# The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Ep. 59 - Part 1

An episode of [All The Right Movies](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1471502633), 20 Jun 2025, 1 h 20 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO6615495153.mp3

Madness, madness. John, Westy, and Matt begin the story of David Lean's sweeping war epic, the film that took the director from intimate British drama into the world of the grand-scale blockbuster. In Part 1 we cover the film's opening, director David Lean, the cast, and the second act — including Alec Guinness's towering performance and the gruelling Ceylon shoot that nearly defeated everyone. Part 2, covering the crew, the finale, reception, and the film's legacy, is available now. Connect with ATRM: To support what we do, access our archive and listen to exclusive episodes, become an ATRM patron: Listen on Patreon Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Twitter/X: @ATRightMovies YouTube: Subscribe to our channel Instagram: @allthe_rightmovies Threads: @allthe_rightmovies Facebook: Join our movie group Bluesky: @alltherightmovies.com TikTok: @alltherightmovies Website: alltherightmovies.com

## Transcript

[0:04] All the right movies. It has been called one of the
[0:08] greatest films in motion picture history.
[0:11] Don't you realize how important it is to show these people that
[0:13] they can't break as in body or in spirit?
[0:16] From Sir David Lean, one of the most acclaimed directors of all
[0:20] time. Must we build them a better
[0:21] bridge than they could have built for themselves?
[0:23] Comes the motion picture event. This is just a game.
[0:26] This war, you've got to do it, boy, you've got to do it now.
[0:30] British officer here to pull off the bridge.
[0:32] Go. Off the bridge, The bridge on
[0:35] the River Kwai. What have I done?
[0:41] The Bridge on the River Kwai was released in 1957 and quickly
[0:45] became a war movie classic. Telling the story of British PO
[0:48] WS building a railway bridge for their World War 2 captors, The
[0:51] film is an exploration of obsession, duty and the madness
[0:55] of war. My name is John and the
[0:56] whistling collaborators with me are Matt.
[0:59] That man's the worst commanding officer I've ever come across.
[1:02] Actually, I think he's mad and Westy.
[1:05] Madness. Madness.
[1:08] Attention, everyone. All the right movies are in the
[1:10] Burmese jungle to talk. David Lean, Alec Guinness and
[1:13] the film's so epic, we might be asking, what have we done?
[1:37] Hello and welcome to All the Right Movies, Madness, Jolly
[1:41] Good Show and a podcast on classic and hit films.
[1:44] Yep, so one. This is ATRM classic where we
[1:48] tell the story of Hollywood 1 movie at a time, and this
[1:51] episode we're on a trek through the jungle.
[1:53] Yep. We certainly are.
[1:55] It's directing heavyweight David Lean at the height of his powers
[1:59] as we discuss him and his World War 2 epic The Bridge on the
[2:02] River Kwai. Indeed.
[2:04] Big one, right? Yeah, big, heavy.
[2:06] Almost too big, yeah. Let's see every time for UST.
[2:10] I know I'm like, I always get really intimidated at the start
[2:13] of like 3 hour films. I'm like, and we cut this back a
[2:16] little bit. I know it's classic.
[2:17] Well, before we whistle our way into camp, let's talk about the
[2:19] ATRM community. Yeah, let's do that.
[2:22] That'll settle us down. It will.
[2:24] So if you're a regular listener to our ATRM Classic podcast, you
[2:28] can help us keep marching by becoming an ATRM patron.
[2:31] Patrons get access to our bonus podcast episode called Double
[2:34] Feature, where we talk films that aren't instant entries into
[2:37] ATRM Classic. That's right.
[2:39] And the Watch List, our monthly film review show.
[2:42] Yeah, and you'll get access to our whole podcast archive full
[2:45] of bonus episodes and archived ATRM Classic episodes.
[2:48] There's more films in there now than Colonel Nicholson's Bridge
[2:51] could take. Absolutely, yeah.
[2:53] Yeah, so if you're a war film fan, The Great Escape,
[2:56] Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jackets are in there.
