47:21
goes on, that heroic figure who stands up for the rules and for
47:24
his men and for what's right to imperceptible, ending up aiding
47:28
in a betting the enemy. That 180 trajectory is so subtly
47:31
done by Guinness because he keeps pushing Nicholson to the
47:34
edge of what's acceptable, but then he rains him in and he
47:37
brings him back. So you understand what he's
47:39
doing and why he's doing it. When they're talking about the
47:42
bridge potentially lasts than 600 years and he goes 600 years,
47:45
imagine that. I get where he's coming from.
47:49
To leave a mark on the world like that.
47:51
That's a really laudable dream, see, and it's all he's dreamt
47:54
of, doing something for Britain to that level.
47:56
That's what his life has been devoted to.
47:58
And that obsession is ultimately what blinkers him to how he's
48:01
crossed over the line by the end.
48:03
So it's a fascinating character, just perfectly played bikeiness.
48:07
You know why people don't talk about this enough?
48:09
Because he makes it look easy. He does.
48:11
He does make it look easy. Yeah, Yeah.
48:12
It just made it look so easy. Yeah, it's ridiculous.
48:17
So Nicholson was kind of based on some real life people, which
48:19
we'll talk about when we saw the writing.
48:21
But a bit like David Lean's director Alec Innes is now
48:24
synonymous with the film. But it could have been
48:26
different. Lots of other big names were
48:28
considered, approached. Some said no to play Nicholson.
48:31
Yeah. It was all madness, wasn't it,
48:33
Matt? Certainly was, because when
48:35
Spiegel bought the rights to the novel first person, he tried to
48:38
cast as Nicholson, Spencer Tracy.
48:40
But he'd read the book and thought he just wasn't right for
48:43
the parts and turned it down. Right, Yeah, apparently, he said
48:46
the part must be played by an Englishman, which to be turned
48:49
out all right, I think. Makes perfect sense.
48:51
It does, yeah. And then Laurence Olivier was
48:53
offered the part but he turned it down to direct and Co star in
48:56
The Prince and the Show Girl and that's a ROM com star in Marilyn
48:59
Monroe. Right, right.
49:01
Love scenes with Marilyn or in the jungle.
49:03
But Sam Spiegel and David Lean can't imagine that was too hard
49:06
a choice. Yeah.
49:09
Not really a coin toss, that is it.
49:12
And then when Lean came in as director, he approached James
49:15
Mason, Noël Coward and Ralph Richardson, but they all said
49:18
no. But the actor he really wanted
49:20
was Charles Lawton, who we just worked with on Hobson's Choice.
49:23
But that fell through because Columbia refused to insure
49:26
Lawton for health reasons. Right.
49:28
So apparently Lawton was massively overweight at the time
49:31
and Columbia's a not right as kind of went this guy in the
49:34
jungle for eight months. Yeah, absolutely no chance
49:38
standing up in the sun. Does he look malnourished
49:43
waffling down their corn beef? Do you want some?
49:45
That's great. Boom, sugar on the whiskey, Yes.
49:51
And somebody that Lane didn't want as Nicholson was Alec
49:54
Guinness because he thought he was too small.
49:56
Sam Spiegel did want them though, so it invited Guinness
49:58
to dinner in London. And initially Guinness said no
50:01
because he saw the novelist being anti British.
50:03
But he said by the end of the night they were discussing what
50:06
kind of week he should wear. Right.
50:08
He sounds like a right Wheeler dealer.
50:09
Spiegel doesn't. He could sell umbrellas in the
50:12
Sahara. After Guinness arrived on
50:16
location in Sale On, they said the first thing David Lean said
50:20
to him was to remind him that he wasn't.
50:21
The first choice. Is what I took earlier.
50:24
First thing he said you're not my first choice.
50:26
So Guinness said he'd consider getting back on the plane and
50:28
just leaving, but decided to stay.
50:30
And I think that was a real motivation.
50:32
I don't know if that's deliberate by Lean, but if it
50:34
is, that's incredible direction. Yeah, maybe it was.
50:36
Who knows? Yeah.
50:37
Yeah, you never know. You never know.
50:38
In the absence of Charles Laudon, no one was wondering on
50:40
this film, though. It's mad.
50:42
Yeah, I guess the first choice or the most obvious choice isn't
50:45
always the best choice sometimes.
50:46
Definitely not, no. And Guinness and Lane then went
50:49
on to have a rocky relationship during filming because at the
50:52
time, Guinness was best known in Hollywood for Ealing comedies
50:55
like The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit and The
50:58
Lady Killers. And he apparently tried to
51:00
inject some humor in this portrayal of Nicholson, but Lane
51:03
told them to play everything straight.
51:05
Yeah, there are some dark moments in there though for
51:07
comedy like we talked about, I think.
51:09
But yeah, Ealing slapstick, probably a bit for custard.
51:12
Pie in the face inside those face Combi pie in the face.
51:18
Falling over in the sun, then just getting back up, pushing
51:20
yourself up. And Guinness and Lane would
51:23
apparently row during the shoot. Guinness wanted Nicholson to be
51:26
more sympathetic and Lane said no.
51:28
He should be a bore. Yeah, I get it from Guinness's
51:31
point of view. I mean, Nicholson was really
51:32
well defined in the writing, maybe too much.
51:35
He's like a cardboard cut out. I think Guinness is bring so
51:37
much to it beyond that. He does, absolutely.
51:40
And in the middle of the shoot, Guinness told Lane he was
51:42
concerned about his own performance and that Nicholson
51:45
was coming off as anti British. So Lane screened a rough quote
51:48
of what they had to Guinness, his wife and his son.
51:50
And he said the next day Guinness said to him.
51:53
We all think it's the best work I've ever done.
51:55
Man. Yeah, Lane said they had that
51:57
screening after the film finished.
51:58
The Guinness has all said thanks and then just got up and walked
52:00
straight out. So we thought they all hated it.
52:02
It's classic British entertainment.
52:05
The rows never stopped, however. The final scene Guinness shot
52:09
was the scene at the end where Nicholson talks about his army
52:11
Cree with Saito. Lane shot Guinness from behind
52:14
which Guinness complained about and after the finished Lane said
52:18
now you cannot fuck off and go home you English actors.
52:20
Thank God I'm starting work tomorrow with an American.
52:24
Brilliant. I mean that does sound pretty
52:26
anti British to be fair. Sounds like James Cameron.
52:30
It really does. Yeah, Guinness wanted to be shot
52:33
and closer apparently, but Lane refused to and shot him from
52:36
behind in that same course. Right.
52:37
Yeah, just shoot a close up version of it and.
52:39
Just be alive. Just do it.
52:41
Just a piece and I've got the one I need, right?
52:43
Do your close up. There's no film in the camera.
52:44
Just turn on it. Either way, no one need of
52:47
worried for his performance as Colonel Nicholson.
52:50
Alec Guinness won the Oscar for best actor.
52:52
Yeah, beating our nominees like Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn and
52:56
Charles Laughton. Oh, wow.
52:58
Crazy. It's the amount of nobody want
52:59
that ends up winning the Academy Award.
53:01
Not Alec Guinness most famous role.
53:03
Maybe. That's probably something else.
53:04
Yeah, but this his finest work. I think these most new ones
53:09
definitely. So now the English actor has
53:14
left, as Lean kind of put it, we can move on to the US star.
53:17
Yeah. That's William Holden, who plays
53:19
Commander Inverted commas. She has an American prisoner
53:23
who's been in the camp long enough to work the system.
53:25
We follow. She has, as he escapes, leaves
53:28
it up and sail on. Outrageous.
53:30
Before being recruited to blow up Nicholson's bridge,
53:32
sacrificing himself on the mission.
53:34
Yeah, he's a survivor. I mean, until the last five
53:38
minutes. Well, yeah, isn't he, Matt?
53:39
Who? Most of it, yeah.
53:41
Brilliant. How's William Holden as she is?
53:45
Just proper old school movie charisma here from William
53:48
Holden. Yeah, like, he brings such a
53:50
cynical streak to the film as she is, which contrasts
53:53
Nicholson. He was all about the rules and
53:55
discipline. And that introduction to him at
53:57
the cemetery, he's so good when the bury and someone who's just
53:59
died and he can barely remember the person's name in what his
54:02
number was. Not out of disrespect, as he
54:04
says. It's just he's been in there so
54:06
long, this is commonplace to him now.
54:08
Yeah, he's like serial number 123456 or whatever it is.
54:12
Yeah. Exactly.
54:13
And it takes like, real charm to make that line work, not be
54:16
like, oh, this guy's a Dick. Yeah, yeah, you get where he's
54:18
coming from. You get that He knows how to
54:19
play the game. He knows how to get on the sick
54:21
list. He knows it's pointless going up
54:23
against Side or when he's scared that Side or will shoot
54:26
Nicholson in the officers. We are scared as well because we
54:29
know what this character she is saying and that he doesn't
54:31
overreact to anything. So he brings all that to the
54:34
system. He looks amazing.
54:36
So when he springs interaction apart from the dummy bit, you
54:38
know, he looks really convincing doing that.
54:40
And for a pretty serious film, he does sprinkle in little bits
54:43
of light relief even. I mean, we've been talking about
54:46
about when he's rescued and he's got the nurses draped all over
54:49
him. It's like he's James Bond in
54:51
there. Yeah, you know, And one stays in
54:53
the night and wardens like who she, where's she come from?
54:56
So Holden, he's just great in this.
54:57
And he plays off Guinness really effectively.
55:00
I agree, I was like William Holden.
55:02
I like him here as well. When he first shows up in the
55:04
camp he's like a bronze God compared to everyone else.
55:07
Been catching some rays clearly. He's straight out of Jason He.
55:11
Really is where Guinness looks every inch to like suffering
55:16
resolute military man, Holden looks every inch the 50s
55:19
Hollywood movie star. It's ridiculous but he's great
55:22
as a character. She has obviously there as the
55:25
opposite kind of persona to Nicholson, where Nicholson has
55:27
his duty in court of honor. She doesn't want to live by any
55:30
rules, certainly not military ones.
55:33
That's personified in that monologue I mentioned when he
55:34
tells Warden that he and Nichols not living their lives the wrong
55:37
way. But I also think he's there to
55:39
kind of encapsulate another theme of the film, like the
55:42
absurdity of war. She has goes from escapee to
55:45
deserter to action hero, which is crazy and something he is
55:49
constantly is the charmer always got an eye for the ladies when
55:53
they've been guided through the jungle by the Thai girls.
55:55
There's that shortwave leaning against the tree.
55:57
All the girls were by him, and he looks every one of them up
56:00
and down. Absolute sleazeball.
56:04
I think it's testament to home. And he brings all these facets
56:06
to. She has character and executes
56:08
all of them really well. Yeah.
56:09
Yeah, I mean, you don't think he's a sleazeball either, you
56:11
know, You're just like, yeah, he's great.
56:12
He's got them shampooed his head in the river. 10 minutes.
56:17
He is over show by Guinness maybe, but a really good 50s
56:20
style movie star work for me. I love to watch him.
56:23
Great. Yeah.
56:24
He's a great contrast to Guinness and they work really
56:27
well off each other when they are on the same scene.
56:29
It's just this absolute bitterness that just love his
56:32
outlook and how much he believes in it and being a good human
56:35
being. And none of this fucking makes
56:36
any sense and it's just absolute madness.
56:39
He's just having a great time when he needs to have a great
56:41
time. You're only walking through that
56:43
whole camp in the school, the commando school, and he's just
56:46
like, he's fine one minute and then the Joe Buddy's like, oh, I
56:49
just want to get out of here. This is ridiculous.
56:52
But just the madness of it. He just highlights every single
56:55
bit of it. But he knows he's painted into a
56:57
corner. That scene with him on the beach
57:00
with the girl that he's found and they're just running to the
57:02
water. It kind of takes me out the film
57:05
a little bit because I'm thinking it's a great character
57:07
moment, but Bill Holden must be having a great time shooting
57:11
this. Well, looks like.
57:12
This must feel like a wonderful time, and he just brings that.
57:17
It is a wonderful time and he's really, really good and he spins
57:21
that on the character. It's like you should feel like
57:23
he's a bit of a Dick for leaving everyone behind, for being
57:27
selfish, for looking after himself.
57:28
But you're like, don't, I don't want him to go back.
57:30
I want him to just live his life.
57:31
He deserves it. Like he sees reality.
57:34
And I think that was the voice of many people who went over in
57:36
World War 2 and they saw the madness of it.
57:38
Nobody wanted to be there. Japanese didn't want to be
57:41
there, British didn't want to be there.
57:42
Americans didn't want to be there.
57:43
There, there's more. 90% of the troops didn't want to be there.
57:46
But you have Nicholson and you have Sido at the top of the
57:50
bill. And unfortunately, and that's
57:52
what people listen to, but if you listen to Shears, World War
57:55
Two would have been over in about 20 minutes.
57:57
Let's kill that. Let's kill us if they're nuts,
57:59
right? This is mental.
58:00
Let's everybody just stop. Let's break this down.
58:02
Let's just run into the ocean and have a bit of a frolic,
58:05
right? That's what life's about.
58:06
He is humanity to me. He is the audience to me.
58:09
And he's a great character and he does deliver it.
58:11
He's wonderful in this so watchable heartbreak at the end,
58:14
but it's so wonderful. And some, Spiegel wondered,
58:17
Somebody with box office appeal to play She Is.
58:19
And he'd worked with Humphrey Bogart on The African Queen in
58:22
1951, and that's who he initially wanted, Cole Foreman
58:25
later said when he wrote the screenplay.
58:27
Spiegel told him write the part of She Is with Bogart in mind,
58:30
but Bogart was already signed up to start in The Harder They
58:33
Fall, so he couldn't do it. Yeah, the boxing film.
58:36
That was Bogart's last ever role in the film, The Harder They
58:38
Fall just before he died. Yeah, well.
58:41
All right, Yeah. And Spiegel then considered
58:43
asking Cary Grant to play. She is, but he changed his mind
58:46
when he realized in 1950 filler he'd been in called crisis to
58:50
being a box office flop. Right, I can see Bogart and
58:53
Grant in there to be honest. But I do like holding sticky
58:55
charm. I wouldn't change it.
58:57
I wouldn't change that for the world.
58:58
No, definitely not so Bill Holden had served in the US Army
59:02
during the Second World War and just won an Oscar for Stalic 17
59:06
and was the next person Spiegel went for for playing shares.
59:09
Holden was paid 300,000 and given wait for this 10% of the
59:14
box office profits as well as wow and he's making some money
59:19
off that. Really is doing well.
59:20
Yeah, Guinness Lee, I said they're the Oscars where he won
59:23
best actor, he said to Holden, I feel bad because I won the
59:26
award, but you were the star. And Holden said you keep the
59:29
Oscar, I'll keep my 10%. Massive.
59:34
Didn't Guinness go into that with that kind of attitude to
59:36
Star Wars, though? And he talked about the
59:37
merchandise and. It's probably where he learned
59:39
it from, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
59:41
So Nuance's recognition for William Holden's performance in
59:43
The Bridge and the River Kwai. He just won one in 1954 for Star
59:46
Like 17, another POW film, so it was never going to again.
59:50
Really. Yeah, but some movie star
59:51
charisma from him here and providing a nice counterpoint to
59:54
Guinness and Nicholson. Oh absolutely.
59:56
Yeah. Perfect chalk and cheese.
1:00:00
The 3rd and final member of the main cast we're going to talk
1:00:03
about is Jack Hawkins, who plays Major Warden, a British commando
1:00:07
task was destroying the bridge he recruits she has leads the
1:00:11
mission through the jungle is successful and if the only lead
1:00:14
character that still be alive as a credit roll.
1:00:16
Yeah, but we does have a debilitating foot injury.
1:00:18
Yeah. Just a crack ball and we can
1:00:20
still put pressure on it. Another Englishman with a bridge
1:00:24
obsession. Matt, How is Jack Hawkins as
1:00:27
warden? He's one of those actors where
1:00:29
it feels like he's in every British film ever made in the
1:00:32
50s and 60s. In everything.
1:00:33
He's got that kind of face and he's got that ultra reliable
1:00:37
vibe and authenticity where whatever the film is, he'll
1:00:41
bring what that film needs in his convents.
1:00:43
In this sense, that Warden is being trapped behind the desk
1:00:46
for so long, he's just itching to get out there into the jungle
1:00:49
to do the action, which contrasts so well to she his
1:00:51
attitude, which is, I want to stay away from this and sit out
1:00:54
the rest of the why you're crazy for wanting to go back to the
1:00:57
bridge. You're insane.
