'The Bridge On The River Kwai' (1957)
Mar 29, 2018 22:29:45 GMT
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Post by petrolino on Mar 29, 2018 22:29:45 GMT
'The Bridge On The River Kwai' is an epic prisoner-of-war picture based upon a book written by French novelist Pierre Boulle. In 1943, British POWs are packed on board a train and sent to a Japanese prison camp located in Burma. The camp has been built on a key strategic line that runs through Thailand, Malaya and Singapore. Camp commandant Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) demands that every prisoner of every rank aid construction of a railway bridge over the Kwai River. Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) refuses to order his incarcerated troops to work on this bridge, citing The Geneva Conventions of 1929 as proof that such actions would break the rules of military imprisonment. A battle of wills commences that will inevitably cost lives.
In the mid-1950s, larger-than-life movie producer Sam Spiegel was keen to score another success like 'The African Queen' (1951) but that film's director John Huston was unavailable. Spiegel is said to have approached John Ford, Howard Hawks and Fred Zinnemann to direct his new project 'The Bridge On The River Kwai' but to no avail. It's said that Spiegel seriously considered Nicholas Ray, Orson Welles and William Wyler but again nothing came from this. In the end, and because Spiegel couldn’t convince anybody active in Hollywood to take on the job, he was lumped with David Lean, a rather difficult but exacting British director who'd had some success making films in Europe. For all their troubles, Lean and Spiegel would collaborate five years later on another epic adventure rooted in the history of military conflict, 'Lawrence Of Arabia' (1962).
Not to be funny, but I think 'The Bridge On The River Kwai' is constructed kind of like the bridge we're watching being constructed. David Lean studied a range of industrial innovations, assessing the work of George Stephenson with Edward Pease in the north of England and Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the south. By observing the bridge being built you certainly get a strong sense of how hard the work is. Shooting in the jungles of Sri Lanka was also genuinely tough due to serious illness suffered by crew members who found living conditions testing. There were also deadly animals about and the intense heat and oppressive humidity was all too much for some.
When I'm watching this movie I feel like every ounce of endurance has been orchestrated to a level that's hard for me to fathom. I'm convinced the cast give it absolutely everything. Lean uses folds in the screen on occasion, which is a bit like the effect on your eyeballs when you glance directly into the sun - I'm not sure what this technique is called but it's subtle and effective. The cinematographer Jack Hildyard had already shot 'The Sound Barrier' (1952), 'Hobson's Choice' (1954) and 'Summertime' (1955) for Lean who trusted in his ability to pull off some trying technical processes. Lean really ramps up the heat visually as the film progresses, leading to an extraordinary extended climax built through ambitious cross-cutting that's influenced countless genre films since, including some of my favourites like Brian De Palma's 'Carrie' (1976), Francis Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' (1979), Walter Hill's 'Southern Comfort' (1981) and Oliver Stone's 'Platoon' (1986).
There's a monthly peepshow calendar in Colonel Saito's office that says "Joey's Garage in Elk City, Ohio". There’s an Elk River in West Virginia that flows via the Kanawha River into the Ohio River. I don't know if there's really a place called Elk City in Ohio. I just don't know.
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
David Lean
Sydney Pollack & Steven Spielberg on 'The Bridge On The River Kwai'
David Lean
Sydney Pollack & Steven Spielberg on 'The Bridge On The River Kwai'
In the mid-1950s, larger-than-life movie producer Sam Spiegel was keen to score another success like 'The African Queen' (1951) but that film's director John Huston was unavailable. Spiegel is said to have approached John Ford, Howard Hawks and Fred Zinnemann to direct his new project 'The Bridge On The River Kwai' but to no avail. It's said that Spiegel seriously considered Nicholas Ray, Orson Welles and William Wyler but again nothing came from this. In the end, and because Spiegel couldn’t convince anybody active in Hollywood to take on the job, he was lumped with David Lean, a rather difficult but exacting British director who'd had some success making films in Europe. For all their troubles, Lean and Spiegel would collaborate five years later on another epic adventure rooted in the history of military conflict, 'Lawrence Of Arabia' (1962).
“David Lean began in the British cinema in 1934, as an editor, and in the years before his films grew to epic length and scope, he directed a series of tight, bright, pointed black-and-white dramas that helped define British postwar moviemaking. Among his key credits in that period were "Blithe Spirit" and "Brief Encounter," both in 1945; "Great Expectations" (1946)' "Oliver Twist" (1948); the underrated "Breaking the Sound Barrier" (1954); "Hobson's Choice" (1954), and the Katherine Hepburn romantic comedy "Summertime" (1955). His editing was a model of craftsmanship. The American director Martin Scorsese remembers his own days at the New York University film school, where students were given the shots in the opening graveyard sequence of "Great Expectations" and asked to re-edit them. A generation of students gave it their best, learning through the process that Lean had put them together in the best possible way.”