[2:59] Yeah, yeah, loads of other stuff as well.
[3:01] So to find out more, visit patreon.com/all the Right Movies
[3:05] or subscribe directly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.
[3:09] Nice, that easy. Better than a stint in the oven,
[3:12] surely. Surely.
[3:13] Fuck. Definitely.
[3:13] Everything is. Or maybe take us to listen to if
[3:17] you ever find yourself in the. Yeah, that's a better idea.
[3:19] The time will sail by. Yeah, keep us in here.
[3:22] I'm fine. Today, though, it is the bridge
[3:26] in the River Kwai. It was your choice, Matt.
[3:28] Yep. So come on, what have you done?
[3:31] What have I done? I don't know how we're going to
[3:32] show all that in. Oh, it's not going to stop
[3:35] endless times. This is the kind of film, the
[3:37] way if you've not seen it before, you've not seen it for a
[3:40] long time, you could be forgiven for thinking, ah, is this one
[3:43] not a bit old fashioned and a bit fusty, Like the kind of
[3:46] thing that stick on TV in the middle of a Sunday?
[3:48] But it's really not. And you mentioned that, John,
[3:50] we've covered The Great Escape, another POW World War 2 drama.
[3:54] These could not be more different.
[3:56] The Great Escape is a big old romping adventure, and while
[3:59] there's elements of that too quiet, there's so much more
[4:02] depth to this one. It does have this epic sweep to
[4:04] it, but at the same time, it talks about things like
[4:07] patriotism, following orders, and ask the questions.
[4:10] What happens when you push that too far?
[4:13] And we'll obviously talk about Alec Guinness throughout this,
[4:15] but all those themes are funneled through this central
[4:17] character of Colonel Nicholson, one of the most flawed and
[4:21] morally complex and ambiguous figures I've ever seen in the
[4:24] film. So this one, it might not be
[4:26] what you think it is if you've not seen it.
[4:28] And I'm just really interested to hear your takes on it.
[4:31] Yeah, not as much romping in this one.
[4:32] Is there not much romping? No.
[4:34] There's a bit. A little bit.
[4:36] She is definitely ROMs from Oh He loves her romp.
[4:40] Definitely. Well, yeah, it was released way
[4:43] before I was born, obviously, The Bridge and the River Kwai,
[4:45] but it's one of those films I think I've always been aware of.
[4:47] It's always been significant, I think, hasn't it?
[4:50] Yeah. And I mean, David Leans
[4:51] reputation alone makes it worth watching.
[4:53] And the first thing I've talked about him, which we obviously
[4:56] have to, but there's something about this particular story that
[4:59] kind of fascinates me, Amanda, just to be a prisoner of war
[5:02] drama, an action film and a character study all in one go,
[5:06] with exploration to some huge themes thrown in as well.
[5:09] So we'll talk about all that. And we also have a big cast,
[5:12] Alec Kinson, William Holden, both funny for different
[5:15] reasons. Yeah.
[5:16] Yeah. And let's talk about both of
[5:17] them. So an important film leaves
[5:19] direction, massive acting performances and a huge and at
[5:23] times hilarious behind the scenes story that's full of
[5:25] modernist, obviously, Yeah. Shoehorn and funny in there.
[5:31] There'll be jokes in this one, promise.
[5:33] So Well, yeah, In other words, this is right about street.
[5:35] So a matter of time before we got here.
[5:37] Yeah. I'm not entirely sure why he
[5:38] didn't call the film Cry Me a River, but let's get in there
[5:42] anywhere. Lovely.
[5:44] Timberlake missed the trick there, didn't he?
[5:46] And Speaking of madness, yeah. Westie.
[5:49] Hello, why the bridge in the river cry?
[5:51] This came to me really late. You know, this is one that you
[5:53] would expect me to have checked out since I was a kid.
[5:55] And it's like I've religiously watched it, like with my love
[5:59] for these epics, Lawrence of Arabia came before this did for
[6:01] me. Zulu came before this did.