1:00:59
How good would have been if all could just stand by the desk
1:01:02
being like I want to get out back in the shit.
1:01:08
But that's the kind of attitude I get from him.
1:01:10
On one hand, it is like a game to him.
1:01:12
But underneath all that typical British politeness, there is
1:01:15
some steal there. You know, he doesn't hesitate to
1:01:17
kill the Japanese soldier in the jungle when Joyce does, I
1:01:20
believe when he says he wouldn't hesitate to leave Joyce behind
1:01:22
if he had been injured, like he gets injured.
1:01:25
And in a lot of ways, I think Warden is probably the least
1:01:27
likable person in the film, which just makes it all the more
1:01:30
ironic that he's the only one who does get to walk way alive
1:01:33
at the end. Yeah.
1:01:35
He was another actor who served in World War 2, Jack Hogan.
1:01:38
So we had experience to bring to it.
1:01:39
Yeah. And like we mentioned before,
1:01:41
Hawkins was second on the bill above Alec Guinness when the
1:01:43
film came out. That's.
1:01:44
Crazy, yeah. Even more surprising when he
1:01:46
doesn't show up until 75 minutes in.
1:01:48
Yeah. He's in the sequel, but.
1:01:53
When he does arrive, he's memorable, yeah, warns another
1:01:55
one of those duty obsessed officers.
1:01:57
He's like Nicholson but on the other side, and I like his ark,
1:02:00
which I think is really subtle. At first, Warden seems like the
1:02:03
rational one. He's got a clear mission and a
1:02:05
bit of a plan, but once he gets shot in the foot he goes mad as
1:02:08
well. By the end he's boot off,
1:02:11
basically crawling through the jungle, determined to get to the
1:02:13
bridge no matter what. And at the end, during the
1:02:16
battle, when he's firing off rounds, when he can't even
1:02:18
stand, it's like, what you're doing, you're going to die, just
1:02:20
go home. Well, I like about Jack Hawkins.
1:02:25
He doesn't hammer home the points that Warden's going mod.
1:02:28
There's no history. Onyx.
1:02:29
He doesn't try to make Warden sympathetic.
1:02:31
Another character would demonstrate the kind of blind,
1:02:34
unthinking devotion to Judy. And again, upstaged a bit by
1:02:37
Guinness maybe, but a good supporting turn I think.
1:02:40
Yeah, I always knew Jack Horton's from Zulu, from when I
1:02:43
was very, very young, of course. So I just expected him to be
1:02:46
like standing up at the bridge we're all going to.
1:02:49
Die. Firing mortars.
1:02:53
Drunk out of his his head, yeah. Yeah, but I think he just makes
1:02:57
it a lot more subtle. It's the same journey downwards.
1:03:00
He's never going to recover from this.
1:03:02
But the way he plays this is so refined, it's so gentlemanly,
1:03:05
it's so British even like you just said, John losing your
1:03:08
mind. But I'm not going to make it
1:03:09
obvious it is there. Like he just wanted to get into
1:03:12
this and see the action and do something meaningful.
1:03:14
He does something meaningful, but at what cost?
1:03:18
What do you believe in? Is it right?
1:03:19
Is it true? And I honestly don't think his
1:03:21
character believes that it is. And he kind of really doubts the
1:03:24
war effort and the side he's on by the end of it.
1:03:27
And really what is going on by the whole thing.
1:03:30
He's read it on paper and now he's seen.
1:03:31
You see it through his eyes and when he sees it, we see it.
1:03:34
We think it's futile, it's pointless, it's violent and he's
1:03:38
part of it now and his hands are dirty and you really feel that
1:03:41
from that character at the end of the film.
1:03:42
But he does play it really refined here.
1:03:44
A great character actor and a great character for him.
1:03:48
But the first person Lean wanted to play the part of Wharton was
1:03:50
John Giel Good. He turned it down and he said
1:03:53
that Wharton was anybody's part and not meaty enough for him.
1:03:56
Yeah. No one wanted to be in this
1:03:58
film, did they? I'll do it help you.
1:04:04
Fine, yeah. I mean, if you want a custom
1:04:05
distinguished British actors and deal, good.
1:04:07
Probably a decent show. Yeah, it would be a great show,
1:04:10
yeah. No award recognition for Jack
1:04:12
Hawkins for Quite for Us, though.
1:04:13
Another strong performance showing the different faces of
1:04:16
military obsession. Yeah, exactly.
1:04:18
He's just sitting on a beach with his 10%.
1:04:24
So that is our principal cast. Aleken is giving the performance
1:04:27
of his career as Nicholson, William Holding providing the
1:04:29
voice of laid back pragmatism as she has, and Jack Hogan showing
1:04:33
yet another version of duty driven modernist.
1:04:35
Yeah, three different approaches to war all ending up in the same
1:04:38
place. Not down bridge, yeah, but some
1:04:41
good work all around. Great.
1:04:42
Well. Amazing that all these guys are
1:04:44
in the same film. Let's be honest, the middle.
1:04:54
Heading into the middle act of the bridge on the river, Kwai
1:04:56
and Lean finally gets his two main storylines running in
1:04:59
parallel. We'll be talking about the
1:05:01
command mission through the jungle.
1:05:02
But first we've got some teams to put together, don't we?
1:05:06
We do. So Nicholson's out of the oven
1:05:08
and in EU turn to end all U turns.
1:05:11
He agrees to build Saito's bridge after all that.
1:05:16
Meanwhile she is still living it up with the ladies now in Sale
1:05:18
on when Major Warden shows up to spoil the phone and recruit him
1:05:21
for a mission to destroy that very same bridge.
1:05:24
Yeah. Yeah.
1:05:25
Two teams, 2 opposite objectives.
1:05:27
Westie. Yeah.
1:05:28
How does it go for you? Well, I'll go for the first one
1:05:32
in that Nicholson's U-turn on this and he inspects the bridge.
1:05:36
He gets everyone's feedback on it and he has this incredible
1:05:39
teams meeting with everybody before teams meetings and he's
1:05:42
so in charge of it. But the way he signs it off is
1:05:45
just so fucking brilliant. And he's like, we have wasted a
1:05:47
month and I wasn't to blame. So just this guy who's just
1:05:53
pummeling home that he's right all the time, the placements
1:05:56
wrong, they're getting it all wrong.
1:05:58
This might be impossible. He knows what's at stake.
1:06:00
And he's got no empathy whatsoever towards site.
1:06:02
Or so they're getting a contractor in.
1:06:03
Like, maybe kids are freezing. I need a new roof.
1:06:05
Can you get it done? Well, you know, we are the best,
1:06:10
but, you know, you could have got a month ago or so in your
1:06:11
office. And there's a real question of
1:06:13
trust here, Like, can't site or like, trust him.
1:06:16
He's telling him to move the bridge completely.
1:06:18
Yeah. He blames the Japanese for the
1:06:20
men's conduct. When they're walking around,
1:06:21
they're unruly, they don't know what they're doing.
1:06:23
It's their fault, but it's not. It's your men.
1:06:25
Like they should be following the cord as you do.
1:06:28
And it's really great how that comes across.
1:06:31
And then just sat there goodbye, have a cup of tea, obviously
1:06:34
getting this stuff here. And it's like 400 yards
1:06:37
downstream and he's talking about working his own men 30%
1:06:40
harder. Well played.
1:06:43
Because Sido was just absolutely fucking furious throughout all
1:06:47
this. It's just like about a teeny
1:06:49
just shout out the window and someone else shouts it and he's
1:06:51
I should have dinner brought here and he shouts it out the.
1:06:54
Window. And he said, will you please
1:06:55
just get on with it? But it's just Nicholson lauding
1:06:58
himself over everything here. You take charge of that and you
1:07:01
take charge of that, and you do this and you do that.
1:07:03
Right? We're on the same page.
1:07:04
Thank you very much. I've spent some time in the Hot
1:07:05
Books, but you're going to have to kill yourself if this doesn't
1:07:07
work. See you later, mate.
1:07:08
Bye. And that's not my fault.
1:07:10
But I just love that there's that little undertone kind of
1:07:13
can site or trust him. Can he trust what he's saying?
1:07:15
Yeah. And you know that Guinness,
1:07:17
should he be trusted? Should he not?
1:07:19
And he plays that right to the end.
1:07:21
But it's this scene that really highlights it for me.
1:07:23
Yeah, I think this is where it all starts to kind of go wrong
1:07:26
for Nicholson a bit. I like how he's expecting site
1:07:28
there was bridge and he's just like, yeah, this is rubbish.
1:07:31
He's so appalled by the shoddy craftsmanship that he just
1:07:34
abandoned all those principles. So a massive change of heart,
1:07:38
but I kind of buy it. He decides to build a bridge out
1:07:41
of a sense of pride and achieving something with the men
1:07:43
and ensuring British superiority.
1:07:46
I mean, it's a mad motivation for a character in a mainstream
1:07:48
film building the best bridge in Burma, but it works.
1:07:52
The bridge works as a symbol of obsession and of hope and of
1:07:55
duty, all kind of rolled into one.
1:07:56
I think it's really excellent. It's almost like, what else are
1:07:59
we going to do? Yeah, exactly.
1:08:01
What I find kind of fascinating is Nicholson after construction
1:08:03
starts, you could talk for England loves the sound of his
1:08:06
own voice. But the things he says are
1:08:08
really revealing. He's like, we can teach these
1:08:10
Barbarians a lesson in Western methods.
1:08:12
We'll put them to shame. So that's what it's about,
1:08:14
showing them what's what, really.
1:08:16
And we get that wide shot of the bridge after the star on it,
1:08:19
putting down the whole thing to the river mass of that and shows
1:08:22
us not just the scale of the bridge, but the scale of
1:08:24
Nicholson's like obsession as it starts to grow great.
1:08:28
He's building a monument to the British, but it's for the enemy,
1:08:31
which is messed up and it messes him right up, obviously, yeah.
1:08:35
It's the scale of his ambition as well, which is really
1:08:37
poisoned. Yeah, exactly.
1:08:39
Yeah. Yeah, so I'll go for the other
1:08:41
scene, which is she has been recruited and briefed by Warden.
1:08:44
Because two things really stand out to me about this scene.
1:08:47
First of all, it's a great example of the devotion to
1:08:50
realism and authenticity that Lane wonders.
1:08:53
Because this scene is basically exposition.
1:08:55
There's no need for it to be set where it is in the outdoors,
1:08:58
with that huge Vista of the jungle behind them.
1:09:01
Like, he could have done this inside on a set at ailing a
1:09:04
couple of fake palm trees through the window.
1:09:06
But feline it's authenticity or nothing through.
1:09:09
The window Matt, I love you in a bits man, but I'm so pleased you
1:09:12
didn't direct this. I'm so mad.
1:09:14
To be fair, that's what I would have done.
1:09:16
A little fan going so it's hot. Everyone knows, and it just
1:09:20
completely adds to the film that authenticity.
1:09:22
And the second thing that's important is that revelation
1:09:25
about she is and he's not who we think he is.
1:09:27
He isn't the kind of big American hero we've been led to
1:09:30
believe. He's actually a liar and an
1:09:32
impostor, and he's constantly trying to get out of action to
1:09:35
see how they want comfort. And I've just seen that so much
1:09:37
more interesting than if he was just a straightforward GI Joe
1:09:41
looking forward again, stuck into the Japanese again for
1:09:43
revenge. And it just adds to the sense of
1:09:46
none of these characters or what the same.
1:09:48
On the surface, she isn't a hero.
1:09:51
Sido is obviously quite a bit of a bastard, but underneath
1:09:54
there's some humanity and sensitivity to him and his
1:09:56
predicament. Warden isn't this stuffy pen
1:09:59
pusher and Nicholson definitely isn't what he thinks himself to
1:10:02
be, which is a matter of principle, doing the right
1:10:04
thing. So for exposition, it's a very
1:10:07
important thing. Absolutely nobody's where they
1:10:09
want to be in this film. On the no.
1:10:12
None of the characters. I think while Nicholas is
1:10:14
becoming the Japanese armies like #1 contractor, she is
1:10:17
having a lovely time in sailor and he's on the beach with the
1:10:20
nurse and. He's having a great time.
1:10:21
Played by Ancias who was well known at the time, but the
1:10:24
character isn't even given the name.
1:10:25
She's just called Nurse in the credits and if I'm being honest
1:10:29
I'd love to just follow. She has round sail on seeing
1:10:31
what she gets up to. Follow her on the beach.
1:10:38
Now who's the sleazy guy? I can't pull it off like William
1:10:41
Olden. Can that's it?
1:10:43
Died with him, I think. But once he gets to the
1:10:46
hospital, the whole thing is just like, absurd Catch 22.
1:10:50
You know, the classic satire novel.
1:10:51
Yeah. Yeah.
1:10:52
That came out in 1961. And I wonder if Joseph Heller
1:10:55
was inspired by this film because it reminds me so much of
1:10:58
the kind of situations he writes about.
1:11:00
Warden goes on about a sense of duty and morals and then
1:11:03
unashamedly blackmails she hasn't are going on the mission
1:11:05
by saying they'll tell the US he impersonated an officer.
1:11:08
And when she has accepts because he has no choice.
1:11:11
Warden, just like. Jolly good show.
1:11:13
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
1:11:14
Possibly. I've got your file here if you'd
1:11:16
like to read it. Oh for fuck's sake.
1:11:18
You've got everything. And all these military types
1:11:20
treating a suicide mission like it's a jolly adventure.
1:11:22
Yeah, hilarious ways. Being briefed by Warden and
1:11:25
Major Reeves about jumping into enemy territory.
1:11:27
And she has. It's all sarcastic, like with or
1:11:29
without a parachute, and they're all laughing it right up.
1:11:32
It's outrageous. He's really serious, Yeah.
1:11:37
He's like, yeah, seriously. But the we both storylines are
1:11:41
showing us the same kind of like insanity but from different
1:11:44
sides. I think the writing is really
1:11:45
good. Yeah.
1:11:47
So the hospital you just mentioned there during the film
1:11:48
was the Mount Lavinia Hospital in Colombo and Sail On.
1:11:52
It was a hotel that the British military repurposed into a
1:11:54
hospital during the Second World War.
1:11:57
And the production of Quite did the same thing, turning it back
1:11:59
into a hospital fulfillment. Kicked everybody out, broke the
1:12:03
legs. Stick around.
1:12:07
It's still there, probably the hotel.
1:12:08
So if you haven't Sri Lanka, Westie, you know where to stay.
1:12:11
Why do we go to school? That would be meant.
1:12:13
For Christmas. Yeah, quietness.
1:12:19
So the bridge building's underway and she has funds over,
1:12:21
unfortunately. Shall we see what happens in the
1:12:23
jungle? Let's.
1:12:25
Let's do it. Both teams are now in motion.
1:12:30
Nicholson's men get to work on the bridge, while Warden's team
1:12:33
of shears, Lieutenant Joyce and their Thai guide is tracking
1:12:36
through the jungle toward it. One man's obsessed with
1:12:38
building, the other with destroying.
1:12:41
Yeah. Yeah, what are you obsessed
1:12:42
with, Matt? I'm obsessed with the hospital
1:12:45
sick basing with Nicholson because.
1:12:48
Oh yeah. Obsessed.
1:12:51
No, I am obsessed with it. I've to be honest.
1:12:53
Of course you are. Yeah, it's amazing.
1:12:54
This scene is so important because this to me is the first
1:12:58
time you really see those lines being blurred between taking
1:13:01
pride in your work and aid and the enemy.
1:13:03
And it's the first moment where I think you really see Nicholson
1:13:06
lose in perspective because before this he's been so heroic
1:13:09
and upstanding, but now you really start to doubt as
1:13:11
motives. And it is kind of darkly funny
1:13:14
the way Nicholson struts through that sick beer, pointing at
1:13:16
various men and demand and know what's wrong with them.
1:13:19
What's the matter with Haskins? Well, he has me big dysentery
1:13:22
and black water fever. His temperature was 104 last
1:13:24
night. I mean, yeah, OK, that's not a
1:13:27
good combination. Let's leave him be.
1:13:29
And then Clipton points out another man has an infected arm
1:13:32
that won't heal because he's malnourished.
1:13:34
Well, I wonder if fresh air and like you, these might do more
1:13:36
good for a scratch on the arm like.
1:13:38
You've. Just been told it's not a
1:13:40
scratch on the arm and you've just been told he's
1:13:42
malnourished. By a medical.
1:13:44
Expertise by a medical an actual doctor.
1:13:46
Exactly question said it's amazing so you're.
