The Bridge on the River Kwai

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British World War II film by David Lean based on The Bridge over the River Kwai by French writer Pierre Boulle. The film is a work of fiction but borrows the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–43 for its historical setting. It stars William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Alec Guinness and Sessue Hayakawa. The film was filmed in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The bridge in the film was located near Kitulgala.

The film achieved near universal critical acclaim, winning seven Academy Awards, and in 1997, this film was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry.

After the surrender of Singapore in World War II, a unit of British soldiers is marched to a Japanese prison camp in western Thailand. They are paraded before the camp commandant, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), who informs them of his rules; all prisoners, regardless of rank, are to work on the construction of a bridge over the River Kwai to carry a new railway line to invade Burma.

Their commander, Lt.

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