[6:03] And then I went on to, you know, Tower Inferno and then big kind
[6:05] of more up to I'm not going to really spend it on anything half
[6:13] decent and HMV had that three for 20 August.
[6:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, I mean, how many can I
[6:19] get? And I got this with Spartacus
[6:20] and High Noon. That's what kind of a mood I was
[6:22] in. Wow.
[6:23] And I got it and I watched it and I just thought I'd seen it
[6:25] 100 times, but in a really good way.
[6:28] Yeah. It's kind of like, I've
[6:29] definitely seen this before, but not like this.
[6:31] It's it's explored completely differently.
[6:33] It's shot the way I expected it to be shot because it's David
[6:36] Lean and I was used to Lawrence of Arabia at that point.
[6:38] But seeing this before he'd done that, it's like him finding his
[6:41] feet almost and finding the grandeur and the use of cinema
[6:44] scope and everything that's going into that.
[6:45] I mean, this really kind of influenced me visually that I
[6:48] didn't wasn't really aware of. It's a wonderful, wonderful
[6:50] story. And it's the mix of stories
[6:52] here, the mix of morality, the mix of outlooks and people's
[6:56] real life ethics and codes and what they believe in and his
[6:59] having a code the right thing to do.
[7:01] So that's what we'll explore talking about this film.
[7:03] And I'm, you know, I'm looking forward to getting into it.
[7:04] I think it's going to be a really interesting discussion.
[7:07] So The Bridge on the River Kwai was produced by Horizon
[7:09] Pictures, distributed by Columbia Pictures and released
[7:12] on October the 11th, 1957, filmed on location in Sri Lanka,
[7:16] then known as Sail On. So that's what we'll be calling
[7:18] it mostly, yeah. The film was directed by David
[7:21] Lean, written by Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, though
[7:24] credited to Pierre Bull for reasons we'll discuss.
[7:26] It was it. And it stars Alec in This is
[7:30] Colonel Nicholson, William Horton as commander.
[7:33] She has Jack Hawkins, Major Warden and Sesu Hayakawa as
[7:37] Colonel Saito. Lovely, yeah.
[7:39] Let's March on into the jungle then, shall we?
[7:41] Let's do it. We're.
[7:42] Heading to Burma in 1943 as we talk the beginning of the bridge
[7:46] on the River Kwai. The beginning.
[7:54] The Bridge in the River Kwai opens with some British and US
[7:57] prisoner of war action that sets up the main narrative.
[8:00] We'll be talking about the moments where Nicholson goes
[8:02] into the oven and she has makes an escape from camp.
[8:05] But first, it's a tale of two kernels and a battle of wills.
[8:09] It is. So we open in a Japanese POW
[8:11] camp, Burma 1943 to be precise, where a British band of brothers
[8:15] have been captured by the Axis. We see them make their way into
[8:18] camp, and the opening brings us introductions of Nicholson and
[8:21] Saito and their point of contention.
[8:24] Nicholson refusing to build a bridge.
[8:25] Yeah, not the last time I mentioned that bridge.
[8:28] No, Bit of an understatement. Yeah, it's going to be mentioned
[8:30] quite a bit I think, isn't it? So when it's different from
[8:33] Nicholson and we've got one to match here.
[8:35] So Matt, yeah. How was the opening for you?
[8:37] Matt, before you start yellow credits, I'm just putting that
[8:40] in there just so we know. Yes, just in case anyone's
[8:42] looking for it, that's fine. You can go now.
[8:44] I just wanted to have that 10. Out of 10 first here, it's like.
[8:46] There it is. Boom.
[8:48] After the credits thought it's got such a grim bleak taunt to
[8:52] it because the camera moved from past all those graves.
[8:54] So there's no mistake and what it diet plays.
[8:56] This is to be captured. Yeah.
[8:58] So when you hear the British approaching in the whistle and
[9:00] Colonel Borgie first impression is, well, this is great.