- Roger Ebert, ‘David Lean : A Filmmaker Of Epic Scale’
“But the film that, I think, changed my attitude and showed me what film was, was David Lean's ‘Brief Encounter’ (1945). Before that, films were all flash and action, pussy, and all that stuff. I remember seeing 'Brief Encounter' here, somewhere in the Melrose/Fairfax area, and leaving the theater and just walking for blocks, and blocks. Lean really opened up the medium. The British films of that time were the best. Then later, Kazan did it here, in the theater first, then brought that sensibility to film, the naturalism in the acting. I was influenced by all those kinds of films and consequently my films, I guess, reflect that. I'm the last person who really knows what it is my films do. Most of this stuff is just instinctual and I don't pay much attention to it. I don't know and I don't really want to know. I find myself during the last 30 years of having a lot of accolades and so forth, and I'll be on the set and asking myself "Wait a minute, am I doing this because this is what the critics expect me to do? Am I trying to follow that, or am I dealing with this honestly?" And it's very difficult. You tend to believe your own publicity. It's hard not to, because it's very pleasant. Suddenly you're the expert and you begin to believe it. And that's very destructive. I think you just have to keep working, which I have. There's not a filmmaker who's ever lived who's had a better shake than I have. I've never been without a project since I started. And they've all been things of my own choosing.”
- Robert Altman, The Hollywood Reporter
Alec Guinness
'I'd Rather Be The Devil' - John Martyn
- Roger Ebert, ‘David Lean : A Filmmaker Of Epic Scale’
“But the film that, I think, changed my attitude and showed me what film was, was David Lean's ‘Brief Encounter’ (1945). Before that, films were all flash and action, pussy, and all that stuff. I remember seeing 'Brief Encounter' here, somewhere in the Melrose/Fairfax area, and leaving the theater and just walking for blocks, and blocks. Lean really opened up the medium. The British films of that time were the best. Then later, Kazan did it here, in the theater first, then brought that sensibility to film, the naturalism in the acting. I was influenced by all those kinds of films and consequently my films, I guess, reflect that. I'm the last person who really knows what it is my films do. Most of this stuff is just instinctual and I don't pay much attention to it. I don't know and I don't really want to know. I find myself during the last 30 years of having a lot of accolades and so forth, and I'll be on the set and asking myself "Wait a minute, am I doing this because this is what the critics expect me to do? Am I trying to follow that, or am I dealing with this honestly?" And it's very difficult. You tend to believe your own publicity. It's hard not to, because it's very pleasant. Suddenly you're the expert and you begin to believe it. And that's very destructive. I think you just have to keep working, which I have. There's not a filmmaker who's ever lived who's had a better shake than I have. I've never been without a project since I started. And they've all been things of my own choosing.”
- Robert Altman, The Hollywood Reporter
Alec Guinness
'I'd Rather Be The Devil' - John Martyn
Not to be funny, but I think 'The Bridge On The River Kwai' is constructed kind of like the bridge we're watching being constructed. David Lean studied a range of industrial innovations, assessing the work of George Stephenson with Edward Pease in the north of England and Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the south. By observing the bridge being built you certainly get a strong sense of how hard the work is. Shooting in the jungles of Sri Lanka was also genuinely tough due to serious illness suffered by crew members who found living conditions testing. There were also deadly animals about and the intense heat and oppressive humidity was all too much for some.
“Brian De Palma analyses rather than ogles - even as the action rolls. In his new film, the noirish gangster thriller ‘Carlito's Way’, there's a scene in which the hero, played by Al Pacino, goes into a pool hall for a drugs drop-off. It goes horribly wrong, with bodies strewn everywhere. But what you remember is De Palma's slow, suspenseful build- up. He seems to be staking out the terrain for us, pointing to each detail, so that when the violence erupts, we see it not as an incomprehensible blur, but preternaturally clearly. At his best, De Palma unravels the mechanics of what normally seem like arbitrary horrors.
Perhaps the trouble is that style is put before content, cruddy dialogue and cardboard characters filling in between camera coups. De Palma sequences are as famous as De Palma slaughters: the explosive opening scene of ‘The Fury’ (1978) in which Kirk Douglas, eating at a seaside restaurant, is peppered with gunfire from a U-boat; the corridor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in ‘Dressed to Kill’ (1980), in which a sinuous shot silently follows Angie Dickinson as she falls into her pursuer's trap; the finale of ‘The Untouchables’, a parody of [Sergei] Eisenstein in which a pram and its baby slip down a set of station steps in the middle of a shoot-out. It's beautiful, but is it a movie?