1:13:49
Questioning and Nicholson's judgment for the first time.
1:13:52
And everyone in the scene, you can see the confused buying, but
1:13:55
at the same time, they still don't want to let him down
1:13:58
because he stood up for them so much.
1:14:00
And what's really interested me is the scene that ends on that
1:14:02
music again, when he strides out that we heard when they first
1:14:05
arrived to camp. Because again, in his head, this
1:14:08
is brilliant. This is Britain standing up and
1:14:10
being triumphant. Look, how have, you know
1:14:12
motivated the men? It's anything but.
1:14:14
Yeah, yeah, Nicholson's lost the plot.
1:14:17
Cliptons already told him performing treason.
1:14:19
He doesn't give him monkeys. Then he goes to the hospital
1:14:22
dragging, clearly injure, mount a bed, and again, he's just
1:14:24
like, good show. Jolly good show.
1:14:26
Good, fresh elder, you good? And that shot as he leaves and
1:14:29
all the guys are just like limping after him.
1:14:31
It's really funny, but it feels powerful as well.
1:14:34
Yeah. Earlier, he wouldn't let healthy
1:14:36
guys build a bridge because of the Geneva Convention.
1:14:38
Now he's got guys with one leg building it just to show the
1:14:40
Japanese who's in charge. I mean, it's great dark
1:14:43
satirical comedy, maybe a bit ahead of his time in films.
1:14:47
Yeah. Yeah.
1:14:47
And we're also cutting to the jungle.
1:14:49
Forget that jungle trek montage with Warden's team showing their
1:14:52
journey in the passage of time. Yeah.
1:14:54
Every shot in that montage is stunning.
1:14:56
Yeah. But what's brilliant, I think,
1:14:57
is how the two narratives are tied together, where both teams
1:14:59
are being driven by differently as obsession with a bridge in
1:15:02
Nicholson and Warden. Yeah.
1:15:04
And both men think they're being entirely rational about the
1:15:06
whole thing when both of them are just, like, off the chain at
1:15:09
this point. Yeah.
1:15:10
And for those scenes where Warden she is, Joyce and the
1:15:13
Thai girls we're through swamps. Lean had specially made swamps
1:15:16
created because the real swamps in Ceylon were considered to be
1:15:19
too dangerous. So they built someone location
1:15:22
but then filled them with leeches.
1:15:24
Yeah, those scenes all look really good.
1:15:26
They do, yeah. It's impressive how we've got 2
1:15:28
entirely different plot lines running now, often with
1:15:30
different tones, but it all still feels of a piece I think.
1:15:34
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah.
1:15:35
So there's a wonderful scene that I really love in this film.
1:15:38
Are you obsessed with it? I am actually obsessed with it.
1:15:41
Yeah, it's my happy place. Like if I'm having a bad time, I
1:15:45
can just imagine this with these waterfalls.
1:15:47
The rocks feel really warm. There's a beautiful woman just
1:15:50
shampooing me hair. Everything's fine.
1:15:53
We've just met 20 minutes ago, so there's no problems.
1:15:56
And it's just this real kind of sense of serenity in all of this
1:16:00
and you know that there's something bubbling underneath
1:16:02
it. I think it's a really wonderful
1:16:04
tilt It like we're talking about camera movements and motivations
1:16:07
where you see the bats hanging and it tilts down to the scene.
1:16:10
And again, visually, you get that wide shot and you get the
1:16:14
Thai girls just washing them, enjoying themselves, and they've
1:16:16
got their own space and that's great.
1:16:18
But you've got the red towel, which like just simulates the
1:16:21
blood for me. That's going to happen.
1:16:22
It's like this foreshadowing that there's something bad is
1:16:24
going to happen, something bad on the horizon.
1:16:26
And it's just really, really wonderful how that is framed,
1:16:29
that wide shot. Everyone has a place, but it
1:16:32
doesn't look staged. And there's that classic
1:16:35
Hitchcock, the girls walk and there's the pan, and then the
1:16:38
Japanese soldier turns up and there's that scream and it's
1:16:41
like, it's like a jump scare. The bridge on the river choir.
1:16:43
Like it's amazing in broad daylight.
1:16:44
It's really, really excellent. What's Warden in this sequence?
1:16:47
For me? His call to arms, his now he can
1:16:50
pounce. Yes, this is what I'm here for.
1:16:53
Straight in there with a massive grenade.
1:16:57
Absolutely love it. Just like his first opportunity
1:17:02
grenade. Can we assess the situation for
1:17:05
a second? Can we see what's going on?
1:17:06
It's fine looking. Maybe sneak down.
1:17:08
We can take these guys out with the knives.
1:17:09
We can. No grenade boom, Brilliant throw
1:17:15
as well, lads behind them perfectly.
1:17:18
To me, I was like, oh, there's Terrence Malick, that's where he
1:17:21
got it from. This whole sequence is a thin
1:17:23
red line on a wide lens and it's just like this madness and it
1:17:27
just cuts to the bats flying, the madness of the disrupted
1:17:30
nature. They've disrupted what was going
1:17:32
on. There's just everything's
1:17:33
terrified to see shadows everywhere.
1:17:35
And then it cuts to the scene again, probably the same shot,
1:17:38
very, very similar framing. And it's just death.
1:17:42
They're all dead. It was just this absolute
1:17:44
carnage of this violence that he brings off screen.
1:17:47
But he does it in such a beautiful way that you just see
1:17:49
this disruption of nature. And I think Terrence Malick
1:17:51
watched that and he said, I'm going to do every film like
1:17:53
that. I'm going to cut away from it.
1:17:55
And I was going to bring the the destruction of beauty and then
1:17:57
cut back to absolute destruction of humans of death, because
1:18:01
that's what it is. But when Joyce stands face to
1:18:04
face to this Japanese soldier and you just think there's just
1:18:06
a couple of fucking kids. They're just children.
1:18:09
What is going on with this? And that's David Lee.
1:18:12
And he shoots everything on a wide lens.
1:18:14
Anyone else tried to do this? You wouldn't even feel a
1:18:16
slightly bit involved in it really is heart wrenching.
1:18:19
And it's beautiful. And you can get it on that
1:18:21
level. But the level I love to get it
1:18:23
on is Warden just going for that grenade.
1:18:25
Doesn't even ask advice. Boom.
1:18:31
I love it. Yeah.
1:18:32
It's wonderful. That's wonderful.
1:18:33
It's wonderful. It's a great team.
1:18:35
Yeah, it's the first action moment since the first act, so
1:18:37
maybe we do kind of need it at this point.
1:18:39
Yeah. And the scene where Warden kills
1:18:40
a Japanese soldier is brutal. He stabs him to death, and as we
1:18:44
move away, the camera shows the soldiers photo of his wife next
1:18:47
to his body. Yeah.
1:18:48
Yeah, that's right. I.
1:18:49
Find that really sad. Pretty shocking as well, yeah.
1:18:52
Really harrowing. So there is more going on here
1:18:53
than just, like, a jolly old adventure.
1:18:55
And it's, yeah, when Warden gets shot in the foot as well, isn't
1:18:57
it? So it does come with
1:18:59
consequences. Yeah.
1:19:00
But we still keep cross cutting by Nicholson to see their
1:19:02
progress with the build. Yeah.
1:19:03
And tell you what, see what you want about Nicholson, but the
1:19:06
man knows how to construct a bridge.
1:19:07
Oh, absolutely. It's turning out to be a beauty.
1:19:09
Yeah. It's really nice.
1:19:11
And after the scene where Warden stabs the Japanese soldier, we
1:19:14
get a shot of loads of bats full in the sky.
1:19:16
Yeah, Eddie Fowley, the props manager, said the startled the
1:19:19
bats in the flying by firing rifles, But when they started
1:19:22
trying because they were so scared, they just urinated over
1:19:25
the custom crew. Yeah, you said it was like hot
1:19:28
stinking rain falling all over us.
1:19:31
That's disgusting. The glamour of Hollywood when
1:19:32
you're on location. Yep.
1:19:34
Totally worth it, the shots are amazing.
1:19:35
They are, and we're through the track that is the middle of the
1:19:38
bridge in the River Kwai. Our two teams are in position.
1:19:41
One is built a great bridge, the other has come to destroy it.
1:19:44
Speaking of men on collision courses, should we talk about
1:19:47
the writing and other crew members?
1:19:49
Absolutely. Let's go for it, the crew.
1:19:57
David Lean had a pretty epic vision for the Bridge on the
1:19:59
River Choir, as we've been talking about, and he had quite
1:20:02
the team behind the camera to help achieve that.
1:20:05
We'll be talking about Malcolm Arnold, who composed the music,
1:20:07
and Jack Hildyard as director of photography.
1:20:10
But let's start with the writers.
1:20:11
Yeah, OK, all should I say the writers who actually wrote it?
1:20:14
Yeah, I was going to say which ones.
1:20:15
Yeah, David Lean. So the credited screenwriter on
1:20:20
The Bridge on the River Quiet the time of release was Pierre
1:20:22
Boule, who wrote the original novel, except he didn't actually
1:20:26
write the screenplay. We'll talk about that more
1:20:28
shortly. With the real screenplay,
1:20:29
writers were Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson.
1:20:32
Both established Hollywood writers formed and written 17
1:20:35
films before this, including Western classic High Noon, no
1:20:38
less. Right, that's why I bought it on
1:20:39
DVD same time. Something in the water.
1:20:42
Yeah, and Wilson had 13 screen writing credits, including A
1:20:46
Place in the Zone and three Hopalong Cassidy films.
1:20:50
Right. Right.
1:20:50
So, Matt, what are your thoughts on the writing of Hopalong
1:20:53
Cassidy or The Bridge on the River Quiet.
1:20:55
Either or we'll do both. It's the same thing.
1:20:57
Similar things. I think you can tell this came
1:21:00
from a novel because there's a depth to this, right?
1:21:02
And that's quite unusual for the genre.
1:21:04
I think if all this film was about was blown up a bridge, I
1:21:07
don't think it would have anything like the reputation
1:21:09
that it does have. And part of what really elevates
1:21:12
is is that characterization, particularly of Nicholson
1:21:15
inside. Or I mean, Nicholson starts off
1:21:18
as such a hero, but with his sense of naivety to him, like
1:21:21
actually thinking that side will care about the Geneva Convention
1:21:25
to the point of offering him to lend him his copy.
1:21:27
And then just imagine actually having that on your person at
1:21:30
all times, you know, trekking in the drug.
1:21:32
Well, I better hold on to that, lads.
1:21:33
This will be important and that adherence to the rules or that's
1:21:37
what makes him a hero to the man when he's put in the oven, in
1:21:39
the cheering, when he finally makes sight or relent and
1:21:41
they're saying he's a jolly good fellow.
1:21:43
But then the way that the stubbornness and the pride plays
1:21:46
out and develops and there's something else that gets called
1:21:48
out, but the rightness so good that it always pulls it back at
1:21:52
the same time. Like when Clipton first brings
1:21:54
sort of Nicholson that what they're doing and what he's
1:21:57
doing could be seen as collaboration.
1:22:00
Nicholson comes back with a really good point.
1:22:01
Well, if you were operating on side or wouldn't you operate to
1:22:04
the best of your ability? And that's a great argument
1:22:07
because of course Clifton would. He wouldn't sabotage that.
1:22:10
So you can't say anything against that.
1:22:11
It's the same principle. So right up until the end, the
1:22:14
rightness, what keeps Nicholson so ambiguous in terms of his
1:22:18
argument for what he believes in and for what he's doing is
1:22:20
right. And it's the same for side.
1:22:22
Or he could have been just a very cliched villain, but it
1:22:25
gives him these moments of humanity where you actually
1:22:27
empathize with him a little bit, like when he's sobbing after he
1:22:30
finally relents to Nicholson's stubbornness you do feel from
1:22:33
just a little bit. So think the character writing
1:22:36
in this is exemplary and it just jumps off the page and right
1:22:38
onto the screen. I agree it does.
1:22:41
I mean, to start, I would have bet my bottom dollar that the
1:22:44
first time we talked about Pierre Boole on this podcast
1:22:47
would have been planned of the year.
1:22:48
Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, which is also based on one
1:22:50
of his books, but no. So well done Matt.
1:22:52
Straight in with the Milky War epic.
1:22:57
Yeah. Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson
1:22:59
here adapting a successful novel, obviously.
1:23:01
And I've not read the book, The Vision, The River Kwai, but I've
1:23:03
seen the film and I think the writing is very, very good.
1:23:07
Two very different storylines, like we talked about one drama,
1:23:10
one kind of action, and I think the weave them together pretty
1:23:13
expertly. Lean does that by managing the
1:23:15
tone and formally Wilson do it by reflecting the themes across
1:23:18
both narratives. This idea of duty and obsession
1:23:22
driving mentor madness that we've been talking about, it's
1:23:24
there in both storylines. Nicholson builds the perfect
1:23:27
bridge for the enemy because of his principles.
1:23:30
Warden pushing his injured body through the jungle because of
1:23:33
his mission. Both of them acted in ways that
1:23:35
make no sense really because of duty, and the fact that the two
1:23:38
storylines don't come together until the climax is a brave
1:23:41
choice but a great one. I think it still works because
1:23:44
they keep drawing these thematic parallels between the two plots.
1:23:47
I would say the pacing is unusual.
1:23:49
Like we said, we spend over an hour with Nicholson before we
1:23:51
even meet Warden and she has properly.
1:23:54
And after being such a strong antagonist in the first act,
1:23:57
Sido fades away in the nothingness as a character.
1:24:00
He doesn't even speak during the climax, following Nicholson
1:24:03
around the riverbed like a mute. And in the She Hasn't Warden
1:24:06
plot, I think you can tell this was written two or three decades
1:24:09
before Hollywood really mastered action movie writing.
1:24:12
I wouldn't call those segments thrilling action film writing.
1:24:15
It's not Mad Max Huey Rd. is it? Not at all.
1:24:19
Nicholson with a flaming guitar. I love that.
1:24:23
But overall the writing is excellent for the reasons I
1:24:25
mentioned. I think it's intelligent, I
1:24:28
think it's thoughtful, it's layered, I think it's a really
1:24:30
elegant put your screen writing on the whole.
1:24:32
Yeah, it is. That's a good word for you.
1:24:34
It is elegant. But the thing that strikes me
1:24:36
about this is that this is almost 3 hours long.
1:24:38
Yeah. Does it need to be kind of?
1:24:41
Probably not. Probably.
1:24:42
Not it does work on all of them things, but it flies over
1:24:45
because you are so engaged in the characters and it's like
1:24:48
Matt said, it's the current right in here and the dialogue
1:24:51
is of the time. The dialogue is believable, and
1:24:54
there is this difference in each of their delivery, in each of
1:24:56
their dialogue and what each of them believe.
1:24:59
There's three different beliefs throughout the whole film and
1:25:01
they're intertwined beautifully. But what people miss about this
1:25:04
film and the way it was marketed and the way it was shot and the
1:25:06
way it's actually put forward is this is a film about an
1:25:10
inanimate object. The bridge is the antagonist,
1:25:13
the bridge is the story. This could have been six hours
1:25:16
long, but you know, the bridge is going to get destroyed, but
1:25:18
it's how it's going to get destroyed.
1:25:20
What's going to happen to this thing?
1:25:22
And it's always working towards that thing.
1:25:24
And the bridge as a character stands there in the background
1:25:27
and it looms so big, which is why it had to be built for real,
1:25:30
I think, for the audience to see this.
1:25:32
It's like sour on at the end of Lord of the Rings.
1:25:34
You don't really see the character, but it's just has
1:25:37
this presence. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:25:38
And. Because of that presence, it
1:25:39
really leads you through it. And I think having the bridge as
1:25:42
the main character, no one, it's going to be destroyed.
1:25:44
You can have the film as long as as you possibly want it to be,
1:25:47
but it's the choices they make by getting to that and that this
1:25:50
is 1 tiny story in the middle of World War 2, and I've no doubt
1:25:54
this type of thing happened, but it's so small in the scale of
1:25:58
it. They don't involve anything
1:25:59
else. They don't do this with DDA
1:26:01
happening in the background, they don't do this with an
1:26:03
Allied invasion. And this needs to be done
1:26:05
because they're invading and then the forces are going to win
1:26:08
the war. It's so pointless.
1:26:10
It's like a minor inconvenience for the enemy.
1:26:12
Yeah, it's a minor story in this in World War 2, but he makes it
1:26:16
front and centre and makes this story everything about World War
1:26:20
2. And that's part of the writing
1:26:22
and that's part of the characterization, and that's
1:26:24
what the actors bring to it. They just zoom in.