[9:03] This is so defiant. It's such a typically British
[9:06] thing to do. Stiff upper lip like you
[9:07] mentioned, John, the captured with the thumb and the nose of
[9:10] the Japanese all the same. And then when they get into
[9:13] come, something really interesting happens, which I
[9:15] didn't quite get when I was younger because they arrive and
[9:17] the marching on the spot. Nicholson's looking at them and
[9:21] then the music comes in over the top of it, which is so jaundy
[9:24] and upbeat. And I used to think that's 4/2
[9:26] OTT, but then I realized what that music is.
[9:29] It's essentially only in Nicholson's head, and it's
[9:32] representing what he's seeing. Yeah, because he thinks he's
[9:34] seeing something great. The British Army keep in
[9:37] discipline perfectly in time with one another, but the
[9:40] visuals tell you something else and they tell you the truth.
[9:42] All those shots of their feet stamping up and down, they tell
[9:45] you their shoes are falling a bit.
[9:47] All these men are physically shot, the suffering in the heat.
[9:50] But Nicholson sees something completely different, which he
[9:53] wants to see because he's blinded by devotion to duties.
[9:56] And that is him for the entirety of the film.
[9:59] And it's set up in this incredibly iconic opening.
[10:01] Yeah, He's taking triumph in defeat, isn't he?
[10:03] As always, Yeah. Yeah.
[10:04] Yeah. I mean, it means business has no
[10:06] opening. Yeah, absolutely massive.
[10:08] Straight away, yeah. Huge.
[10:09] That opening shot of what I think's an eagle looking down on
[10:12] the jungle. Yeah, I'd take that signifying
[10:14] the futility of war. Maybe looking down from that
[10:17] high, everything looks a bit pointless.
[10:18] I think so. Great cinematography, which
[10:20] we'll talk about more later. And the men whistling Colonel
[10:23] Bogey is the end of the camp is iconic nowadays.
[10:26] Yeah, it is really loud as well. Yeah, yeah.
[10:29] The seven dwarfs have turned up. 7000 dwarfs.
[10:34] But the production design instantly impressive as well.
[10:37] The jungle setting in all the wooden huts of the camp had
[10:39] created how Authentic saw that look.
[10:41] Yeah, take the walk straight into one, yeah.
[10:43] Yeah, exactly. And first thing, we see
[10:45] Nicholson leg up on that log, massive stance, that peak
[10:49] Harrison for that. Maybe you've got that Guinness
[10:53] later on. Very possibly.
[10:54] You never know. But it's the moment that
[10:56] follows. This always stands out for me.
[10:57] The first face off between Nicholson and Saito, when
[10:59] Nicholson refuses to let the men work on the bridge to Saito, has
[11:02] them all stand in the heat for hours.
[11:04] Two guys who both think the right, but I'm not sure either
[11:07] of them are. But the point is, it kind of
[11:09] sets up their rivalry, the powers.
[11:10] The first half of the film really well sets up Saito as the
[11:13] main antagonist, sets up Nicholson as a man of like
[11:16] dignity whose story we're going to follow, and sets up the fact
[11:18] that it's going to look about as epic as any war movie of the
[11:21] decade did were a few. So a great intro for what's to
[11:24] come. Yeah, massively.
[11:26] Yeah. I mean, we've both mentioned
[11:27] that. Did any of you guys used to sing
[11:28] this in school as that just how old I am.
[11:31] I actually knew the lyrics to this in school.
[11:33] It's like, yeah. Yeah, I think everyone did,
[11:34] Yeah. Absolutely crazy, but the tune
[11:36] the men were sold, which you've mentioned was Colonel Bogey.
[11:38] When the comment of the cab was written by British Army Band
[11:41] Master called Lieutenant FJ Ricketts in 1914.
[11:44] It wasn't in the original script and it was Lean's idea to
[11:47] include it. The producer was Sam Spiegel and
[11:49] he didn't want it in, but Lean got his way, as always.
