Today in History: The Bridge on the River Kwai opens in theaters

Although today's younger audience may not appreciate this film as much as people in the past, it is just a tad unusual when a film manages to win 7 Academy Awards and later be praised by pretty much everyone for its historical and cultural importance.

They year was 1957

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While the characters in the film are completely fictional, the situation they find themselves in is not. The movie is based on a French novel entitles Le Pont de la Rivière Kwaï by Pierre Boulle. I don't expect that name to mean anything to you but have you ever heard of Planet of the Apes?.... well, he wrote that as well.

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The movie is about a real bridge that was part of the Burmese Railway that was constructed, in part, by P.O.W.'s captured by Japan in World War 2. As the film begins we see a bunch of mostly British soldiers being brought in by train to the work site as they are informed that they will be used as labor to build a river to help connect Bangkok to Rangoon.

The officers protest, claiming that the Geneva Convention exempts officers from manual labor as prisoners. The Japanese guards, especially Colonel Saito, insist they must do so anyway - when the British officers refuse they are punished etc - which is also a violation of the Geneva Convention.

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Basically, this goes on for a while but during the construction time something happens to Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (played by Obi-Wan Kenobi with a mustache) and he starts to feel a sense of pride in the bridge and genuinely wants to do a good job in its construction. The enlisted men are intentionally sabotaging the construction and doing as poor of a job as possible, but he attempt to put a stop to this.

I don't want to spoil the film but it is actually a great deal more entertaining than I am making it sound.

_{from the Sony Pictures official channel}

Some fun facts about this famous film:

• The Japanese were upset about how the movie depicts the West as being intellectually superior when Alec Guinness' character is constantly correcting Japanese engineers and improving their work / designs. In reality, the Japanese were extremely proficient engineers - whatever, it's a movie.

• The detonation of the bridge obviously could be filmed only one time. The director took great precautions to make certain that many camera angles were used and that everything was perfect. However, when the film was sent back to England it was lost in transit. When a worldwide search was done for these scenes, it was discovered sitting in the sun at an airport in Egypt. It was feared that all the film (which is heat sensitive) would be destroyed. Thankfully, everything was fine

• Alec Guinness hated his character in this film and frequently butted heads with the director. At one point he was threatened to be fired.

• None of the filming was actually done in Myanmar, where the film is meant to take place. Instead, nearly all of it was filmed in Sri Lanka

• The famous whistling tune, which is a song called "Colonel Bogey" was introduced to the movie by accident. When the director was losing his cool over the extras inability to march in time he said "For God's sake, whistle a march to keep time to." One of the extras chose the song and soon after the tune became a timeless song frequently whistled whenever people are doing tedious labor.

All in all, this movie will likely fail to entertain today for the discerning modern audiences, but I still suggest that anyone out there give it a go if you can. It is, after all, considered to be one of the best movies ever made by both American and British film institutes.

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_{The actual bridge which is still used both for transportation and is a major tourist attraction in Kanchanaburi, Thailand}