1:26:26
It reminds me at the end of the burbs where it comes out and
1:26:29
it's like there's planet Earth, but you've been concentrating on
1:26:32
this cul-de-sac. It's like that was World War 2
1:26:36
and we've just been looking at this for 3 1/2 hours and it
1:26:38
seems so big. And I think that is down to the
1:26:41
right and characterization, the way the play you through that
1:26:43
story and that everything that you do in life, no matter how
1:26:45
small you think it is, does have a big impact on the bigger
1:26:48
picture. But you just saw zoomed into
1:26:51
this, it speaks volumes. And then the volumes turned
1:26:55
right down at the end and you don't even hear it anymore.
1:26:58
It's brilliant, brilliantly done.
1:27:00
The babes on the River Kwai you'll.
1:27:02
Be trying to say that for the last 10 minutes.
1:27:06
So Pierre Bull's novel The Bridge on the River Kwai was
1:27:08
published in 1952. Yeah, he based on his own
1:27:11
experiences as a prisoner of war in Hanaoi and Saigon in World
1:27:14
War Two. Yeah, he wasn't involved in the
1:27:16
building of a bridge, but based on the real life building of the
1:27:19
Burma Railway in like 194243, right, For which the Japanese
1:27:23
really did use Allied prisoners as labour.
1:27:25
Yeah, apparently about 100,000 people died building the Burma
1:27:29
Railway, which is absolutely crazy.
1:27:31
That's insane. And the first person Sam Spiegel
1:27:33
hired to adapt Builds book was called Foreman, mainly because
1:27:37
of his writing on High Noon. But when Lean came in, he didn't
1:27:39
like the script. So Spiegel hired another writer
1:27:42
called called A Willingham to have a crack.
1:27:44
But Lean didn't like that either.
1:27:46
So Spiegel then hired Michael Wilson, who would just win an
1:27:49
Oscar for A Place in the Sun. Right.
1:27:51
Yeah. Tragic love story with Liz
1:27:52
Taylor, A Place in the Sun. Yeah.
1:27:54
And Speaking of beauties, and see, as Nurse wasn't in the
1:27:57
book, she was out of the request of the studio because it said
1:28:00
one of the characters needed the love interest.
1:28:02
Yes. So obviously that had to be.
1:28:03
She has. Yeah.
1:28:04
Obviously, I thought you're going to say if the request of
1:28:06
William Holden, he wouldn't do it unless they added that in.
1:28:09
Absolutely. They said there was no white
1:28:10
women in the film. Like we need to rectify this
1:28:12
immediately. Right.
1:28:13
Exactly. Yeah.
1:28:14
So like we said earlier, Pierre Bull received credit for writing
1:28:17
the screenplay when the film came out, even though he didn't
1:28:20
write it whatsoever. The real writers, Michael Wilson
1:28:22
and Carl Foreman, had been blacklisted in Hollywood after
1:28:25
being accused of communism in the McCarthy witch hunt.
1:28:28
That meant they couldn't be credited at all as writers.
1:28:31
Yeah, apparently they fled to the UK in the middle of writing
1:28:33
the film so they could finish it.
1:28:34
Right. And Sam Spiegel had to credit
1:28:36
someone as the writer for the obvious choice was Pierre Boule,
1:28:39
right? Right.
1:28:40
I was surprised he didn't just choose himself.
1:28:42
To be honest. A picture by Sam Spiegel.
1:28:48
And PA Bull couldn't even speak English, let alone write it.
1:28:50
Exactly. How would you take all the
1:28:52
credit though? Unbelievable.
1:28:53
Yeah, but he didn't turn off for the Oscar in person, or did he?
1:28:56
No, it was Kim Novak. Yeah, turned up to the Oscar.
1:28:59
Yeah, OK. So the film had a fictional
1:29:01
narrative, like we said, but lots of it is based on real life
1:29:04
events. Bill said the character of
1:29:06
Nicholson was an amalgamation of several collaborating French
1:29:09
officers he came across in the camp and he was also based on a
1:29:12
British officer called Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosie
1:29:15
and he was a Japanese POW in Thailand and the men under his
1:29:19
command were forced to build Bridge 277 to support the Burma
1:29:22
Railway. Right, Yeah, he was a real life
1:29:24
war hero, apparently. Philip to see.
1:29:26
He sabotaged the building of his bridge by collecting termites to
1:29:29
eat the wood. Nice.
1:29:30
And he apparently made sure the concrete was mixed poorly.
1:29:32
Right. Not a lot for Nicholson.
1:29:33
No, No. How does the Peacock?
1:29:34
Yeah, he. Loves it, yeah.
1:29:36
Leg up. And Saito was based on Major
1:29:39
Rasabiru Saito, who was the commandant at the camp where
1:29:42
Philip Tusi was based. But unlike the Saito in the
1:29:45
film, however, he had a reputation for being fair and
1:29:48
reasonable. Yeah, and apparently the Tusi
1:29:50
defended the real Saito. What?
1:29:52
His war crimes trial after the war and he saved them from
1:29:54
execution and they became friends.
1:29:56
I can't imagine Nicholson and Saito becoming pals, no.
1:29:59
Going for. Drinks, probably afterwards, you
1:30:01
never know. And the real bridge wasn't built
1:30:04
to run over the River Kwai, it was built over the Meklong
1:30:07
River, which was nearby Bull. It seemed it had been built over
1:30:10
the Kwai and just got the location wrong.
1:30:12
Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.
1:30:13
Well, plus it's a better title than the Bridge on the River
1:30:15
Meklong, surely. Yeah.
1:30:18
But in 1960, the Meklong River was renamed Kwai Yeah, because
1:30:22
of the book in the film, So it's now called that.
1:30:25
Oh, brilliant. OK, wow.
1:30:26
For they're working right in the bridge in the River Kwai.
1:30:28
Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson did not win an Oscar, but yeah,
1:30:32
Bull did. Yeah.
1:30:33
Unbelievable. He did all the work, obviously.
1:30:35
Yeah, I think he was crediting the screenwriter by Spiegel.
1:30:37
He was the person nominated. Absolutely shameless.
1:30:40
Oh, Oscar is it. Thanks very much.
1:30:42
Yeah. I love that.
1:30:43
Yeah. Cheers.
1:30:44
But he did turn up in person for, though, just really rubbing
1:30:47
it in. And it wasn't Kim Novak.
1:30:49
He's turned up. He's like now see.
1:30:53
Gives the speech in French, Yeah.
1:30:56
Brilliant. But then in 1984 the Academy
1:30:58
corrected the screen writing credit and awarded the Oscar to
1:31:01
call form in a Michael Wilson ride.
1:31:03
However, sadly, neither were like to see it, so the studies
1:31:05
were given to their families instead.
1:31:07
Right. Yeah, better late than never, I
1:31:09
guess. And for us, some excellent
1:31:11
writing here that works on multiple levels.
1:31:13
It does for multiple people, which is probably why.
1:31:16
Just like a bridge. Absolutely.
1:31:21
From the writing to the music. And the composer on the bridge
1:31:23
in the River Kwai was Malcolm Arnold, a British writer with
1:31:27
over 100 film scores to his name at this point.
1:31:30
That's a lot. It is.
1:31:31
Arnold had already worked with Lean twice before on The Sound
1:31:34
Barrier and Hobson's Choice. Right?
1:31:37
How is music here though, Matt? Does it make you cry?
1:31:46
The music? I mean, it's always interesting,
1:31:48
I think when you go this far back and you're talking about
1:31:50
the music, because I kind of made this point on The Great
1:31:52
Escape episode. This is obviously the era before
1:31:55
the likes of John Williams would reinvent film music as
1:31:58
soundtracks as we know them today.
1:32:00
With music from beginning trend, this is much more soundtracks as
1:32:04
flourishes, less is more. The music at the start, for
1:32:06
example, is incredible, really dramatic, really bombastic.
1:32:10
Let's you know what you're in for.
1:32:12
And then the music after that, it's just like it just adds
1:32:14
punctuation to the scene. So the use of Colonel Bogey that
1:32:17
we've talked about the music right at the end, which is
1:32:20
deliberately upbeat because that contrast to how bleak the actual
1:32:23
ending is. But apart from that, there's not
1:32:25
lost. And I'll talk about this later.
1:32:27
But some scenes I think are all the more effective because they
1:32:29
take place without music. So it's a different kind of
1:32:32
musical error in film we're talking about.
1:32:34
But what there is of it is excellent.
1:32:37
I agree. I think the score isn't
1:32:39
necessarily something that leaps out immediately when you first
1:32:41
watch the film. But the more that you watch it,
1:32:43
like we obviously have, yeah, I think you start to appreciate it
1:32:45
more. Yeah.
1:32:46
What stands out now is how sparingly the music's used.
1:32:49
Huge parts of the film have no score at all.
1:32:51
Yeah. Just the sounds of the jungle,
1:32:52
birds chirping or insects buzzing.
1:32:55
So when the music does come in, it's usually big and rousing and
1:32:58
has a big impact. I think the finale is especially
1:33:00
effective where there's no music at all, just like gunfire and
1:33:03
shouting and explosions and sight or wandering around like a
1:33:06
mute. Gives it all the sense of
1:33:07
realism instead of heroism like you might normally get in this
1:33:10
kind of film. And the main theme, I think does
1:33:13
what Lee needed to. It's military and dignified, but
1:33:17
seems to have this underlying sense of tension as well.
1:33:20
Pretty perfect for a film about military guys kind of gone mad.
1:33:23
And I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Arnold incorporates
1:33:26
the Colonel Bogey March into the main theme.
1:33:28
You kind of adapts the melody to fit the score.
1:33:30
Yeah, which is a nice touch. OK, really nice.
1:33:32
All right. Yeah, so an experience head in
1:33:34
Markham Arnold, and I think that's yours.
1:33:36
You know, when they come in big, you know when to hold back, when
1:33:38
to stay silent even. I think this isn't just a
1:33:40
talented composer, but one who understands film as well.
1:33:44
Yeah. I think David Lean had a lot to
1:33:45
say about it, as he did with everything else in the
1:33:47
production. Yeah, and there's some big
1:33:50
pounding themes in this. It just accentuates the visuals.
1:33:53
As I've said so many times with great soundtracks, it just makes
1:33:56
the visuals better. But it's the sound design of
1:33:58
this film as well as the soundtrack itself that really
1:34:01
sit together for me. And the way that they've both
1:34:03
been thought through and they've both been really used as part of
1:34:08
the layers of the visuals is the real layer to this soundtrack.
1:34:11
Like you've just said there, you know that you use that whistle,
1:34:13
but you've really got to look for it and it's very, very
1:34:15
subtle and some very subtle moments in this.
1:34:17
It's a really bombastic film with really bombastic visuals.
1:34:21
There's some really bombastic bits on the soundtrack, but
1:34:23
there's also bits that you'll really miss unless you listen to
1:34:26
it independently, which I have done, and it's fantastic,
1:34:28
nuanced, but a really, really wonderful, a really rounded
1:34:32
soundtrack. I think it really marries the
1:34:33
visuals very, very well. It does.
1:34:35
It's a big part of it, isn't? It.
1:34:37
Yeah, definitely. Sam Spiegel He actually wanted
1:34:39
to release the movie by December 31st, 1957, because that would
1:34:44
make it eligible for the Oscars. But in early December, the
1:34:47
scores still hadn't been written.
1:34:49
So we hired Malcolm Arnold, who had a reputation for working
1:34:51
quickly and told me at 10 days tried all the music.
1:34:54
That's crazy. It is crazy.
1:34:56
Well, Arnold said. It was the hardest job he ever
1:34:58
did, but he did finish all the music in time.
1:35:00
Boom. That is an insane brief.
1:35:02
James Cameron Brief. It is for aliens, isn't it?
1:35:05
Is. Yeah.
1:35:07
I mean, not that it's yours. I think the music sounds pretty
1:35:09
like sophisticated. It does even more so when you
1:35:12
know you had 10 days to do it. For the amount of nuance that's
1:35:14
in it as well, like the depth in the layers, it's thinking he
1:35:17
must have loads of time to do this, but no.
1:35:19
Exactly. Yeah, it's impressive.
1:35:20
Yeah, The sound that on the film was Eric Boyd Perkins.
1:35:23
He was the person who had to record the men whistling the
1:35:25
Colonel Bogey March when they came in.
1:35:27
Now, that's no hard feat at this point.
1:35:28
That's got to be really difficult to do that.
1:35:31
And the men he brought in was struggling to whistle in time,
1:35:33
so he brought in Malcolm Arnold's flute player called
1:35:36
John Scott to help. He came in with his piccolo and
1:35:39
played the March while watching the film, and the others all
1:35:42
whistled along. And that's what we hear in the
1:35:44
final film, like the Pied Piper. Absolutely brilliant.
1:35:47
Just walking along, loving that. Yeah, John Scott said that he
1:35:51
was furious because helping with the recording made him miss his
1:35:54
lunch. Is that it?
1:35:56
I'll be gutted as well. On B for lunch.
1:36:00
But despite only being given 10 days to write the score for The
1:36:02
Bridge in the River Kwai, Malcolm Arnold managed to be
1:36:05
nominated for and win the Oscar for Best Original Score.
1:36:08
Brilliant. Surely there can't be too many
1:36:10
Oscar winning scores Compose as quickly as that.
1:36:12
Surely I. Don't think so, Definitely.
1:36:14
Not and for us, a sparing score, but pretty expertly judged.
1:36:18
Yes, wonderful. Now let's talk about the man who
1:36:22
was responsible for capturing the Burmese jungle on the
1:36:24
screen. That's Directory of Photography,
1:36:26
Jack Hildyard. Yeah, like Mark Model, he'd
1:36:29
already worked with Lean on the sound barrier and Hobson's
1:36:31
Choice. Yeah, which is why Lean brought
1:36:33
him in here. A bit different.
1:36:35
Filming in sale on Northwest here.
1:36:37
Absolutely. How did Jack Hildyard's work
1:36:39
hold up? I mean, these patients held up.
1:36:42
Let's be perfectly honest. That's the first thing.
1:36:43
I mean, this was shot on the Mitchell BNC, which was the
1:36:46
Mitchell Blimp noiseless camera, which was invented so there
1:36:49
wasn't any noise on set, which was famously used in Citizen
1:36:52
Kane. It was invented in 1934.
1:36:55
Big camera metal construction. Heavy as hell.
1:36:58
Really heavy. It's like shooting IMAX now, I
1:37:01
guess back in there and putting that through the jungle and
1:37:03
going through everything else and making sure it worked and
1:37:05
was, yeah, it's just an incredible task, an incredible
1:37:08
feat. A lot of this is David Lean, as
1:37:11
I've mentioned before, kind of shooting on a 16 mill frame and
1:37:14
it got themselves taking the crew with them.
1:37:16
But Jack Hildyard's work on this, I mean, shooting this
1:37:18
anamorphic as well, which for anyone who doesn't know,
1:37:20
basically what would happen is this is going to be in cinema
1:37:22
scope, which is 70 mil when it's projected.
1:37:24
So it's shot in 35 mil film, but it's shot in anamorphic lenses.
1:37:27
So it squashes the frame, right? Yeah, right.
1:37:29
Through anamorphic lens. And then when it's projected,
1:37:31
it's projected to a different lens which stretches it to fill
1:37:34
that full wide screen cinema scope.
1:37:36
And that's where cinema scope came from.
1:37:38
It's kind of one of the earliest films shot anamorphic as well.
1:37:41
So he's really, really finding his feet here and does some
1:37:44
incredible work. I mean, just the frame into this
1:37:47
film, just the composition by itself is incredible.
1:37:50
A thorough war film. The camera doesn't really move.
1:37:53
It's the composition. You could just put all of the
1:37:55
frames of this film next to each of that, walk around the room
1:37:57
and look at it and it'll tell the story.
1:38:00
Incredible, incredible work. And for somebody to achieve
1:38:04
David Lean's vision on his step towards Lawrence of Arabia from
1:38:09
smaller films, Hildyard needs massive kudos for this, massive
1:38:14
credit for this. Like I say, he's patient.
1:38:16
Stays intact. Because I'm sure Lean absolutely
1:38:18
dragged him through every conceivable nightmare to make
1:38:22
this film happen. And he did it so beautifully
1:38:25
that the look of this film cannot be debated.
1:38:28
It cannot be. Because without this, you
1:38:29
haven't got Lawrence of Arabia. Without Lawrence of Arabia, you
1:38:31
haven't got 2001. It starts stepping up from this.