[11:52] Yeah, well, that's you did become better known as the
[11:54] Hitler's when he got one ball. So yeah.
[11:56] Yeah, Goering has two, but very small.
[11:58] And apparently, at first, Liam didn't want the men to be
[12:01] whistling. He wanted to be singing that
[12:03] song. Wow.
[12:03] Amazing. And that was where Sam Spiegel
[12:05] drew the line. Not quite as much Dignity of the
[12:07] belly now, I don't think. And Sam Spiegel, the producer,
[12:10] we're going to be talking about him quite a bit as we go as
[12:12] well. The madman.
[12:13] Quite a character, yeah. Sammy panic attack.
[12:18] He's a producer. Had to be.
[12:19] Constantly just on the edge. And the Colonel Bogey March went
[12:23] on to be pretty influential, and it's been whistled in lots of
[12:26] films since. As a homage to The Bridge on the
[12:28] River Kwai, it's in The Parent Trap, The Breakfast Club, Short
[12:31] Circuit and Space Balls. Yeah, it's in The Simpsons as
[12:35] well, isn't it? Of course it.
[12:36] Is. Yeah, of course it is.
[12:37] Yeah. I mean, it shows how good an
[12:39] idea it was when it turns up in that film was it became iconic
[12:42] in their own right and The Simpsons as well.
[12:44] Yeah. I'll go on to the scene that
[12:45] you've touched on there, John, where who have had this
[12:48] introduction of the characters and now Silo's coming out and he
[12:50] means business because Nicholson's just, I'll have a
[12:52] word with this chap. Who does he think he is at the
[12:54] end of that match? Show some respect at least.
[12:57] There's dignity and then there's stupidity.
[12:58] There's a fine line that Nicholson draws all the way
[13:00] through this film. So Silo comes out on a platform
[13:03] that's twice as big this time to kind of show that he's grandeur
[13:07] and he speaks to everybody and he just immediately berates
[13:10] them, just says you're English prisoners, not soldiers.
[13:12] He tries to beat them down into the ground, but the bravery of
[13:16] it and the genius of it is, like I say, it's really close to
[13:18] stupidity. Either way.
[13:19] They're all just stood there and there's a guy in the background
[13:21] which is lean all the way through.
[13:23] This film shows that depth, and they're all just really defiant
[13:26] of what's going on, but it's sight or who just looks at the
[13:29] sun and kind of walks away and he knows how dangerous that is.
[13:33] So the scene just goes on. There's an incredibly iconic
[13:36] shot of Guinness from that low angle with the sun there, and
[13:38] you see, is he given? Where is he not?
[13:40] What's going to happen? But there's nobody like David
[13:43] Lean who can put an emotion and there's that sense of like, you
[13:46] can reach out and really touch these environments and he really
[13:48] soaks it onto the film. And you get that from this whole
[13:51] sequence. But they're all still stood in
[13:53] the background of that shot. So there must have been somebody
[13:55] else. There must have been a runner
[13:56] off screen to them. When he says the kind of guts
[13:59] that are going to get us killed and a guy just falls exactly
[14:02] when he should, yeah, that's amazing.
[14:04] And it's just one thing after the other with these guys.
[14:07] It's just, you know, his officers are standing by him.
[14:09] They've got this absolute amount of respect for him.
[14:11] I don't think the fear Nicholson, I think they respect
[14:13] him. And then there's the whole he's
[14:15] a jolly good fellow that's going to carry him through.
[14:18] It is, it's just madness. It's craziness from the start.
[14:21] There's this jewel of morality between the two of them and none
[14:25] of them are moving. It's like 2 trains literally
[14:27] coming at each other on the bridge to collide themselves and
[14:30] that's what this whole scene sets up.
[14:32] I think it's fantastic from the start of the film.
[14:33] It really puts you in the tone and really makes you pick a side
[14:37] and you can't choose anyone but Nicholson, obviously.
