Tuesday Minute
No. 158 | September 14, 2010

It Was a Very Good Year … 1957

Our theme this week
Notable films of 1957

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Sweet Smell of Success

The Bridge on the River Kwai

Pierre Boulle published the novel on which the movie was based in 1952, and when Academy Awards were handed out in 1958, Boulle won for best adapted screenplay, one of seven awarded to the film, including Best Picture.  What’s notable about Boulle’s Oscar is that he was a Frenchman who spoke French, not English.  The screenplay was in fact written by two Americans, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, who were part of the Hollywood blacklist and not eligible to get screen credit during the time.  In 1984, the Academy corrected the record, awarding Oscars properly, but posthumously, to Foreman and Wilson.

The film was a huge success, both at the box office and with critics.  Director David Lean earned the first of two Academy Awards he won in his long and distinguished career.  Lean had a special talent for making epic films that reeked of respectability, and were very good too.  That’s not as easy as it sounds.  (His earlier, shorter films were very good too, but his epics seem to have been a greater influence on later generations of directors, who could more easily emulate the length of his pictures than their quality.)  I wasn’t around when The Bridge on the River Kwai came out, but as I remember hearing about it while growing up, it was about as esteemed as any film ever made, especially for the World War II generation.  I saw it again not too long ago, and though it’s no doubt set in a time and place far different from our world today, the film stands up.

The largely fictionalized story centers around British soldiers at a prison camp in Southeast Asia.  The Japanese commandant, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), orders them to work on construction of a bridge to help the Japanese war effort.  The British leader, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), objects to Saito’s treatment of his officers, citing the Geneva Conventions.  Two parallel storylines follow.  One is the interplay of Saito and Nicholson, and the effort to get the bridge built.  The other involves an American, Shears (William Holden), who escapes from the camp but then is enlisted by Major Warden (Jack Hawkins) for a mission to blow up the bridge.

The film packs a lot into its 161-minute running time.  We see Nicholson’s principled and admirable resistance, and also the madness of his obsession to build the bridge.  We see Saito’s cool determination, and his private humiliation as he fights desperately with thoughts of suicide.  We see Shears’s lack of concern about anyone but himself, and finally his selfless heroism.  The characters are easy to peg as British, Japanese, and American, but they’re not painted with too broad a brush.  Their treatment is very much as complicated individuals struggling to make the best of difficult circumstances.

The American star, Holden, got top billing, though the film was a British production.  Yet in 1997 the movie was selected for the U.S. National Film Registry.

Anyone who sees the The Bridge on the River Kwai will never forget the tune whistled by the British soldiers, “The Colonel Bogey March.”  It became a hit for Mitch Miller, but it was composed by a British bandmaster, F.J. Ricketts, during World War I and adapted various times in later years.  One parody sung during WWII had the title “Hilter Has Only Got One Ball.”  The tune, and film, had special resonance for British audiences who may have remembered that version.

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The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
David Lean, director
Pierre Boulle (novel); Michael Wilson, Carl Foreman (screenplay, originally not credited), writers
Jack Hildyard, cinematographer
Trailer

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The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Arrival of the British at Camp 16

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Quote of note
“I’ve been thinking.  Tomorrow it will be twenty-eight years to the day that I’ve been in the service.  Twenty-eight years in peace and war.  I don’t suppose I’ve been at home more than ten months in all that time.  Still, it’s been a good life.  I loved India.  I wouldn’t have had it any other way.  But there are times when suddenly you realize you’re nearer the end than the beginning.  And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents.  What difference your being there at any time made to anything.  Hardly made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men’s careers.  I don’t know whether that kind of thinking’s very healthy, but I must admit I’ve had some thoughts on those lines from time to time.”
—Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

…58…59…60.

Thursday Minute
No. 85 | April 29, 2010

Deal Me In 

Our theme this week
Card games at the movies

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
Tuesday         —   Rounders (1998)
Wednesday    —   The Sting (1973)

Born Yesterday (1950)

Two sexes can play that game.  The game of cards in Born Yesterday is gin.  The lesson is:  don’t underestimate the dumb blonde.

Her name is Billie Dawn (Judy Holliday), and she’s not nearly as dumb as you think.  She accompanies her crude and crooked tycoon boss Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford) while he’s in Washington to peddle influence (we have made progress:  these days it takes a more refined class to buy off politicians).  Meanwhile, Brock hires a tutor (William Holden) to give Billie an “education.”  What she learns, among other things, is to think for herself.

The performances carry the picture, and Holliday, in reprising the role she played on stage, steals the show.  What’s more:  she stole the Academy Award for Best Actress, competing in a year against two of the most sensational performances in the history of movies.  Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard) and Bette Davis (All About Eve) never did finer work, but went home empty-handed on Oscar night.  Schneider!

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Born Yesterday
George Cukor, director
Adapted from Garson Kanin’s play
Trailer

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Born Yesterday
Judy Holliday, William Holden, Broderick Crawford
The Gin Game (scene starts at 3:50)

The Gin Game (scene continues for first minute)

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Quote of Note
“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.”
—Rick (Humphrey Bogart), Casablanca (1942)

…58…59…60.