1:38:34
And somebody had to do it. And that person who did it was
1:38:37
David Lean. But the person who should have
1:38:39
taken a little bit more of the credit was Jack Hillyard.
1:38:41
And nobody talks about him enough.
1:38:42
And they really should, because he fucking pulls it off here.
1:38:45
I agree. Jack Hill yard jumping, Jack
1:38:47
Flash, yeah, what he does, he has incredible.
1:38:50
And when you consider the shooting entirely on location,
1:38:52
in a sail, on jungle with 50s equipment like you're seeing
1:38:54
rusty, it's even more impressive how it still holds up. 30s
1:38:57
equipment 1934 This camera came out exactly Yeah, ridiculous.
1:39:02
Although he frames the characters, there's a shot in
1:39:03
the first act when Nicholson leaves the Hut after he's been
1:39:05
talking to She hasn't the men. He walks away but stays centred
1:39:08
in the door frame in the background.
1:39:10
Yeah, like a classic wave showing us when someone, like,
1:39:12
trapped or confined. And Nicholson is by his own,
1:39:14
like, rigid thinking. But I think it's a landscape
1:39:17
shots that I love most. So many moments where we see
1:39:20
these tiny human figures set against a backdrop of, like, the
1:39:23
massive jungle or mountains. There's a shot when we were on
1:39:26
the jungle track with Walden and his team.
1:39:28
He's lagging miles behind him because he's injured.
1:39:30
He's in the front of the frame with one of the Thai girls.
1:39:32
In the distance. We can see the rest of his party
1:39:34
climbing the mountain. Yeah.
1:39:35
What a shot that is. Yeah.
1:39:37
Hang it in the Louvre that. Yeah, I mean, there's so many
1:39:39
shots at the tour boat, but just look at how much depth there is
1:39:41
to these frames. Yeah.
1:39:42
How much is in the foreground and not lit and out of focus.
1:39:46
Seidel steps out and in between his legs is Nicholson stood with
1:39:50
attention. Sergio Leone shot.
1:39:51
It's just incredible. It's just you've got all of this
1:39:54
foreground sort of happening in everybody's frame, within a
1:39:57
frame within a frame in the background.
1:39:59
Watch this film again. At any point, just pause it and
1:40:02
look at it and go there's foreground, there's mid ground,
1:40:04
there's background, there's depth to this frame.
1:40:07
It's so, so well done, the depths.
1:40:09
Unbelievable. It's difficult to look past
1:40:11
Lawrence of ABS David Lean's most stunning looking film
1:40:14
probably, but quite definitely a 4 runner of that.
1:40:16
Oh absolutely. You can see him building up to
1:40:19
it and he's relying hugely on Jack Hildyard to do it.
1:40:21
Yeah, To me, it was striking that Hildyard didn't come back
1:40:24
for Lawrence of Arabia, which was Freddie Young, obviously.
1:40:26
But I mean, his work here really sets the.
1:40:28
He's made Freddie Young's life a little bit easier by going, this
1:40:31
is a bit of a blueprint, yeah. Maybe come up with some cool
1:40:34
transitions and we're pretty much there.
1:40:35
Yeah. I mean, by no means about
1:40:38
bringing down Freddie Young's work there at all.
1:40:39
I mean, he's incredible as well, but he set some perimeters here.
1:40:42
It just boggles my mind the challenges of shooting this on
1:40:45
location, the heat, the train, changeable weather conditions,
1:40:49
none of those are conducive to a comfortable shoot.
1:40:52
So the fact that they did do it, and they've pulled it off to a
1:40:54
degree where everything is seamlessly put together, there's
1:40:58
no actual sense of stress in how this film looks, which, if I'm
1:41:01
quite remarkable, they've made it look easy, which we'll keep
1:41:03
saying they make this look easy. And it was surely anything but.
1:41:07
I mean, you're obviously shooting these locations.
1:41:09
Of course it's going to look incredible.
1:41:10
And those fast landscapes are staggering.
1:41:13
But the shooting in water, there's so many potential
1:41:16
pitfalls, and it cleaves them all.
1:41:17
And they don't just rely on the location doing the work for
1:41:20
them. There's that incredible shot
1:41:21
where the camera is looking up at Nicholson as he's standing in
1:41:24
the heat with a sun blazing above him.
1:41:26
So yeah, yeah, yeah. It's something where the more
1:41:28
you think about it, the more impressive it is what they've
1:41:30
done here. Yeah, the crew don't look like
1:41:32
they're struggling at all. No, they don't.
1:41:34
Everyone in front of the camera is really struggling where the
1:41:36
crew look like they're in a lovely tent just having a great
1:41:38
time. This is perfect.
1:41:40
Yeah, it is crazy. So getting into some Jack Hill
1:41:43
Yards work and what he went do in this is just incredible.
1:41:46
He went to some lens to capture the kind of visuals we're
1:41:48
talking about here. So to film the scene when the
1:41:51
paratroopers jumped from the plane, Hilliard strapped himself
1:41:54
to the wing of the plane. We'll talk about Tom Cruise.
1:41:56
I'm talking about Jack Hilliard every single step of the way,
1:41:59
strapped himself to the wing of the plane and shot the jump
1:42:01
himself with a handheld 16 mil camera.
1:42:05
Unbelievable. He is jumping Jack Flash.
1:42:07
He is. One of the paratroopers dies in
1:42:08
that jump as well, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah, probably.
1:42:10
He's one of the cameramen. Yeah.
1:42:12
Just fell, man. Probably Hilliards.
1:42:15
Why he didn't come back for Lawrence of Arabia?
1:42:19
Yeah, it's spiel goes like just fake.
1:42:20
He's dead. It's part.
1:42:22
And David Lane had a reputation for being a bit of a taskmaster
1:42:24
and a perfectionist. The crew had to go through
1:42:27
difficult conditions in the shoot, like personally looking
1:42:30
heavy 1930s camera equipment around the jungle for hours on
1:42:33
end, and there was a famous myth about quiet that Lane made the
1:42:36
crew trek 150 miles to just get one shot he wanted for the film.
1:42:40
However, it isn't true and Lane said if he did do something like
1:42:43
that, he'd have been out of a job out.
1:42:45
Of the job, yeah, I've seen that interview.
1:42:46
It's amazing, that interview. Though, Yeah, it's great.
1:42:48
Yeah. Yeah.
1:42:49
That shot in question comes towards the end when sighted,
1:42:52
when Nicholson. They're on the finished bridge.
1:42:54
Sighter comes over and goes beautiful and we're cut to the
1:42:56
sun setting over the mountains. Yes, like 3 seconds or
1:42:59
something. And people were like, you made
1:43:00
them walk 150 miles without one shot.
1:43:03
Even he's not no. It's Fincher esque, a cool bit.
1:43:06
Maybe for his work on The Bridge in the River Choir.
1:43:09
Jack Hildiard won the Oscar for Best Cinematography.
1:43:12
Good. Beating out in A Fair to
1:43:13
Remember, Funny Face and Peyton Place.
1:43:16
And you went on to be a founding member of the BSc?
1:43:18
Yeah, the British Society of Cinematographers.
1:43:20
So, right. Significant career legend.
1:43:22
Absolutely. Definitely.
1:43:24
And for us, a well deserved Oscar for what you did here, I
1:43:26
think incredible. Work.
1:43:27
And he did the wild keys. Brilliant.
1:43:29
Yeah, so that is the crew behind the bridge, and it's a notable
1:43:32
1. We've got Carl Foreman and
1:43:34
Michael Wilson crafting a complex screenplay they couldn't
1:43:37
put their names on, Malcolm Arnold writing in Oscar winning
1:43:39
a score in 10 Days Flat. And Jack Hill, you are risking
1:43:42
life and limb to capture some stunning vistas.
1:43:45
No wonder, really. The film looks and sounds as
1:43:47
good as it does. Yeah.
1:43:48
Absolutely the end. The final act of the bridge on
1:43:57
the River Kauai sees our two major storylines come crashing
1:44:00
together. The climactic battle on the
1:44:02
bridge where Nicholson discovers the explosives is coming up, but
1:44:05
first we're going to see how both sides get ready for what's
1:44:08
about to go down. They are.
1:44:10
So nightfall at the bridge and Borden and Shia's commando team
1:44:13
are in position while Nicholson throws a party to celebrate his
1:44:16
bridge. He loves that bridge.
1:44:18
He really does he. Really.
1:44:19
Does the commandos float downriver to plant their
1:44:21
explosives? Two very different preparations
1:44:24
for what will be a pretty eventful morning.
1:44:26
Yeah. So times like the fuse, Westy.
1:44:28
As you would love to do. Yeah.
1:44:30
How is it all looking for you? I mean, when they float down and
1:44:33
the start set the charge, it's a great sense of peril here.
1:44:36
There's a real slow move and it's really building it and
1:44:40
there's just these layers to everything that's going on and
1:44:43
it's just intercut with this wonderful song and dance
1:44:45
routine, which is like Tropic Thunder.
1:44:48
You know, it's ripped that off massively and it's played
1:44:51
through and through all, but it's just wonderful to see
1:44:54
Nicholson laughing at that point.
1:44:56
Again, this is shot day for night, which you can really
1:44:58
tell. I mean, the sunlights bouncing
1:45:00
off the river for God's sake. It's not like moonlight.
1:45:03
It is fucking golden. Maybe desaturated slightly, but
1:45:08
I mean, at the time it would have just been, this looks
1:45:09
great, fantastic role with it, but you've got that peril.
1:45:12
And again, we're talking about camera motivations and camera
1:45:15
movements. They're coming down the Rapids
1:45:17
and that is in a wanna. That's just, we'll pan down with
1:45:19
it because the movement then matches the movement of the
1:45:22
characters. It's not unnecessary.
1:45:24
And we're not in the boat with them, with the with the water
1:45:26
splashing over the side. You don't need that.
1:45:29
You need this slow build. This is the start of the end
1:45:33
now. It's like the start of a roller
1:45:34
coaster where you go, you don't go up quick.
1:45:36
You just, he really builds the tension because it's good to
1:45:39
each character. They've got them brilliant
1:45:42
little beanies on. He's like completely covered in
1:45:45
the darkness. And you just think, surely
1:45:48
someone would say that the Japanese are absolutely rubbish.
1:45:50
Like if Nicholson was on that bridge, which you should have
1:45:52
been patrolling it, you could have seen them a mile away.
1:45:55
But it's great because you just see that what I wanted to see
1:45:57
through all of the films is really great wooden spools of
1:46:01
the charges getting put on and wrapped around the bridge.
1:46:04
And you're like, yeah, this is a World War Two film.
1:46:06
This is what I remember from these epics.
1:46:08
But it's just the build attention, that slow, slow build
1:46:11
of tension of them moving down the river, attacking this
1:46:14
bridge, which everyone's now proud of.
1:46:17
There's a model that's built behind them.
1:46:20
Again, exact model. Who's done that?
1:46:22
Who's had the time to do that? But they're not so busy.
1:46:25
It's an impossible task to build the actual bridge.
1:46:28
But get someone on this because we're doing a song and dance
1:46:31
thing. So we need a little model behind
1:46:32
them. Let's do that.
1:46:33
Who the fuck's in charge of that?
1:46:35
But at the same time, Aline should have seen that and went
1:46:38
well. If we just blow that up, we're
1:46:40
going to save yourself a substantial amount of money, get
1:46:42
the train set and just put it across it and blow that up.
1:46:45
But yeah, this is just the start of the end, the build of the
1:46:47
tension. Let's see where it goes.
1:46:49
But you've always got this element of doubt.
1:46:51
Your heart starts to sink at this point.
1:46:52
You think this isn't going to go well?
1:46:55
No, it doesn't for most of them. I mean, those wide shots where
1:46:58
we finally see the bridge in all its glory?
1:47:00
Fantastic. And this whole sequence where
1:47:02
the commandos are sneaking down the river up to the bridge.
1:47:05
Yeah, it feels like the template for every kind of I've seen in a
1:47:07
war film since. Yeah, it's pitch black, creeping
1:47:11
through the water, guards patrolling above, everyone
1:47:13
holding the breath. Every Bond film has one of these
1:47:16
scenes. It's normally the opening, isn't
1:47:19
it? Yeah, the only true lies.
1:47:20
Yeah, it is. Yeah.
1:47:21
Spielberg's seen this as well for sure.
1:47:24
But this does feel like the original and no wonder it seems
1:47:26
to influential because I think it's really well done.
1:47:28
I love how he lean shifts the tone.
1:47:30
Everything has gotten darker, literally with the day for night
1:47:32
in the lighting, but the whole atmosphere has suddenly got more
1:47:35
serious. Sinister, isn't it?
1:47:37
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she has to.
1:47:39
Joyce, I wish you were long and happy life before he swims off.
1:47:42
It feels like things are about to kick right off and then
1:47:45
everyone just goes to sleep, Yeah.
1:47:48
Amazing. I know it leaves up in any rush,
1:47:50
but Gordon should be. Surely we'll do it in the
1:47:53
morning. Yeah, but it's really good,
1:47:55
Those images of the commandos floating down the river and the
1:47:57
dog, beautiful and ominous at the same time.
1:48:00
I love it. Yeah.
1:48:01
But building the bridge for the film was a whole project of its
1:48:03
own. So to design how wood would
1:48:06
look, Lane gave his concept artist a photograph of the real
1:48:08
bridge to base his designs on. It was designed and planned over
1:48:12
2 years of pre production and then built on location over 8
1:48:15
months. 1500 trees were cut down to build it. 500 workers were
1:48:19
involved and it cost $250,000, which was the biggest
1:48:23
construction in sale on at the time.
1:48:25
That amount of money back then, do you know how much that would
1:48:28
cost now? And we're talking about, you
1:48:29
know, the bridge in the song and dance sequence, right?
1:48:31
If they're blowing that up, you know how much they would have
1:48:33
saved, £2.8 million. Wow, wow.
1:48:37
Bloody hell. 2.8 million is what it would cost now to build that.
1:48:41
Wow, that yeah, I mean, it looks incredible, isn't it?
1:48:44
It looks unreal. And they had 35 elephants to
1:48:46
help carry the wooden the materials, but the wild
1:48:48
elephants. So they would just wander off
1:48:50
where the light and go for a swim.
1:48:52
Spiegel just be like, here's the action scene.
1:48:54
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a beautiful bridge,
1:48:58
to be fair. Fair player.
1:48:59
Nicholson, he delivered it. He did.
1:49:01
Yeah. Yeah, it's lovely.
1:49:03
Yeah, so we've mentioned that there's a party going on at the
1:49:05
same time. And I know again, it's like the
1:49:06
food situation. Beggars can't be choosers, but
1:49:08
this is my ID of entertainment. Like Prince and the bar with
1:49:11
coconut Ros and like the Madonna or something like Ballou.
1:49:15
Ballou. Yeah, I think just have an early
1:49:16
night instead, lads. No thanks.
1:49:19
But seems you know what's great about the scene?
1:49:20
It's another example of how the film is constantly pulling
1:49:24
Nicholson back from the S just when you think he's gone too far
1:49:26
because just before this, he saw that amazing monologue on the
1:49:29
bridge. Yeah.
1:49:30
About his past achievements and military life.
1:49:33
And he gives a speech about, yes, I understand why you may
1:49:36
feel let down by what you've done, but you'll get home one
1:49:39
day. And when that day comes, you can
1:49:41
reflect what you've done in the face of adversity, and you can
1:49:43
be proud of it. And you listen to it, and you
1:49:45
go. He's got a point.
1:49:47
Yeah, it's a speech. It's fantastic.
1:49:49
Yeah. Yeah, well, it is.
1:49:50
And you go maybe ever. The Nissan up until now has been
1:49:53
for the men's morale and for the greater good.
1:49:55
And maybe it's our perspective that's wrong on it.
1:49:58
So Guinness really sells out. But what's also interesting is
1:50:01
Lean is into cutting this with those scenes of sight or
1:50:04
seemingly preparing to kill himself.
1:50:06
But then he kind of shelves it. And you think, is he going to
1:50:09
wait until he at least has the satisfaction of seeing the train
1:50:12
cross the bridge and then do it? Is he going to kill Nicholson at
1:50:15
some point for busy humiliating him for the last few months?
1:50:18
Or even at this late stage? The film would just get in these
1:50:21
really the interesting character moments that show them in a
1:50:23
different light. Yeah, it is really good.
1:50:25
I mean, while the commanders are sitting there, bombs,
1:50:27
Nicholson's having his moment of glory.