[14:40] It does. I mean, Saito wastes no time
[14:42] laying down the law, does he? No, and the film wastes no time
[14:45] getting narrative moving. We get the fact that Saito wants
[14:47] the bridge to be built set up really quickly, and the kind of
[14:50] conflict between Nicholson and Saito when Nicholson says no.
[14:52] I mean, it's obvious immediately that both Nicholson and Saito
[14:55] are pretty crazy. Nicholson cites the Geneva
[14:58] Convention and has the papers with them.
[15:01] Saito takes them, looks at them, and slaps them across the face
[15:04] of them. George Blood as well.
[15:07] Yeah, I'll have a paper quote. Stan Baston, Ryan, it's great.
[15:09] That bit never just don't know, don't react.
[15:11] He thinks he's got control of it.
[15:12] That's the way he picks it up and just dusts it off.
[15:14] Yeah, yeah, it's great. You know, it's so defiant.
[15:17] Yeah. Does that have a relationship
[15:18] and conflict that I'll drive the first half of the film?
[15:20] I think it all works really well, yeah.
[15:22] And Colonel Seidel was played by Sasu Hayakawa, a Japanese actor.
[15:26] He'd first came to Hollywood in 1914, when he appeared in a
[15:29] short drama called The Typhoon. This made him a matinee idol,
[15:33] and he was a big star for a few years.
[15:35] But he'd retired for movies by the time Kwai came around.
[15:38] But Lane had remembered him from his head in Hollywood and
[15:40] approached him to play a site out.
[15:42] Yeah, he'd be big. In the 1920s.
[15:44] He was signed by famous players Lasky, now known as Paramount
[15:47] Pictures, and his salary was apparently $5000 a week, which
[15:50] is about $150,000 a week today. Wow, massive heartthrob wasn't
[15:55] he was a good looking son of a bitch, but he.
[15:56] Was yeah, you think? Apparently was playing like
[15:58] exotic villains. Obviously 1920s.
[16:01] Yeah, wonderful. And.
[16:03] I think his career was kind of ended when the talkies came
[16:05] along. I guess his Japanese accent
[16:07] maybe didn't go down so well with Western audiences at the
[16:09] time. Right.
[16:10] Maybe. Yeah.
[16:11] Yeah, maybe. Hayako was 68 when he was cast
[16:14] as sight. Or he didn't speak great
[16:16] English, so when he was given the script, he tore all of the
[16:18] pages that didn't have any dialogue with him.
[16:21] He later said Lean didn't mind at all and they had a great
[16:23] relationship. I love that.
[16:25] Yeah, I'm not there. So just get rid of it.
[16:27] Yeah, that's. Exactly what I would.
[16:28] Do to be so don't need that. Also decide to remind anyone
[16:33] else of Lao Shay from India as you went in the Temple of Doom.
[16:36] Obviously he. Looks just like him.
[16:38] Yeah, the guy who goes the poison you just drank, Doctor
[16:41] Jones. He's even got the little Tash.
[16:43] Yeah, and he owns club Obi Wan. Yeah, there's links all over the
[16:46] place. Might be under something here.
[16:50] And then after Bridge on the River, Quiet Higher Cover pretty
[16:52] much retired from acting again apart from a few small TV roles.
[16:56] But he later said his appearances Colonel Saito was
[16:58] the highlight of his career and he was nominated for an Oscar
[17:00] for Best Supporting Actor. Yeah, right.
[17:03] Not bad for someone who only read 5% of the script, yeah.
[17:06] That was not the only Oscar that didn't win for it was his
[17:09] performance. Yeah, I think it was.
[17:10] Yeah, we'll see him that because he's amazing.
[17:11] Yeah, he's great. He's very good.
[17:13] Yeah. And that's our opening moments.
[17:15] Colonel Nicholson, Colonel Bogey and a Colonel who was a silent
[17:18] era heartthrob turned Oscar nominee.
[17:21] An eventful start, really. A very eventful.
[17:26] With Nicholson refusing to budget on the officer work
[17:28] detail, Saito throws him in the oven, which is basically a
[17:31] corrugated iron box, which looks pleasant.
