On a hot sunny day in 1943, another batch of British prisoners arrives at a Japanese prison camp in the middle of the jungle. Although the men are impoverished by the gruelling journey, they arrive with a cutting song. For their superior, Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), is not about to show any weakness to the enemy. The camp's commander, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), is visibly nervous: he suspects trouble is brewing on his section of the railroad construction project, which is supposed to connect Bangkok to Rangoon on a killer deadline. One of the captive "old-timers", the American Shears (William Holden), watches it all ironically from the shadow of the marooned building where he has just taken refuge. Colonel Nicholson manages to wrest for himself and his officers the right not to work. Gradually, he becomes obsessed with building the perfect bridge. In his view, well-organised work will keep morale high and the Japanese will realise that they will never beat the British with their skills and civilised traditions. The POWs under Nicholson's leadership actually build a great bridge and are duly proud of it. Meanwhile, Shears has escaped from the camp and soon returns with a unit of Allied saboteurs. Their mission is to blow up the perfect bridge over the River Kwai along with the first passing Japanese train. What will Colonel Nicholson do?
Based on the novel of the same name (by Pierre Boulle), the film won seven Oscars out of eight nominations: best picture, actor (Alec Guinness), director (David Lean), adapted screenplay (Pierre Boulle, Michael Wilson, Carl Foreman), cinematography (Jack Hildyard), editing (Peter Taylor), music (Malcolm Arnold).
Lyrics and captions are not in Czech.
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