De Palma is unapologetic. The visual has always been paramount - so much so that his rough cuts have often run short, as he dispenses with dull-looking character scenes. 'The idea,' he explains, 'was to develop a stunning, articulate visual style: a hypnotic way of making movies. Then, having got that under control, to use those techniques in more story- oriented, character-driven pieces. In a film such as ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’, the force of the final explosion is heightened by the fact that each character is an emotional or ethical embodiment of a philosophy of war. The character hook gives the visual sequence impact.'
That may seem a strange, stony path for an artist: to start with technique and then move on to character. Most creators start with a view of the world and then work out how to express it. But detachment has always been at the heart of De Palma's film-making. For human warmth go to Steven Spielberg. For the bustling, nervous energy of the street, see Martin Scorsese. For the reassuringly old-fashioned morality of new frontiers, try George Lucas. But for calculated shocks, knowing parody and wintry humour, Brian's your boy. For years he was known as Hollywood's coldest hot director.”
- Quentin Curtis, The Independent
“I try and be original as I can, and original in my enthusiasm as I can for a fresh look at things. And because of all the arts, I guess, music is the most abstract you can possibly have, right? Apart from mathematics — and even that adds up, or should add up. Music just doesn’t add up. It’s all intuition, and it’s all wonderful smoke and mirrors, is the way I look at it. But I also learnt that music also is, and I’ve said this before, the final dialogue. Music, in a sense, is dialogue — with the audience, it can be a dialogue between the characters, which will impose anything from a threat to beauty to emotion. And one tries not to rely on the music for these things, but in fact hope that the film works without it. But I tend to shoot with music in mind. I once worked with an editor who said, “No, we can’t put music on this, the film must stand on its own. Then we’ll apply music.” At the time, I went, “Ooh, alright,” and I was very impressed with that. And then I said, “Wait a minute, I don’t work that way.” I work with a view to music in mind, to help compose and construct the overall picture.
I kind of rely on everything, including good words and good acting. I’m one of those “schools of everything,” which I think is one of the reasons I got into the business when I first saw Orson Welles and David Lean. I think David Lean with ‘Great Expectations’ - you can’t do better than that. To remake it is absolute nonsense, okay. It was absolutely genius. So he was the master of everything, as was Welles, you know. And I like to think I try to get into that on every facet. It’s all important.”
- Ridley Scott, Projector & Orchestra
Sessue Hayakawa
'Forty Thousand Headmen' - Traffic
Perhaps the trouble is that style is put before content, cruddy dialogue and cardboard characters filling in between camera coups. De Palma sequences are as famous as De Palma slaughters: the explosive opening scene of ‘The Fury’ (1978) in which Kirk Douglas, eating at a seaside restaurant, is peppered with gunfire from a U-boat; the corridor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in ‘Dressed to Kill’ (1980), in which a sinuous shot silently follows Angie Dickinson as she falls into her pursuer's trap; the finale of ‘The Untouchables’, a parody of [Sergei] Eisenstein in which a pram and its baby slip down a set of station steps in the middle of a shoot-out. It's beautiful, but is it a movie?
De Palma is unapologetic. The visual has always been paramount - so much so that his rough cuts have often run short, as he dispenses with dull-looking character scenes. 'The idea,' he explains, 'was to develop a stunning, articulate visual style: a hypnotic way of making movies. Then, having got that under control, to use those techniques in more story- oriented, character-driven pieces. In a film such as ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’, the force of the final explosion is heightened by the fact that each character is an emotional or ethical embodiment of a philosophy of war. The character hook gives the visual sequence impact.'
That may seem a strange, stony path for an artist: to start with technique and then move on to character. Most creators start with a view of the world and then work out how to express it. But detachment has always been at the heart of De Palma's film-making. For human warmth go to Steven Spielberg. For the bustling, nervous energy of the street, see Martin Scorsese. For the reassuringly old-fashioned morality of new frontiers, try George Lucas. But for calculated shocks, knowing parody and wintry humour, Brian's your boy. For years he was known as Hollywood's coldest hot director.”