[17:34] Awful. Meanwhile, some American
[17:35] prisoners, led by Commander Shares, see their chance and
[17:38] make a break for it. They do.
[17:40] Westie, is it the great or not so great escape?
[17:43] It's a terrible escape, isn't it?
[17:47] There's nothing real great about it.
[17:49] Holden's got the real push, and you've seen it from his
[17:52] character that he doesn't really care about anybody else.
[17:54] You know, from giving the guy the lighter and just being that
[17:56] whatever, it can get him forward.
[17:57] Then you learn later he's not really in command at all.
[18:00] He's just full of shit. I just absolutely love this
[18:02] character. He's amazing.
[18:03] But even this escape shot there for night, as well as all of the
[18:06] night scenes are in this. And I mean, you can really tell
[18:08] not as much as you can tell in Deliverance, let's be honest.
[18:11] There's a big influence, but this man dead, dead nature comes
[18:16] out of nowhere. Boom, done.
[18:18] And the one thing that I don't really get from this whole scene
[18:21] is the dummy falling into the water.
[18:24] Oh yeah, yeah. It's not that big a jump.
[18:28] No, they've. Spent all this money building an
[18:30] actual bridge that that actually blow up with an actual train.
[18:32] Just get an actual stuntman to jump into some actual water.
[18:37] Kind of pulls me out of it, but it's really funny.
[18:39] It's really great. And then there's a little bit of
[18:42] time passes between that. But you can see how dedicated
[18:45] Bill Holden is to this performance.
[18:47] He looks absolutely fucked. We could spot him in the sun and
[18:51] he's just sat there and he's like David Lean's just turned up
[18:53] with the camera and he's like, oh, you're back.
[18:55] Oh, let's just do the scene then.
[18:57] But the use of sound design here, which we'll go and do with
[18:59] David Lean as well, is absolutely next level because
[19:01] he's just terrified by it. Terrified by his dragon, his
[19:04] canteen, He's out of water. He's absolutely done for.
[19:06] And then he just stumbles upon this village and you just think,
[19:09] oh, thank God, that is how terrifying it is to try to
[19:13] escape from this place. You're not going to get out.
[19:15] Basically. You are going to die.
[19:16] And he's so close to not making it, which again, I think makes
[19:20] his return journey, as we're going to talk about later on,
[19:22] all the more heartbreaking and that he's been through this once
[19:25] and now he has to go back and do it again.
[19:27] I mean, it could be like the rock, like he goes back and
[19:29] teaches. I want to have to escape from
[19:30] there. Really long hair.
[19:35] First of all, you go back and everyone that you go with dies,
[19:38] and then you throw a dummy in the river and fuck off to a
[19:40] village. It'll be absolutely fine.
[19:42] That's the way to do it. But yeah, it's a great setup for
[19:44] his character and you actually think he's just going to have
[19:47] Intel. You don't quite know where he's
[19:48] going, but it just kick starts this whole other narrative, this
[19:51] whole other story within a story.
[19:53] I think it's really, really pivotal and brilliant to set up.
[19:56] It is, yeah. It's a little action moment,
[19:58] kind of sets the tone a little bit for some of the action that
[20:00] comes later on as well. Yeah.
[20:02] But I think Nicholson in the oven.
[20:04] Such a great beast from a storytelling perspective,
[20:06] represents, like, the brutality of a POW camp.
[20:09] And there's also a huge plot device pushing Nicholson down,
[20:11] like, a particular path for the narrative.
[20:13] Yeah. And it looks like hell in that
[20:16] box. You see, it's the Clipton when
[20:17] he's in there. Don't you see how important it
[20:19] is to show they can't break or somebody or in spirit.
[20:21] And they haven't broken his body or spirit, but they're
[20:24] definitely breaking his mind. He's going crackers.
[20:26] Nicholson. Yeah.
[20:27] I think it's a great showcase for the character.
