The Bridge on the River Kwai

David Lean’s first work in the big-budget-epic mode for which he was most famous snared seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Director and Actor (Alec Guinness). (Its success also convinced producer Sam Spiegel to bankroll Lawrence of Arabia, Lean’s even bigger follow-up.) The film is set in 1943 in a POW camp in Burma, where the British prisoners are forced by their Japanese captors to build a strategically important railway bridge over the River Kwai. Guinness plays Colonel Nicholson, the by-the-book British commander locked in a fierce battle of wills with Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), his Japanese counterpart, over the rules of war and the construction of the bridge. To the disbelief of some — including William Holden, as American POW Shears — Nicholson resolves to have his ragged men build the very best bridge possible, in order to bolster their morale and demonstrate the superiority of British character. The film is based on a best-selling novel by French writer Pierre Boulle (author of Planet of the Apes). The memorable theme whistled by the prisoners, “The Colonel Bogey March,” had many ruder wartime variations (including, famously, “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball”). “One of the finest war films ever. Stunningly photographed ... intelligent and exciting” (The Movie Guide). Colour, Blu-Ray. 161 mins.