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FILM 1231: THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI

TRIVIA: Colonel Saito was inspired by Major Risaburo Saito, who unlike the character portrayed in the film was said by some to be one of the most reasonable and humane of all of the Japanese officers, usually willing to negotiate with the POWs in return for their labor. Such was the respect between Saito and Lieutenant-Colonel Toosey (a substitute Nicholson) that Toosey spoke up on Saito's behalf at the war-crimes tribunal after the war, saving him from the gallows. Ten years after Toosey's 1975 death, Saito made a pilgrimage to England to visit his grave.

During shooting, Alec Guinness continued to have doubts about his performance and the direction he was getting from David Lean. To put Guinness at ease, Lean decided to show the actor a rough cut of certain sequences. One night, Lean ran over an hour's worth of footage for Guinness with the actor's wife and son also attending. During the screening, nothing was said. At the end, the Guinness family thanked Lean and promptly walked out, leaving the director without a clue as to what to think of their reaction (or lack of). Later that night, Lean received a visit from his lead actor who told him that he and his family had decided that Nicholson was the best thing that Guinness had ever done.

For the scenes where William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Geoffrey Horne and the native girls had to wade through swamps, they were wading through specially created ones. The real swamps in Ceylon were deemed to be too dangerous. Nevertheless, the leeches in the recreated swamps were real.

There were no facilities on the island of Ceylon to process film rushes so the day's filming had to be flown to London to be processed and then flown back out to Ceylon.

Laurence Olivier was offered the part of Colonel Nicholson but turned it down in order to direct The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) instead. In retrospect, Olivier said that it was a sensible decision to go off and do love scenes with Marilyn Monroe rather than tough it out in the jungles of Ceylon with David Lean.

When the film was first released in theaters, Alec Guinness's name was misspelled in the opening credits, using only one 'n' in his surname. The error has since been corrected.

Howard Hawks was asked to direct, but declined. After the box-office failure of Land of the Pharaohs (1955), he didn't want a second one in a row, and he thought the critics would love this movie but the public would stay away. One particular concern was the all-male lead roles.