Classic war movie alert: Bridge Over the River Kwai

[kcollins4]

Turner Classic Movies 9:15PM Central Saturday, the 10th.
Great movie, great acting! Been several years since I've seen this. Get the popcorn ready! Nothing like a 3 hour war movie.

[avionic]

I had a Congo African Grey parrot that would whistle that tune all day long and then morph it into the Andy Griffith theme tune.Crazy bird..

[Snade]

One of the best movies of all time.

Thanks for the heads up.

Snade

[amsoilman]

Now I'm not much of a movie guy but as a kid that was my favorite

[Aage]

The Longest Day is playing here tonight. Gotta love that war drama stuff.

It should be called The Longest Movie, something like near to 4 hours long.

[Fast_Eddie]

Great film. Ones of the best ever.

[LBPete]

By war movie standards of the era, it was a great one. But it doesn't come close to portraying the brutality those poor bastards had to endure building that railroad.

That bridge was just one river crossing along a railroad the Japanese built across Burma using POW slave labor. It was human suffering of the worse kind.

- Pete

[Arkay]

Been a fan of that movie since I first saw it as a little kid.

Fortunately, it is one of those great old classic movies that is available in Letterboxed CinemaScope with Dolby (remastered) surround sound ... on LASER DISK! One cheap purchase, and you can watch it again and again, whenever you like. Who could ask for more? [Unless it were LD copies of Zulu, A Bridge Too Far, and a bunch of other great old war movies?!]

[diddlybopper]

The survivors of that sad and tragic labor camp say the movie is an absolute sham!!

[reggaenaut]

Great movie.

[Tom Brennan]

Japanese using Lee-Enfield rifles? C'mon.

The picture is interesting as a post-war attempt to "humanize" the Japanese, who were quite inhumanly brutal afterall making Lean's notions now seem trite.

Not Lean's best, indeed looking back his work suffers with only Lawrence of Arabia still up to the standard originally held, time is not being kind to his pictures. Where as Hawks' and Ford's pictures for instance seem to grow as time passes. Wyler's too. And Hitch's.

[Snade]

Originally Posted by Tom Brennan

Not Lean's best, indeed looking back his work suffers with only Lawrence of Arabia still up to the standard originally held, time is not being kind to his pictures. Where as Hawks' and Ford's pictures for instance seem to grow as time passes. Wyler's too. And Hitch's.

An astute commentary.

The best things about The Bridge on the River Kwai are the performances of Alec Guinness and William Holden. Guinness would win the oscar for best actor, but over time, many think Holden's performance is just as good.

Snade

[Bigerik]

It's not that time is being unkind to a lot of Leans work. SCALE is missing. To see Lawrence of Arabia or Dr. Zhivago on the small screen is to loose much of their impact. The 70mm, 2.35 aspect Panavision just does not cross over to home "theatre" well. I saw them a few years ago in 70mm on a huge IMAX screen and was stunned by the beauty of Leans work in both L of A and Zhivago.

As Norma Desmond stated so well:

"I *am* big. It's the *pictures* that got small."

[Tom Brennan]

I dunno Big, I saw Lawrence several times in 70mm when originally released, when the restored version was released and 3 or 4 years ago when Roger Ebert displayed it in 70mm in Champaign. Not to mention seeing Zhivago on the big screen many times and Ryan's Daughter a couple of times in 70mm when released.

And I still maintain the movies suffer as time passes. You don't need to see The Searchers or Vertigo in VistaVision to "get" them. Zhivago especially seems a mess to me now and the only things I thought worthwhile about Ryan's Daughter were Sarah Miles' splendid nipples.

[Bigerik]

Originally Posted by Tom Brennan

I dunno Big, I saw Lawrence several times in 70mm when originally released, when the restored version was released and 3 or 4 years ago when Roger Ebert displayed it in 70mm in Champaign. Not to mention seeing Zhivago on the big screen many times and Ryan's Daughter a couple of times in 70mm when released.

And I still maintain the movies suffer as time passes. You don't need to see The Searchers or Vertigo in VistaVision to "get" them. Zhivago especially seems a mess to me now and the only things I thought worthwhile about Ryan's Daughter were Sarah Miles' splendid nipples.

Lean used the camera differently than hitchcock did. I mean, the trouble Lean went to to get some of those snow shots. The shots of the train. Damn few directors would ever bother with something like that, but to see them on the big screen is stunning. Vertigo, which is one of my all time favs, also loses much in the transfer to DVD, LD, whichever, but for different reasons. Where Lean used the camera to capture incredibly large vistas, Hitchcock put in an incredible amount of detail, down to the textures of clothing, into every shot.

I do agree however, about some of the plot liberties taken in Zhivago. Having read the book (yes, I really did) some of the impact was definitely lost in the movie. Then again, both the book and the movie were subversive enough to be banned in the USSR....