1:50:29
Finally, that speech that he gave us talking about how when
1:50:32
the wars are over and they've all gone, the bridge will still
1:50:34
be there. I mean, he's wrong, obviously.
1:50:35
He'll be blown to smithereens in a couple of hours.
1:50:38
But he still doesn't seem to grasp that he hasn't built this
1:50:40
for king and country. He's built it for the enemy.
1:50:42
Yeah. And Gainer sells that really
1:50:43
well. And Seidel just sitting there
1:50:45
grinning, can't believe his luck.
1:50:46
Yeah, he tortured Nicholson Fume in the oven, and he's building
1:50:49
the best bridge in Burma. But Nicholson in this whole
1:50:53
scene with the weeds, kind of sells the pompous pride in what
1:50:55
they've done. Yeah.
1:50:56
Absolutely fantastic. Yeah.
1:50:58
Ian Watt was a professor of English at Stratford and had
1:51:01
been a prisoner of a real camp and worked on the real bridge.
1:51:05
Liam brought him in act as a consultant during the shoot to
1:51:07
advise on how the team worked and how the bridge looked.
1:51:10
From POW to David, lean out of the frying pan of the fire.
1:51:14
Absolutely. It's like it would be easier.
1:51:18
But Ian what said that the film didn't capture the real horror
1:51:21
and the real like suffering of building the railway except for
1:51:24
like a few scenes. Of course not.
1:51:25
I mean it must have been bad. 100,000 people died building the
1:51:28
railway. Yeah, be.
1:51:29
Disgusting. We don't see that side at all
1:51:31
really. That does seem like a bit of a
1:51:33
missed opportunity storytelling wise maybe.
1:51:35
It's hard, though, because then who are you supposed to follow?
1:51:38
Because Nicholson would look even more maniacal.
1:51:40
You'd look even even more insane.
1:51:41
Yeah, he would in the face of that.
1:51:43
Like he doesn't care about his men then, because he wouldn't
1:51:45
let this happen. Yeah.
1:51:46
Yeah. So you have to go down one Rd.
1:51:48
I guess. It's a fairpoint, yeah.
1:51:50
Either way, the bridge is there, and Nicholson's probably as can
1:51:53
be for now. He is, yeah.
1:51:54
Should we see what happens in the climax?
1:51:56
Let's do it. The sun rises on the bridges
1:52:00
first day of operation, but as Nicholson goes for his morning
1:52:03
inspection, he notices something.
1:52:05
The tide is lowered, showing the wires leading to Warden's
1:52:08
explosives. Yeah.
1:52:09
What follows is one of the cinema's most famous for now is,
1:52:12
which is destroyed. Every main character.
1:52:14
Bob Warden is killed in a shoot out and Nicholson delivers one
1:52:17
of Hollywood's most famous final lines.
1:52:19
Yeah, he does. Matt, what has he done?
1:52:22
What has he done indeed? I mean, I'll tell you what
1:52:25
Lane's done. He's delivered a master class in
1:52:27
building tension. Because this plays that note if
1:52:31
we know something some of the out of the counters don't, that
1:52:33
the bridge is being rigged with explosives.
1:52:35
Yeah, so effectively you sort of hear the trainer, and this is
1:52:39
what I mean by seeing some play with no music and it's all the
1:52:41
better. No music here, just the sound of
1:52:44
it on the tracks getting closer and closer.
1:52:46
See, we know they've got a hold out just for a couple of minutes
1:52:50
until it's close enough to blow the bridge and the train at the
1:52:53
same time. And I think she is speaks for
1:52:56
everyone when he's watching Nicholson, who's seen The Wire,
1:52:58
and he's going back and forth. What's he doing?
1:53:01
Because, yeah, what is he doing? Has he gone so far over the side
1:53:04
he's actually going to stop this from happening?
1:53:06
Because he walks away at 1st and he pauses and he comes back and
1:53:09
he can see it all ticking over in his mind.
1:53:11
And as it's ticking over again, the constant sound of that train
1:53:14
in the whistle getting louder and louder and closer and
1:53:17
closer. And then that's it.
1:53:19
It's that realization that Warden makes.
1:53:21
He's gone mad. He's leading them right to it.
1:53:24
Our own man. So all that character ambiguity
1:53:27
with Nicholson has been building up to this moment.
1:53:29
So it's not just the tension of or they're going to be able to
1:53:32
blow up the bridge at the same time as the train comes across.
1:53:35
It's also the tension of is Nicholson actually going to stop
1:53:38
them at this point? Yeah, I always get that.
1:53:40
Yeah. And.
1:53:41
It's superbly ramped up, and I just love that visual of
1:53:44
Nicholson finding the white and slowly pulling it up out of the
1:53:48
sand. And they're being revealed.
1:53:50
Yeah, brilliant. The men comes trading onto the
1:53:52
bridge, whistling Colonel Bogey again.
1:53:54
Nicholson had a plaque made. Yeah.
1:53:56
Who made the plaque? Who made the plaque?
1:53:58
That guy. That's the hero for me because
1:54:01
that plaque is fucking Immaculate.
1:54:02
Beautiful, isn't it? It's a placulate, if you will.
1:54:08
Craftsmanship. Yeah, brilliant.
1:54:10
Mean the pride in what they've done is madness.
1:54:11
But I buy it. I buy the illusion.
1:54:13
It all works really well. Yeah.
1:54:15
The reveal, the way the Nicholson spots the wires and
1:54:17
follows them. It is great sight.
1:54:18
Or just after him with no words. Yeah.
1:54:21
These guys are meant to be enemies.
1:54:22
They're now on the same side basically.
1:54:24
Yeah. And the look on Nicholsons face
1:54:26
when he realizes someones trying to destroy the bridge.
1:54:28
He still doesn't get it. And again, it's great stuff from
1:54:31
Guinness to sell it. Yeah, and Joyce just throwing
1:54:33
sand on the wire to try and hide the bomb.
1:54:35
You'll need more than that, pal. It's massive.
1:54:38
He does all right, though, to be fair, he.
1:54:39
Does do, all right. And then he stabs sight.
1:54:41
Or about time, to be honest. He's done nothing for two hours,
1:54:44
Sido. But that reveal of the wires in
1:54:46
the water when he pulls them out, I think that's really good.
1:54:49
Yeah, yeah, it's great. I mean, there's that lovely
1:54:51
speech when he's on the bridge and he's talking about his life.
1:54:53
Yeah. And I think that's an incredible
1:54:55
performance from Guinness because he's just, he feels like
1:54:57
he's achieved something and he feels like this is the end of
1:54:59
his journey and this is something he's really
1:55:01
accomplished and he's proud of. Which hits home even harder
1:55:04
because I always think he's going to turn around and go
1:55:06
upright nor right. I know what side I'm on.
1:55:08
And you're right, he's a complete turncoat here.
1:55:10
He is working for the enemy whether he likes it or not.
1:55:13
And he she would probably be court martialed if he got out of
1:55:15
it. I would imagine so, yeah, he
1:55:16
would. Probably be held accountable
1:55:18
before what he's done. Why would why is this being done
1:55:20
so well? Why was it moved 400 yards
1:55:22
downriver? Well, you wondered.
1:55:24
Duress, like we've said, this build a tension that goes up and
1:55:26
up and up. Lean builds the tension better
1:55:28
than he builds the bridge. And it costs them 2 million to
1:55:31
do that. So that's how good this sequence
1:55:33
is. And it just gets better from
1:55:34
here. And the swords are tasked with
1:55:36
detonating the bridges. Lieutenant Joyce and he's played
1:55:38
by Geoffrey Horne. But Lean's first choice to blame
1:55:41
was Montgomery Clift. And Lean and Sam Spiegel had
1:55:44
dinner with Clift at a famous restaurant in New York called
1:55:46
Danny's Hideaway, but it went very badly.
1:55:49
Sam Spiegels wife Betty said Monty was taking pills and was
1:55:53
only vaguely coherent. He'd answer with non secateurs
1:55:56
like the sky is blue. And he then collapsed into
1:55:59
Bettys lap and they decided to cast somebody else.
1:56:03
Yeah, Montgomery Cliff had a famous Cox and in 1956 and
1:56:07
apparently became addicted to painkillers afterwards and then
1:56:09
alcohol, which is what was going on at the time.
1:56:11
And I imagine the role would have been made quite a lot
1:56:13
bigger if Montgomery Clift had been cast as Joyce.
1:56:16
Yeah, yeah, He's a big name at the time, wasn't he?
1:56:18
He would have been stabbing no problem.
1:56:20
Yeah. I would have done it.
1:56:22
I did do it. Clifton there.
1:56:25
I will mention that wonderful speech on the bridge that
1:56:27
Douglson has. That discussion was said about
1:56:29
his career in the military. He's looking over the sunset and
1:56:32
Lean shot Guinness from behind, which Guinness didn't like at
1:56:36
all. He thought it should have been
1:56:37
done in close up. I mean, he's going to argue with
1:56:39
Lean about that kind of shit. Like obviously he hadn't seen it
1:56:42
then, but that an argument on set about it.
1:56:44
But Lean obviously got his way. Yeah, I like that's how he's
1:56:47
delivering this huge monologue, but it's shot as if it's like
1:56:50
nothing. Yeah, kind of four showers in a
1:56:51
few minutes. All his work will have been for
1:56:53
nothing. Exactly.
1:56:54
Being a bit pointless. Yeah.
1:56:56
But the monologue is powerful. Like he ruminates on his life,
1:56:58
how he's like. There are times when suddenly
1:57:00
you realize you're nearer the end in the beginning.
1:57:02
Yeah. I love that line.
1:57:03
That's great. Obviously, he's very near the
1:57:05
end now. He just doesn't kind of know it
1:57:06
yet. Yeah, so are we.
1:57:08
It's great when near the end of the film, when near the end of
1:57:10
the story. I thought you made us free our
1:57:12
lives. Not us personally.
1:57:13
Like we're not going to die tomorrow.
1:57:18
You know something we don't? I wish I did.
1:57:20
No, I don't. But that's how we feel as an
1:57:22
audience because we're near the end.
1:57:24
We're thinking, how is this going to end?
1:57:25
Yeah. Yeah.
1:57:25
Where are we going from here? And then you get to the final
1:57:28
bit, which the film has been building up to the battle, the
1:57:31
explosion and the build up to this has been so painstakingly
1:57:35
put together by Lean. It's like watching someone
1:57:38
playing Chessy's 15 moves ahead of everyone else, and this is
1:57:41
when he brings it together for checkmate.
1:57:43
We know the river's gone down, we know where Joyce is with the
1:57:45
plunger and how exposed he is. We know she's is on the other
1:57:49
side of the river so he gone too much.
1:57:50
And we know Warden stuck up on the hill with his broken ankle,
1:57:53
so he can't do very much either. And Lean just brings it together
1:57:57
so masterfully and it always shocks me, no matter how many
1:57:59
times I see just how badly this goes for them.
1:58:02
Like we've had our doubts about Joyce's ability to kill face to
1:58:05
face from the soldier in the jungle, but here he knife sight
1:58:09
or no problem. But then he shot and killed.
1:58:12
And then she is tries to get across and stop Nicholson, but
1:58:14
he shot and killed Warden just firing indiscriminately.
1:58:18
And then it comes to the moment, which is all about Nicholson and
1:58:21
Guinness's finest one. Because that realization, just
1:58:24
that one small line of dialogue, what have I done?
1:58:28
That could be really Harmy. But he feels it was so much
1:58:30
horror and regret. And this could have ended in
1:58:32
such a variety of ways. Joyce could briefly recover and
1:58:35
get to The detonator. She is could get there and make
1:58:38
it his die in action. But no, it has to be Nicholson,
1:58:41
the man who's done so much to build a bridge.
1:58:43
He has to be the one to destroy it.
1:58:44
And his collapse is justifiably iconic.
1:58:47
But the bit that gets me is just before that, when he picks
1:58:50
himself up after the explosion from the water and he just
1:58:53
starts to dust down his hat because even now his first
1:58:57
instinct is, well, I've got to be proper, that's a British Army
1:59:00
cup. That's got to look smart.
1:59:02
I mean, this is a film which is built into precisely 1P off the
1:59:06
explosion. And it doesn't disappoint on a
1:59:09
visual level or on a character level.
1:59:11
It's absolutely spectacular. Yeah, we have been building up
1:59:14
this moment since star of the film, more or less.
1:59:17
And when it comes, it's chaos slightly.
1:59:19
When Joyce, I go on gunfire everywhere.
1:59:22
She has confronts Nicholson and he's like you, you anyone but
1:59:27
the bronze God. Great.
1:59:29
But the famous part of the ending is obviously Nicholsons.
1:59:31
What have I done? He finally realizes what's
1:59:33
happened and it's massive. Does he fall on the plunger
1:59:36
deliberately? Do you think to blow up the
1:59:38
bridge? I think so.
1:59:39
Yeah, I like the ambiguity of it, I'm just not sure.
1:59:42
I like the ambiguity of it as well, and I guess it doesn't
1:59:44
really matter. The royal dead, it's all been
1:59:46
pointless except for Warden. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:59:48
But for a 1950s war movie, it's such a bleak ending.
1:59:51
There's no heroes or villains, really, just the point that says
1:59:54
of it all. Yeah.
1:59:55
The bridge collapsing is a great show.
1:59:57
And there does feel like, well, yeah, that was all pointless
1:59:59
then, which I guess is the point.
2:00:01
That's the point, yeah. The point is the pointlessness.
2:00:03
I think the whole narrative and the themes, it all resolves
2:00:06
really tightly at the end as well.
2:00:08
Yeah, I think the whole point of this, like we've been talking
2:00:10
about is kind of does he fall on it intentionally?
2:00:14
Is all of this for nothing? Does he then resort to Sidos
2:00:19
code of you have to kill yourself?
2:00:21
Because to me it's him falling on the sword.
2:00:23
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's him literally killing
2:00:25
himself, killing who he was, killing all of his beliefs, and
2:00:29
it is a suicide for him because he kills everything he's built,
2:00:32
and it's under principle and it's under the code that he's
2:00:35
gone for, but the codes have been mixed.
2:00:37
But what an ending to a film that is really uplifting at the
2:00:43
same time that it's really bleak because you walk out of it
2:00:46
thinking I've seen something spectacular there where you
2:00:49
should really walk out of it going, but the first thing you
2:00:52
want to do is get it right back to the start and watch it again.
2:00:55
And that's the genius of David Lean, and that's the genius of
2:00:57
this last scene. It's absolutely fantastic.
2:00:59
It's some climax, isn't it? Yeah, it's amazing.
2:01:01
So the train we see in the film was a real train that Sam
2:01:04
Spiegel had bought from the Sylanese government.
2:01:06
It had belonged to an Indian Maharaja and had been in service
2:01:09
for 65 years. Spiegel had it refurbished
2:01:12
completely and then had one mile of railway track laid forward.
2:01:15
How long does it take for the train to arrive?
2:01:18
5 to 10 minutes, apparently. Yeah, it should be a 5 to 10
2:01:21
minutes. Yeah, Basically just like
2:01:23
waiting for the fucking metro. Yeah, could be any time.
2:01:28
Yeah. So this is incredible.
2:01:30
I mean, check this out. Imagine being this fucking dude.
2:01:32
All right, so filming the explosion the moment the bridge
2:01:35
is blown up was a really complex setup.
2:01:37
Lean had five cameras set to record the explosion.
2:01:40
There's 1000 LB of dynamite rig to blow the whole bridge that
2:01:44
one shot of doing it. So all 5 cameramen had to turn
2:01:47
on a light when they were in a safe distance.
2:01:49
So they turn the cameras over, then they get with safe distance
2:01:51
turn the light on just to confirm they were filming, and
2:01:54
the stuntman had to do the same signal to say he was off the
2:01:57
train. So a guy had jumped off a train
2:01:59
to do a light right and this guy nailed it.
2:02:02
The stuntman, he jumped off a train, nailed it fine.
2:02:05
One of the cameramen forgot to turn his light on so they didn't
2:02:08
blow it up and had to reset everything.
2:02:10
There was executives on the set that couldn't see it blow up
2:02:13
because 1 cameraman and I would guarantee that would be fucking
2:02:17
me on this set. I'll be on camera 5 and I'll be
2:02:22
like, oh, it's not that important, right?
2:02:24
Yes. Oh shit, I didn't turn the light
2:02:26
on. Oh yeah, God, I'm sure he was
2:02:28
out of there immediately. The guy jumping out the train
2:02:31
managed it, and then the train, they said crashed into the
2:02:35
generator truck or something, didn't it?
2:02:37
It was just absolutely crazy. Yeah, that's right.
2:02:39
Yeah, He was filling me. He just didn't turn the light
2:02:41
on. He did a.
2:02:42
Nightmare. He turned the camera over, just
2:02:44
so excited about it, he started. Didn't turn me light on.
2:02:47
Yeah, the guy had second time round apparently, but the sound
2:02:49
design team didn't. So what we hear in the film is a
2:02:51
sound effect that's been added in post, right?
2:02:54
It's not that you can tell, I don't think.
2:02:55
Yeah, you hear the train, can't you?
2:02:56
More predominantly, yeah, in the sound design, because that's
2:02:59
from the first take. Yes, and Lean had originally
2:03:02
wanted to film the movement the bridge collapses differently.
2:03:05
He wanted to blow up the pilings on one side of the bridge so it
2:03:08
would topple towards the camera as it fell.
2:03:10
Spiegel said though, they couldn't risk the bridge not
2:03:12
collapsing completely, so they just destroyed it completely
2:03:15
instead. Right.
2:03:16
Yeah. I mean that would have been a
2:03:17
great shot falling towards the camera with the train on it it.
2:03:20
Would have been amazing, yeah. Yeah, something else I did as
2:03:22
well was for every carriage of the train that all had their own
2:03:25
engine to make sure that it kept going for the whole train would
2:03:27
go over the bridge. Right.
2:03:29
OK, the film is pretty fearful of the novel, but in the book
2:03:32
the bridge was not destroyed. It is minor damage.
2:03:34
I mean, imagine that it's that court of axes.
2:03:37
Just Jack Torrance giving it 6 now, Leon said.
2:03:43
We can't talk about blowing it up for two hours and then not do
2:03:45
it whatsoever. So had the end and change.
2:03:47
I mean, it's in the posters, in the promotion machine.
2:03:49
It has to happen. It does.
2:03:51
It needs that climax, for sure. Yeah.
2:03:53
Yeah. But different in the book and
2:03:54
real life. The real bridge was destroyed by
2:03:56
Allied aerial bombings during the war.
2:03:58
It was rebuilt though, and it's still there today apparently.
2:04:01
Wow. Amazing.
2:04:02
Yeah, yeah. So the bridge in the film is
2:04:03
done, but the film itself isn't just yet.
2:04:06
We got time for a fleeting final scene with Clifton to lead us
2:04:09
out. Yeah.
2:04:10
We do in a the field's really fitting that he gets the last
2:04:13
line because I think James Donald has been brilliant in
2:04:15
this and he kind of gets overshadowed by everyone else.
2:04:18
But he's been the voice of sanity throughout the film, the
2:04:21
only one who's able to stand back a bit from Nicholson and
2:04:24
go, what is he doing? Why are you doing that?
2:04:26
So for him to stand and survey the wreckage and the carnage and
2:04:30
like we've been saying, everyone has been killed, it makes
2:04:34
perfect sense that the team that just gets to look and go
2:04:36
madness, madness. Yeah.
2:04:38
Clipton's been the audience, hasn't he?
2:04:40
All the way through. Definitely been the audience,
2:04:42
yeah. Yeah, same in The Great Escape
2:04:44
as well. He's in the Great Escape.
2:04:45
He's great in that as. Well, yeah, it's the same
2:04:47
character. It's pretty much yeah, Yeah.
2:04:49
It is a great final line, but it's not just about what you're
2:04:51
seeing in front of him. I don't think it's about
2:04:53
everything that we've seen or Declan's obsession with the
2:04:55
bridge sight was tyranny. Warden hopping along with that
2:04:58
injured foot. Yeah.
2:04:59
The real hop along Cassidy. Yeah, I'm a helicopter shot
2:05:03
pulling away from all the Cornish to finish.
2:05:05
Just perfect. Yeah, we started with those
2:05:07
aerial shots that we talked about and we end the same way
2:05:10
again. Kind of highlights how pointless
2:05:11
it all was. Nothing's really changed.
2:05:13
They built the bridge and then they blew it up.
2:05:16
What was the point in any of that?
2:05:18
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Eagle shot that we
2:05:19
got at the start, to me this is like the Eagles point of view at
2:05:22
the end of the film. Yeah, see it from the guy's
2:05:24
point of view and then we're almost seen from the Eagles
2:05:26
point of view. So yeah, the final helicopter
2:05:28
shot, that was the last year they filmed.
2:05:30
Lean had the idea to mirror the opening shot at the end of the
2:05:33
production, but most of the crew had left sail on.
2:05:36
So Lean had to film himself on a wind up 35 mil camera and had to
2:05:41
get a stand in for James Donald as Clinton because he'd already
2:05:44
left the set. Right.
2:05:45
So it's literally it's like the end of we were soldiers.
2:05:47
Like Lean's the last one to leave the set.
2:05:49
He's taking his foot off the ground.
2:05:50
This was a 35 mil just pulling away.
2:05:53
So yeah, I'm the I'm the first one there.
2:05:55
I'm the last one. But yeah, it gets that whole
2:05:57
vibe, doesn't it? Of like this tiny thing that I
2:06:00
spoke about in the right and it it makes no difference.
2:06:02
Exactly, Yeah. It's fun.
2:06:03
Nothing. I saw anything to do with Lean
2:06:05
where he said later as well that that shot because it's not James
2:06:07
Donald. That's why the actor walks like
2:06:09
a mannequin in that shot, which I can't see I've noticed to be
2:06:12
honest. Right.
2:06:12
Not really I. Didn't know that's.
2:06:13
Just Lean's attention to detail, isn't it?
2:06:15
Yeah, he noticed, obviously, Yeah.
2:06:17
Wasn't Guinness. Wasn't Mannequin Skywalker?
2:06:21
Before we finish with the climax, we have our second data
2:06:24
to your own patron question. This one comes from JJ Brat.
2:06:28
Hello, JJ. Hello.
2:06:29
JJ. So JJ says this film has a great
2:06:32
final line summing up everything we've just seen in one word.
2:06:35
Madness. Yeah, another classic war film,
2:06:37
Apocalypse Now with a similar final line as Kurtz whispers the
2:06:40
horror with his dying breath. Definitely.
2:06:42
What other films come to mind that have great final lines like
2:06:45
these? Good question, JJ.
2:06:48
It is a good question. What do you think about
2:06:49
memorable final lines, Westie? There's Lords, there's lots that
2:06:53
I remember because that if your film ends on a really good line
2:06:56
that sums the whole film up, it really just makes the film for
2:06:59
me. And you want to go back and
2:07:00
watch it from the start. So one we've already mentioned
2:07:03
that is tight to This is planet, the Earth.
2:07:05
Yeah. Yeah, of course.
2:07:07
Blew it up your maniacs. It's like, OK, that's what the
2:07:10
whole film is about. I'm finished from There Will Be
2:07:13
Blood. Yeah, lovely.
2:07:14
Absolutely love that. Now where was I from the mentor?
2:07:19
Of course. Yeah, Great.
2:07:20
Yeah. Love that.
2:07:21
Yeah. Where was I Bang?
2:07:23
Yeah. And we've absolute favorite.
2:07:25
And there's people talk about different ones, different
2:07:27
classics, but I wish I could chat longer, but I'm having an
2:07:30
old friend for dinner, Science of the Lambs.
2:07:33
That's just wonderful. And there's that shot.
2:07:35
It's very still at the end of this where it just pulls away
2:07:38
and he disappears into the crowd.
2:07:39
Then for me, absolute favorite. That fixed me out, that final
2:07:42
shot in that final line because like, what's going to happen
2:07:45
next kind of thing? Exactly, but that's the great
2:07:47
thing about it. You can just see eat in his
2:07:49
face. It's 1.
2:07:52
Well, I've got a few different ones.
2:07:54
I love the One in Seven, Somerset Voiceover and Hemingway
2:07:57
Once Row. The world's a fine place and
2:07:59
worth fighting for. I agree with the second part.
2:08:01
That's great. Yeah, Venture hated that though,
2:08:03
didn't he? Did he?
2:08:04
Yeah, he didn't want it in. Wow, I love it.
2:08:06
Yeah, he just wanted it just to cut the black.
2:08:09
Obviously, Jim Gordon's outrageous monologue at the end
2:08:13
of The Dark Knight. He's not our hero.
2:08:15
He's a silent God, you know, watchful protect Dark Knight,
2:08:18
talking like he's the Riddler. But I do love it.
2:08:20
Yeah. Especially alongside that final
2:08:21
shot of the back pod. Incredible.
2:08:23
Yeah. And Billy Wilder, always a
2:08:25
master of the final line. Yeah.
2:08:27
Nobody's perfect. And some like it.
2:08:28
Hots. Probably his most famous.
2:08:30
My favorite is from the Apartment.
2:08:32
Francine should have been Deal after Bud tells her your
2:08:34
daughter. Yeah.
2:08:35
It's funny, heartfelt. It's pretty perfect.
2:08:37
Yeah. Just like the film.
2:08:39
Yeah. Great.
2:08:40
Yeah, I mean, you have covered most of the ones.
2:08:42
I was going to say. I was going to say some like it
2:08:44
hot in particular, because nobody's perfect, but that film
2:08:47
pretty much is perfect. It's just really nice way of
2:08:50
summing it up. I know that when they wrote that
2:08:51
final line of the placeholder and they were always planning to
2:08:53
replace it, but they never did, yeah.
2:08:55
Yeah, they never did. I think it's the same with
2:08:56
Casablanca, isn't it? You know this is the beginning
2:08:58
of a beautiful friendship. Is it right?
2:09:00
OK. Written on the fly.
2:09:01
We'll come up with something better actually, that's perfect
2:09:04
for Casablanca. And then the other one I wanted
2:09:06
to mention was just AT. I'll be right here.
2:09:09
Because that's like, it's not not just ET saying that to
2:09:11
Elliot. I think that's like Spiegelberg
2:09:13
saying this character is going to be writing in popular culture
2:09:16
for everyone forever. And he was right.
2:09:18
He was right. And that's the end of the bridge
2:09:20
in the River Kwai. What started the battle of wills
2:09:22
between two stubborn mules ends in destruction.
2:09:25
Yep. Nichols in the moment of clarity
2:09:26
comes too late. The bridge is gone.
2:09:29
Pure madness. Bought some great filmmaking for
2:09:31
us. Oh yeah.
2:09:32
Yeah, it's a masterpiece. Reception and awards.
2:09:40
So that's the story of the Bridge on the River Kwai, from
2:09:42
military discipline to complete madness.
2:09:45
But how did it fare when it hit theaters in October 1957?
2:09:49
Time to look at the numbers. And Mark, you've been building
2:09:52
bridges with the box office figures.
2:09:53
I have indeed. How to all pan out on release?
2:09:56
So production budget was $2.8 million and Bridge on the River
2:10:01
Kwai grossed $33.3 million worldwide to a massive hit for
2:10:05
Colombia and at the Academy Award triumph winning seven
2:10:09
Oscars out of eight nominations. So those winners were best
2:10:12
picture for Sam Spiegel, best director for David Lean, best
2:10:15
actor for Alec Guinness, best cinematography for Jack
2:10:18
Hilliard, best film editing for Peter Taylor, best original
2:10:21
score for Malcolm Arnold and best adapted screenplay somehow
2:10:25
for Pierre Boule. Yeah, we know the story there.
2:10:28
Shameless bull. Yeah.
2:10:30
Messi. Bullshit.
2:10:33
And apparently at the Oscars ceremony, even though they
2:10:36
cleaned up speaking and Lean still weren't getting on, things
2:10:39
became heated and then physical and they ended up duelling each
2:10:43
other with the Oscars, which sounds amazing.
2:10:45
It's. Amazing.
2:10:46
Like Errol Flynn. Love that.
2:10:50
Yeah, it's great. That's what the critics thought.
2:10:54
Let's start with the Sultan of Cinema, Roger Ebert for his
2:10:58
time. But he did review the vision on
2:10:59
the river choir later, right? So what more did he give it to,
2:11:02
you think? I reckon the 4/4.
2:11:04
I'm gonna go for marks. He did give her the maximum four
2:11:07
stars over the four and said most war movies are four or
2:11:10
games. There was the bridge on the
2:11:12
river. Kwai focuses not on larger
2:11:14
rights and wrongs, but on individuals.
2:11:16
Yeah, by the end, we are less interested in who wins, but in
2:11:19
how characters will behave. Yeah.
2:11:21
It's not about the politics, it's about the people.
2:11:23
Yeah, according to Rog. He's a big character, man, Rog.
2:11:26
Yeah, yeah, he loves it. He's a character, all right. 2
2:11:28
right? My cap land Variety was equally
2:11:32
impressed, saying a gripping drama expertly put together and
2:11:35
handled with scale in all departments.
2:11:37
William Holden is easy, credible and always likable.
2:11:40
That's true enough, but the film unquestionably belongs to Alec
2:11:44
Guinness. Yeah, yeah.
2:11:45
And Holden would rather I was 10%.
2:11:47
So everyone's a winner, everyone's happy, definitely.
2:11:50
And Bosley Crow, there in the New York Times, said about the
2:11:52
bridge in the River Kwai. The mounting of drama upon drama
2:11:55
makes it more than a towering entertainment of rich variety
2:11:57
and revelation of the ways of men.
2:11:59
It makes it one of the niftiest bargains to be had on the screen
2:12:02
this holiday. Lovely.
2:12:04
A nifty bargain. Spiegel probably didn't put that
2:12:06
on the poster. High praise.
2:12:09
Regretting it now? A nifty bargain from some
2:12:12
Spiegel. And so today on Rotten Tomatoes,
2:12:17
Bridge on the River Kwai has a critic score of 96% and an
2:12:21
audience score of 93%, And on IMDb it sits at an impressive
2:12:26
8.1 out of 10. Yeah.
2:12:28
Massive scores, big. It is a classic, likely always
2:12:32
will be. Yeah, yeah.
2:12:33
So The Bridge in the River Kwai was received is pretty much the
2:12:35
classic it became massive box office numbers, scrapped the
2:12:38
Oscars, loved by critics and still highly regards the day.
2:12:41
Yeah, not bad for a film where the director and producer were
2:12:44
dueling it out at the Oscars. Until the very end, yeah.
2:12:48
And then did Lawrence of Arabia. I don't know how this works.
2:12:55
Sequels and influence. Unlike many successful war
2:13:00
films, The Bridge on the River Kwai never spawned a sequel.
2:13:03
I mean, it's hard to imagine where you go off that blowing up
2:13:05
your cast and the bridge that is the title of the film.
2:13:08
But the influence, that's a different story.
2:13:11
So, Matt, what kind of influence and legacy has been left by the
2:13:14
film? I think Huge Ron, I mean, we've
2:13:16
been seeing it already, but David Lane can't and doesn't
2:13:19
make Lawrence of Arabia until he makes this and he can prove he
2:13:23
can make films on location, fast canvas, huge cast, big lady
2:13:26
themes and pull it off. And I don't know if this is the
2:13:30
first to do this, but it does feel like this was the first
2:13:33
film with mainstream appeal to put on screen how different the
2:13:36
Japanese POW experience was compared to the German one and
2:13:41
also what the Japanese military attitude was.
2:13:44
So I think the DNA from this film is in the likes of Merry
2:13:47
Christmas, Miss Lawrence, Letters from Iwo Jima and even
2:13:50
on TV. You mean people in this country
2:13:52
might remember show from the 80s called Tenkor, which was about
2:13:55
women civilians in a Japanese POW camp?
2:13:58
So the may well have been other films before Kwai that explored
2:14:02
that, but I can't think of any of that broke through in the way
2:14:04
that this one did. And then just an individual
2:14:07
scene. So I think the trek through the
2:14:08
jungle feels very, very Temple of Doom.
2:14:10
And then the train crash. I think huge influence on Chris
2:14:13
McCrory when he made Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning.
2:14:16
For sure, yeah. I think for us, there's people
2:14:18
that grew up watching 80s and 90s films.
2:14:20
The influence of the bridge in the River Kwai, we've seen it in
2:14:23
many places. On a technical level it evolved
2:14:25
how large scale films could be made.
2:14:28
Before Quiet, big films were almost always shot in studio
2:14:31
lots with dropped in backdrops. The African Queen, we mentioned
2:14:34
it, that's exactly how that was created.
2:14:35
And because of that, it hasn't aged half as well visually as
2:14:38
Cry has. Not at all, no.
2:14:40
Lean insists on shooting everything on location in sale,
2:14:43
on dealing with all the headaches that brought, and that
2:14:45
approach kind of became the standard afterwards.
