Review of The Bridge on the River Kwai

In 1942, Colonel Alec Guinness and his men are captured by Japanese troops in Singapore. They are taken through the Burmese jungle to the camp run by Colonel Sessue Hayakawa, where they find an American prisoner, William Holden. Sessue Hayakawa, charged with erected as far as possible a bridge over the river Kwai, orders his prisoners to set about the task… The first superproduction taken on by David Lean, who directs this take of absurdity with as much scale as intelligence, without any over-simplification. A genuine monument of the cinematic art, this film was rewarded with seven Oscars.