- Quentin Curtis, The Independent
“I try and be original as I can, and original in my enthusiasm as I can for a fresh look at things. And because of all the arts, I guess, music is the most abstract you can possibly have, right? Apart from mathematics — and even that adds up, or should add up. Music just doesn’t add up. It’s all intuition, and it’s all wonderful smoke and mirrors, is the way I look at it. But I also learnt that music also is, and I’ve said this before, the final dialogue. Music, in a sense, is dialogue — with the audience, it can be a dialogue between the characters, which will impose anything from a threat to beauty to emotion. And one tries not to rely on the music for these things, but in fact hope that the film works without it. But I tend to shoot with music in mind. I once worked with an editor who said, “No, we can’t put music on this, the film must stand on its own. Then we’ll apply music.” At the time, I went, “Ooh, alright,” and I was very impressed with that. And then I said, “Wait a minute, I don’t work that way.” I work with a view to music in mind, to help compose and construct the overall picture.
I kind of rely on everything, including good words and good acting. I’m one of those “schools of everything,” which I think is one of the reasons I got into the business when I first saw Orson Welles and David Lean. I think David Lean with ‘Great Expectations’ - you can’t do better than that. To remake it is absolute nonsense, okay. It was absolutely genius. So he was the master of everything, as was Welles, you know. And I like to think I try to get into that on every facet. It’s all important.”
- Ridley Scott, Projector & Orchestra
Sessue Hayakawa
'Forty Thousand Headmen' - Traffic
When I'm watching this movie I feel like every ounce of endurance has been orchestrated to a level that's hard for me to fathom. I'm convinced the cast give it absolutely everything. Lean uses folds in the screen on occasion, which is a bit like the effect on your eyeballs when you glance directly into the sun - I'm not sure what this technique is called but it's subtle and effective. The cinematographer Jack Hildyard had already shot 'The Sound Barrier' (1952), 'Hobson's Choice' (1954) and 'Summertime' (1955) for Lean who trusted in his ability to pull off some trying technical processes. Lean really ramps up the heat visually as the film progresses, leading to an extraordinary extended climax built through ambitious cross-cutting that's influenced countless genre films since, including some of my favourites like Brian De Palma's 'Carrie' (1976), Francis Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' (1979), Walter Hill's 'Southern Comfort' (1981) and Oliver Stone's 'Platoon' (1986).
"Hobson's Choice (1954) is distinguished by its deep-focus photography, most imaginatively used in the Salford locations with the terraces and long alleyways running between the rows of back-to-back housing. The crisp images effectively capture the 'realism' of an industrial urban space, rather comically in the scene on the banks of the polluted river Irwell where Maggie (Brenda de Banzi) courts the gauche Will Mossop (John Mills). The studio sequences, on the other hand, allow for a more creative use of lighting, most notably the low key expressionism of Hobson's (Charles Laughton) comic nighttime drinking exploits and hallucinations - where he chases the reflection of the moon from puddle to puddle - which recalls the work of Jack Hildyard's mentor Robert Krasker in such films as Odd Man Out (1947)."
- Duncan Petrie, The British Film Institute
“I have always had a thing for military films. 'Twelve O'Clock High' (1949) was incredible. I felt the same way about 'Patton' (1970), which came much later. 'The Bridge On The River Kwai' (1957) is also great.”
- Sidney J. Furie, Money Into Light
"David Lean, when he made 'Lawrence of Arabia,' couldn't bear to leave the desert. Well, I felt the same way about the jungle."
- Francis Coppola recalls the making of ‘Apocalypse Now’
“David Lean has long been my favorite director, and 'The Bridge of the River Kwai' is definitely one of my favorite films of all time. I think we all learn about our culture though cinema, as it’s an art form with tremendous communal power, and Lean’s works had that sense of both being epic and intimate, and truly transported you to new places.”
- Richard Rush, We Are Cult
William Holden
'River Man' - Nick Drake
- Duncan Petrie, The British Film Institute
“I have always had a thing for military films. 'Twelve O'Clock High' (1949) was incredible. I felt the same way about 'Patton' (1970), which came much later. 'The Bridge On The River Kwai' (1957) is also great.”
- Sidney J. Furie, Money Into Light
"David Lean, when he made 'Lawrence of Arabia,' couldn't bear to leave the desert. Well, I felt the same way about the jungle."
- Francis Coppola recalls the making of ‘Apocalypse Now’
“David Lean has long been my favorite director, and 'The Bridge of the River Kwai' is definitely one of my favorite films of all time. I think we all learn about our culture though cinema, as it’s an art form with tremendous communal power, and Lean’s works had that sense of both being epic and intimate, and truly transported you to new places.”
- Richard Rush, We Are Cult
William Holden
'River Man' - Nick Drake
There's a monthly peepshow calendar in Colonel Saito's office that says "Joey's Garage in Elk City, Ohio". There’s an Elk River in West Virginia that flows via the Kanawha River into the Ohio River. I don't know if there's really a place called Elk City in Ohio. I just don't know.