2:14:47
I wonder if this was an inspiration for Spielberg when
2:14:50
he decided to shoot Jaws on location in Martha's Vineyard.
2:14:52
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, 100%.
2:14:54
And so, yeah. And Speaking of Spielberg, I see
2:14:56
influences on him, specifically Indiana Jones, constantly.
2:15:00
Once you get to the jungle. There are many times I'm
2:15:02
watching this thinking, like you said, Matt, that looks like
2:15:04
Raiders. Yeah.
2:15:04
That looks like Temple of Doom. Yeah.
2:15:06
I mean, if you're influencing Spielberg, you're influencing
2:15:08
just about everybody else since. Yeah.
2:15:10
But I think it's influence that major film makers as well.
2:15:12
You can see it's influence on Sergio Leone.
2:15:14
You mentioned in Westie. Yeah.
2:15:15
The Bad and the Ugly. There's a scene in that where
2:15:17
they blow up a bridge. Yeah, that's right.
2:15:19
Like 9 years later. So surely inspired by Kwai.
2:15:22
Yeah. And I think the storytelling
2:15:23
influence stands out. This was made around the time
2:15:25
when Hollywood war films were very much about heroes, like Way
2:15:29
He Goes. There was a few years later that
2:15:30
kind of thing, the kind of Western set behind enemy lines.
2:15:33
This exposed the idea of taking a war film and making it more
2:15:37
about moral ambiguity rather than good versus evil.
2:15:40
Yeah, we've mentioned Apocalypse Now and I think the influence of
2:15:43
Kwai and Coppola is bringing noticeable as well.
2:15:45
Definitely. So I think it's influence is its
2:15:47
legacy. One of those films that's so
2:15:49
influential that a filmmaker could make a war movie, and even
2:15:52
if they have not seen The Bridge in the River Kwai, they'll be
2:15:54
influenced by it whether they know it or not, either directly
2:15:56
or indirectly. Yeah.
2:15:58
I mean, like you both have just said, I don't think it's
2:16:00
necessarily an influence. I think it's more of an impact,
2:16:02
yeah, that this made on the whole business of cinema.
2:16:06
I mean, The Great Escape came later and it's in.
2:16:08
It's the shadow of this. It's the opposite.
2:16:10
There's no barbed wire. There's no way to get out.
2:16:11
What if there was barbed wire? What if there was a way to get
2:16:13
out? Similar kind of characters with
2:16:15
it, you know, it's not as heavy Guns in Avarone, I think is
2:16:18
massively, massively influenced by this.
2:16:21
Again, going into Lean's career without this, you don't get
2:16:24
Lawrence of Arabia. Without running to Arabia, you
2:16:25
don't get a lot of other films. But again, more of the date.
2:16:29
I say Full Metal Jacket shooting on location, even though it's
2:16:32
not the correct location. I say 2001, just the scale of
2:16:36
2001. The cinema scope feel of it is
2:16:38
very, very similar. I've mentioned the Thin Red Line
2:16:40
from Terrence Malik, but more of the day, I don't think you would
2:16:43
get anywhere near the output from Chris Nolan that you get
2:16:47
now without this or without Lawrence of Arabia.
2:16:50
Watch Dunkirk again. It is framed very, very similar.
2:16:54
It has a very similar tone. He only moves the camera when he
2:16:57
absolutely needs to. All of this really comes into
2:17:00
the fact that, yes, there's an epic scope, but at the same time
2:17:04
there's an epic scope. There's an incredible attention
2:17:06
to detail. It's a wonderful thing.
2:17:08
It doesn't mean you kind of wonder with what Lean could do
2:17:11
with just a camera, Yeah. What would he be able to do if
2:17:13
he had the technology that Spielberg and Nolan and all
2:17:16
those guys had? If he had it now, just the
2:17:18
vision that he had, he could have made something absolutely
2:17:21
outrageous. And I think that's why Tarantino
2:17:24
was turning around going, I'm making The Hateful 8 and 70 mil.
2:17:26
Yeah. And Nolan's going, I'm shooting
2:17:28
everything in IMAX on the next film because this is what David
2:17:31
Lean would have wanted to do. And I think everyone's kind of
2:17:34
any shadow a little bit. If you're a serious filmmaker,
2:17:36
you can't really progress your career without giving it a bit
2:17:39
of a nod to David Lean and going if you can make something now,
2:17:43
you don't have the same parameters that David Lean had
2:17:46
when he made this masterpiece, and that's why this really
2:17:49
lasts. Yeah, I mean, he's a filmmaker.
2:17:50
That's filmmaker in a lot of ways, isn't he?
2:17:52
Definitely 100%. In one of the legacy it has is
2:17:56
that the film aired on you as TV for the first time in 1966 and
2:18:00
typically at that time long films would be screened over 2
2:18:03
nights. But Choir was screened by ABC as
2:18:06
one uninterrupted broadcast and it was the longest single
2:18:09
network telecast of a film up to that point.
2:18:11
It was 60 million viewers which was a record for a movie on TV.
2:18:15
In short, networks the pulling power films on prime time TV and
2:18:18
from then on big films were screened as major events rather
2:18:22
than shown in late night slots like they previously have been.
2:18:25
Right. 60 million. 60 million. Huge.
2:18:28
Another two years before that, The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan
2:18:31
Show, which was one of the biggest TV events ever.
2:18:33
Like at 70, 3,000,000, Yeah. So not too far off.
2:18:36
We're talking serious numbers. Yeah, one person wasn't pleased,
2:18:39
though. William Holden tried to sue
2:18:41
Columbia for screen in the film, and that's basically because his
2:18:44
10% deal was tied to box office receipts, so he would make far
2:18:47
less. Right.
2:18:49
Hilarious Holden, isn't it? Hang on a minute, this isn't
2:18:52
right. And then Guinness did sign that
2:18:54
whopping deal with George Lucas a few years later.
2:18:56
Yeah, yeah, keep your 10%. I'll keep my Oscar and my 2.25%
2:19:01
on Star Wars. Thank you very.
2:19:02
Much cheers. So no sequels to The Bridge and
2:19:05
the River Choir course, but its influence on film making sense
2:19:08
is pretty widespread from large scale location shooting,
2:19:12
psychological war films, how television broadcast major
2:19:15
films. The Bridge was destroyed, but
2:19:17
its legacy still standing. Definitely.
2:19:19
Its legacy, its influence, and more importantly, its impact.
2:19:25
All the right movies ranking. And that's the end to end story
2:19:30
of the bridge in the River Kwai from the kick off whistle of
2:19:33
Colonel Bogey to how it's viewed today.
2:19:35
Now it's time for us to build our Rome monument with our
2:19:38
scores out at 10. Very nice.
2:19:39
So Matt, you chose this one for US.
2:19:42
Want to tell us what you think of it one last time?
2:19:44
One last time. This is such a monumental
2:19:47
achievement. It would be impressive enough if
2:19:49
this was a straightforward action film to go out and shoot
2:19:52
it entirely on location and having the incredible climax
2:19:55
that this film has, that would be enough to make a memorable.
2:19:59
But what really elevated is the writing for me, which has such
2:20:02
thematic and character depth, this streak of tragic irony
2:20:06
running all the way through it of what was the point?
2:20:10
And it somehow never presents Nicholson as an out and out
2:20:13
villain. He's just so tragically
2:20:15
misguided. And I mean, all the
2:20:17
performances, all great, but particularly from Guinness, that
2:20:20
is an all timer for me. Just one of the great
2:20:22
performances of all time. And I've referenced The Great
2:20:25
Escape a few times doing this now.
2:20:27
This isn't as easy watch as The Great Escape.
2:20:30
You can watch The Great Escape from the halfway point, and it's
2:20:32
brilliant. Yeah, Choir, you have to watch
2:20:34
it from the beginning. You have to be in a certain
2:20:35
frame of mind to watch it. Yeah.
2:20:38
But to me, the two sides of the same coin.
2:20:40
You've got the big romp in action adventure film of World
2:20:42
War 2, and then you've got this one which really examines the
2:20:45
madness and the pointlessness and the tragedy of so much of
2:20:48
it. And as we've said, the influence
2:20:51
this film has, it really is one of the most important films ever
2:20:54
made, and I don't think people appreciate it on that level
2:20:56
enough. So for me, it's not as easy to
2:21:00
watch as The Great Escape, but it's still up there as an
2:21:02
absolute masterpiece. So it's a 10 for me.
2:21:04
Nice. Why was that coming in with the
2:21:06
big guns? Just like Warden, the more it
2:21:09
has. All over the place, grenades,
2:21:11
everything. The guns of matter run.
2:21:17
So yeah, coming back this film, like years after I first watched
2:21:19
it, one of the first things that was struck is by how a man used
2:21:22
to be both intimate character study and an epic war film at
2:21:25
the same time. No easy task.
2:21:27
The performance is all grace across the board.
2:21:30
Alec Guinness gives us one of the great tragic figures in
2:21:32
Nicholson, a man who loves a bridge more than any man should
2:21:35
ever love a bridge. And William Holden brings the
2:21:38
charisma, provides a great counterpoint, the Nicholson's
2:21:41
obsession, as she has a man who doesn't seem to care about
2:21:43
anything. Except the women, obviously.
2:21:45
Obviously, priorities. And David Lew's direction I
2:21:48
think is masterful, the handling of piercing, the handling of
2:21:51
torn, and then bringing it all together in the climax.
2:21:53
It's become kind of like textbook big scale filmmaking in
2:21:56
a lot of ways. I do have some slight issues
2:21:59
like I talked about sight or fade into the background a bit
2:22:01
too much after being such a strong presence in the first
2:22:04
act. And the action scenes by today's
2:22:06
standards, leaves something to be desired a little bit of
2:22:08
times. But this is a Great Wall film
2:22:11
with a great message. It's about how blindly following
2:22:14
any kind of ideology can lead to making some morally questionable
2:22:17
choices. Yeah, all symbolized in that
2:22:19
damn bridge. So a classic, without doubt.
2:22:22
Massively influential and settling on the path to
2:22:25
Hollywood greatness. Not one of my personal favorites
2:22:27
by any stretch, but massively significant.
2:22:30
So it's a nine out of 10 for me. Lovely, nice and rusty.
2:22:34
Your submarine score for the Bridge on the River Cry.
2:22:37
Yeah, it was one that hit me when I bought it and I realized
2:22:39
that I should have seen it earlier, and I'm kind of glad
2:22:42
that I didn't because I got a lot more from it I haven't
2:22:44
appreciate and the technique behind it.
2:22:46
If you can watch this at any point and you'll get something
2:22:48
from it, I think that's really important from a filmmaking
2:22:51
point of view. And I think from just from a
2:22:53
story point of view, this still stands up.
2:22:55
This still makes sense. Yeah, there's still people out
2:22:57
there with this completely closed mindedness in this
2:23:00
moronic sense of self worth for nothing.
2:23:03
And it really is an exploration of that without getting too deep
2:23:06
into any one of those themes. It shows that everybody, no
2:23:09
matter where you're from, has a code of conduct and has this
2:23:13
belief in what is absolutely right.
2:23:16
And I think what this film shows you is nothing is absolutely
2:23:19
right. And what you have to do is learn
2:23:20
from each other. And I think if everyone learned
2:23:22
from each other, it would be a lot better and a lot safer and a
2:23:25
lot more enjoyable to be alive. But from a filmmaking point of
2:23:29
view, from a craft point of view, from an enjoyment point of
2:23:31
view, it's just a masterpiece. David Lee put everything into
2:23:34
this film. It still stands up now, like
2:23:36
I've said. And there's so much effort
2:23:38
that's got into it and you can see it in every single frame.
2:23:41
And it's been a lesson for all of our film makers since then.
2:23:45
And we'll probably wouldn't have the podcast to the point that we
2:23:48
love and enjoy talking about films without someone like like
2:23:51
David Lean having the vision in the 1st place.
2:23:54
It's a 10 all day. It's brilliant.
2:23:56
Beautiful, wonderful. Well, we also put this out there
2:23:58
to our ATRM patrons, and they were pretty much unanimous in
2:24:01
their prayers as well. First up, Gareth Benmore said.
2:24:05
I think this is one of the great epic war films, but it's also
2:24:08
much more than a simple World War two-story with levels of
2:24:11
complexity. Yeah.
2:24:12
And I think it's Guinness's best role.
2:24:14
Yep. A great.
2:24:15
Hard to argue with Gareth there. Yep, Yep, Kim Jackson wrote.
2:24:18
I cannot count how many times in the last 10 years I've thought
2:24:21
about Sir Alec Guinness's What Have I Done?
2:24:23
Yeah, it shot me when I first watched it.
2:24:25
It shocked me today. And as a reminder how far we may
2:24:28
travel from what is right when ego and obsession become
2:24:30
involved 10. Absolutely correct.
2:24:32
Beautifully. Beautifully put by came here as
2:24:35
usual and he had that moment of Nicholson's realization.
2:24:38
Does kind of stay with you, I think.
2:24:40
Yeah, it does. And Tim Brucelle had some big
2:24:42
words as well. He said this one has always been
2:24:45
personal as my father served in Burma for three years in World
2:24:48
War 2. Like many veterans, he never
2:24:51
talked about the war much. And seeing what these men went
2:24:53
through, I can see why. It's been my top ten since I
2:24:56
first saw it. And that ending is top three.
2:24:59
Cinematography, acting, screenplay, direction and score.
2:25:02
Fantastic. I'm happy in my work.
2:25:05
Easiest 10 ever. Nice.
2:25:07
Can't argue with that. Personal connections make any
2:25:09
film more powerful doing this or.
2:25:10
Definitely, yeah. And to know that this was more
2:25:13
of a diluted version of what is doubt we went through as well is
2:25:15
incredible. Overall then, our page ones
2:25:17
rated the bridge in the river choirs.
2:25:19
What do you think out of 10? Could go with the full bifter.
2:25:23
I want to say 9, you know. I'll go 9 as well then, yeah.
2:25:26
It was even more impressive 9.5. 9.5 All right, OK.
2:25:30
Brilliant. So total that all up and the
2:25:32
bridge in the River Kwai gets 38.5 out of 40.
2:25:35
Lovely. So a proper score for a proper
2:25:37
classic too, right? Next time out, Luke, Westie and
2:25:41
Matt are going on the run. Or are you chasing?
2:25:44
It depends who you're talking to.
2:25:45
I don't care I didn't kill your wife.
2:25:49
I've got 2 arms, it's not me. You are tackling Andrew Davis
2:25:55
classic 90s thriller The Fugitive.
2:25:57
Andrew Davis, classic thriller. Fucking love it.
2:26:01
I'm looking forward to that one. That's going to be fun.
2:26:03
It will be fun. Harrison Ford pick of his
2:26:05
powers. So you're happy with that one,
2:26:06
Misty? Yeah, absolutely.
2:26:08
Yeah. You could do no wrong then.
2:26:09
He could do no wrong now. If I'm.
2:26:12
Socially, you can keep up with all the right movies on X,
2:26:14
formerly Twitter, where you're at AT right movies, the movie
2:26:17
making or threads we post are all based on coming from people
2:26:20
involved in the production, all three separate sources, the same
2:26:23
as the podcast. And we're also on YouTube,
2:26:26
Instagram threads, Blue Sky, TikTok, and we have an active
2:26:29
Facebook group where you can discuss films with fellow movie
2:26:31
lovers. So we'll get into it.
2:26:33
Yeah, yeah, try and get rid of it.
2:26:35
Impossible. Exactly and our website pop with
2:26:38
great features and articles all the right movies.com sure is and
2:26:42
we have a listen to us. We have a favor to ask.
2:26:44
Please leave us a five star review.
2:26:46
Yes, Apple podcasts ideally, but any platform would be great.
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That really helps us out. It really, really does.
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You don't even have to write a review, just five stars.
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Just give it a click. And yes, thank you so much.
2:26:56
That really, really helps us Lords.
2:26:58
It really does. We're all off now to whistle
2:27:00
Colonel Bogey while building a massive bridge.
2:27:03
Probably not, to be honest. I'm just going to try and sleep
2:27:05
without that repeating in me head for the next six weeks.
2:27:08
Maybe a little model bridge like the one at the end?
2:27:10
We'll do that. I've got some fireworks in the
2:27:12
back of the car. We'll get to that.
2:27:14
The Fugitive. So we'll be back, and you should
2:27:18
definitely come back for The Fugitive for more Madness 1.
2:27:20
100%. Until then, thanks for listening
2:27:22
everyone. Thanks for listening, guys.
2:27:24
Yeah, cheers. Stay safe.