[20:29] He's tough. He's stubborn as hell.
[20:32] I miss some nice dark humor as well.
[20:34] Always laugh when Nichols was talking to Clifton about Sido
[20:37] and he says that man's the worst commanding officer I've ever
[20:39] come across. Actually I think he's mad.
[20:42] Then cut to Sido watching him through binoculars.
[20:45] Peeping Tom. Rear window.
[20:47] George McFly, though, while Nicholson is going through hell,
[20:53] she has having escaped having a wonderful time in that Thai
[20:57] village. The locals love him, the girls
[20:59] love him, obviously, obviously, but again, they're defining the
[21:02] character. Then the contrast between she
[21:04] has Nicholson, it's like a a visual representation of what
[21:07] she has said. Later, the warden, you know how
[21:09] to die like a gentleman when the only important thing is to live
[21:11] like a human being. Yeah.
[21:13] Great line. And one of the themes of the
[21:14] film to get set up here. Yeah, and they'll hold that
[21:17] shave his chest every single day.
[21:19] He was that hairy. Ouch.
[21:21] He's that much of a man. To get that look.
[21:23] Like Steve Krill in The 40 Year Old Virgin.
[21:25] Like Robin Williams knuckle. You know, it's great to be fair.
[21:30] It's fantastic. Yeah.
[21:31] It looks amazing. Well oiled.
[21:33] Wonderful, man. So Nicholas being tortured by
[21:36] being placed in the oven is in the original novel, but wasn't
[21:39] entirely made-up by Pierre Boyle.
[21:41] Japanese power camps used to use iron boxes stood in the heat as
[21:45] a form of torture against Allied soldiers.
[21:47] Do you know what this always reminds me of?
[21:48] You know the hot box and stir crazy when Gene Wilder crawls
[21:51] out and say, can I have a little bit more time?
[21:56] I mean, that's just absolutely disgusting.
[21:58] Imagine that like that's. Awful.
[21:59] That's awful. Yeah, against the Geneva
[22:01] Convention. So cycles committing a war
[22:02] crime? You should probably read them
[22:04] rather than stopping people in the face with them.
[22:08] I'm going for this really great character moment when Nicholson
[22:11] is LED out-of-the-box so he can have supper with Sidewall.
[22:14] And I know other one. Russians, right?
[22:16] So biggest can't be choosers, but a big slab of greasy corned
[22:19] beef for supper with some rice doesn't look appetizing to me
[22:23] that at all. Lovely that that's what I'm
[22:25] having tonight. A big slab as well A.
[22:30] Big slab. What are the tins you still need
[22:32] a fucking keyed over? Apart from that, though, this is
[22:37] such a great scene of the shift of power between these two, and
[22:41] it's done with such subtly. Because Sido holds all the cards
[22:44] here, there's no reason on the face that he should give any
[22:47] kind of leniency to Nicholson, particularly the condition he's
[22:50] in. And I think the physicality
[22:52] Guinness brings here is so effective that stagger.
[22:55] And when he sits down and he has to put his fists on the table to
[22:57] support himself, and Despite that, he still refuses the food.
[23:01] He refuses to back down over anything.
[23:03] And the one thing they've got in common is that both want to
[23:06] adhere to the rules, Nicholson's rules about how he and his
[23:10] officers should be treated side or about how he has the deadline
[23:13] for the completion of the bridge.
[23:15] And you can feel that balance of power between them.
[23:17] Start a shift because Seidel was the one who gets exasperated
[23:20] while Nicholson just keeps his cool throughout.
[23:22] You know, Seidel says let us not get excited, but he's the one
[23:25] getting excited and frustrated. And that's just the slightest
[23:29] budget of authority that Nicholson needs because point
[23:32] blank refusal on everything. You won't even take a cigar, not
[23:36] even the offer of saying, well, I wasn't going to make you work.
[23:39] But the other officers, even that, Nah, Nah.
[23:41] He's not used to confrontation side or as a character as he's
[23:44] like this. