NFR Project: 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' (1957)

NFR Project: “The Bridge on the River Kwai”

Dir: David Lean

Scr: Carl Foreman, Michael Wilson

Pho: Jack Hildyard

Ed: Peter Taylor

Premiere: Dec. 14, 1957

161 min.

This is the first of director David Lean’s big-budget, epic film masterpieces. Prior to this, Lean was known for his collaborations with Noel Coward, and for his Dickens adaptations. His incredible visual sense is borne out in all his films, but his last five would cement his reputation as a master filmmaker.

Each epic is set in a different environment – this film, the jungle; Lawrence of Arabia, the desert; Doctor Zhivago, a snowscape; Ryan’s Daughter, the edge of the sea; A Passage to India the landscape again. In each he asks probing moral questions. What is identity? What is integrity? How does the heart cross paths with the mind?

Here, he takes up, in Technicolor and CinemaScope, the plight of British prisoners of war in World War II. The script was written by two blacklisted screenwriters, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson. The Oscar for Best Screenplay was given, not to them, but to the author of the novel, Pierre Boulle. In fact, the film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Guinness, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Score.

Under the guns of their Japanese captors, the soldiers are forced to help build a railway – one known as the Death Railway -- between Bangkok and Rangoon. In particular, they must build a bridge across the river Kwai. Into the prison camp marches Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness) and his men. The Japanese commanding officer, Col. Saito (Sesue Hayakawa), orders the officers to work on the bridge beside their men. Nicholson refuses, as it is against the rules of battle, the Geneva Convention.

Saito strikes him and orders him and his officers to sweat it out in “ovens,” corrugated tin boxes exposed to the brutal jungle sun. Days go by, and Nicholson refuses to give in. Finally, Saito, facing an ominous deadline to get his bridge built, acquiesces. Nicholson recovers – or does he? Soon he has conceived of a plan to take over the construction of the bridge, claiming that his men could do a much better job than their captors, seeing it as a morale-building exercise. The cautiously friendly doctor (James Donald) as whether this behavior is treasonous, but he is scoffed at.

Meanwhile, an American sailor pretending to be an officer (William Holden) escapes the camp and makes it to safety – only to be found out and ordered to go on a mission back to the Kwai, to destroy the bridge.

The intersection of the fates entangling Guinness, Hayakawa, and Holden are fascinating. How comfortably can a man live with delusion? What does a code of honor imply? Once Nicholson is given command of the bridge, he persuades the officers to work alongside the men, and even recruits the men in hospital to help out. His consuming passion is the completion of the bridge, and against all true logic his deranged logic drives him and his men onward.

The conclusion is spectacular, and equivocal. The last words in the film are aptly uttered by the good doctor – “Madness! Madness!”

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Edge of the City.

Just for Halloween: The 100 (OK, 110) Greatest Horror Films

 

OK, I finally did it! I forced myself to identify the strongest 10 horror films from each decade, then listed them all in chronological order. You will find some favorites. You will scratch your head at some of the choices. You will miss some that you think should be on there. I did my best, and left a lot of my personal favorites off the list. Trust me, if you watch all these, you will be a movie horror expert.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)

The Golem: How He Came into the World (Paul Wegener, 1920)

Destiny (Fritz Lang, 1921)

Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages (Benjamin Christesen, 1922)

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (F.W. Murnau, 1922)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Wallace Worsley, 1923)

Waxworks (Paul Leni, 1924)

The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925)

The Cat and the Canary (Paul Leni, 1927)

The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927)

Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931)

Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931)

M (Fritz Lang, 1931)

The Mummy (Karl Freund, 1932)

Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)

The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933)

King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)

Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)

Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935)

The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941)

Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942)

I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)

The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson, 1943)

The Body Snatcher (Robert Wise, 1945)

Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Robert Hamer, Basil Dearden, 1945)

Hangover Square (John Brahm, 1945)

Isle of the Dead (Mark Robson, 1945)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin, 1945)

Bedlam (Mark Robson, 1946)

The Thing (from Another World) (Christian Nyby, 1951)

It Came from Outer Space (Jack Arnold, 1951)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1954)

Godzilla (Ishiro Honda, 1954)

Them! (Gordon Douglas, 1954)

Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956)

The Curse of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher, 1957)

The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957)

(The Horror of) Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958)

House of Usher (Roger Corman, 1960)

Jigoku (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1960)

Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

The Innocents (Jack Clayon, 1961)

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962)

Planet of the Vampires (Mario Bava, 1965)

Kill, Baby . . . Kill! (Mario Bava, 1966)

Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)

Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)

The Devils (Ken Russell, 1971)

The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)

It’s Alive (Larry Cohen, 1974)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)

Deep Red (Dario Argento, 1975)

Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)

Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)

Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)

Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)

Friday the 13^th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980)

The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

The Howling (Joe Dante, 1981)

Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981)

The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)

Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984)

Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)

Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (Sam Raimi, 1987)

Near Dark (Kathyrn Bigelow, 1987)

They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)

It (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1990)

Misery (Rob Reiner, 1990)

The People Under the Stairs (Wes Craven, 1991)

The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)

Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992)

In the Mouth of Madness (John Carpenter, 1994)

Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)

Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)

Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997)

I Stand Alone (Gaspar Noe, 1998)

American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000)

Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000)

The Cell (Tarsem Singh, 2000)

Audition (Takashi Miike, 2001)

The Others (Alejandro Amenabar, 2001)

28 Days Later . . . (Danny Boyle, 2002)

May (Lucky McKee, 2002)

Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)

The Host (Bong Joon Ho, 2006)

Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)

I Saw the Devil (Kim Jee-won, 2010)

John Dies at the End (Don Coscarelli, 2012)

We Are What We Are (Jim Mickle, 2013)

What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, 2014)

Crimson Peak (Guillermo del Toro, 2015)

Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier, 2015)

Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2016)

Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)

It Comes at Night (Trey Edward Shults, 2017)

The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro, 2017)

Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018)

Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)

M3GAN (Gerard Johnstone, 2022)

Pearl (Ti West, 2022)

Late Night with the Devil (Colin and Cameron Cairnes, 2023)

The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024)

Weapons (Zach Cregger, 2025)

Obsession (Curry Barker, 2025)

Backrooms (Kane Parsons, 2026)

 

NFR Project: '12 Angry Men' (1957)

 

NFR Project: “12 Angry Men”

Dir: Sidney Lumet

Scr: Reginald Rose

Pho: Boris Kaufman

Ed: Carl Lerner

Premiere: April 10, 1957

96 min.

Question: how do you make a dynamic film out of a bunch of talking heads?

This was the problem set out for first-time feature film director Sidney Lumet. His ingenious solution to this problem enlivens 12 Angry Men, a film that takes place almost entirely in a small, crowded New York courthouse room where jurors debate the guilt or innocence of a teenager accused of murder.

Lumet had already earned a reputation as a top-notch director of actors in his work for television prior to this assignment. He was a classic East Coast artist, a New Yorker who, as his career developed, painted many pictures of the city on film. Here he takes a dozen excellent actors and puts them through their paces, creating an absorbing drama about the judicial system and the frailties of human perception and decision-making.

The drama was originally written for television, appearing on Studio One on Sept. 20, 1954. The writer, Reginald Rose, was inspired by his own jury duty. Back in the early days of television, everything was done live, much as in a stage play. Adept and sensitive direction was needed to pull off this difficult creative feat – and another future film director, Franklin J. Schaffner, was at the helm for the broadcast.

When the film opens, we are briefly shown the face of the young defendant, tense and aggrieved. We quickly move to the jury room, into which our players file. Eleven jurors vote guilty; one man (Henry Fonda) votes not guilty. The majority complain and harass Fonda, but as he begins to articulate his objections to the evidence presented, minds are changed. Mind you, Fonda does not declare that the boy is innocent, he simply harbors a reasonable doubt as to his guilt and therefore is reluctant to sentence him to death.

The cast is a cross-section of (white male) humanity. There is the principled Fonda, an insecure jury foreman (Martin Balsam), a meek bank teller (John Fiedler), a couple of angry, prejudiced business owners (Lee J. Cobb and Ed Begley), an immigrant watchmaker (George Voskovec), a silly ad man (Robert Webber), a retired man (Joseph Sweeney), a house painter (Edward Binns), a stockbroker (E.G. Marshall), and two other working-class jurors (Jack Klugman and Jack Warden).

The day is hot, with a rainstorm threatening. Sweating and arguing, the twelve go over the testimony given to them again and again. Fonda wears down the certainty of the voters for guilt; eventually he convinces all of them to vote not guilty. As this happens, we are given essential details about each and every juror, giving each of them a distinct character and viewpoint.

So how did Lumet do it? He started with the camera poised slightly above the heads of the actors; gradually, he brings the camera down to level with their faces, and then, in the last third of the film, he shoots from below, letting the performers’ faces loom over the audience. Gifted with outstanding performances from everyone involved, the merciless close-ups that make up the film are filled with excellently underplayed reactions.

The result is a commanding meditation on the flimsy nature of the implementation of human justice, and the prejudices and mental shortcuts that cause people to make bad decisions. Fonda is the voice of reason here; the men respond to his quiet insistence that the boy may not be guilty with varying degrees of disbelief and credulity. Is justice served? Perhaps; the system calls for a unanimous verdict, and this particular jury comes down on the side of innocence. We can but hope that, if we were ever in the defendant’s position, there would be a Henry Fonda on the jury.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Bridge on the River Kwai.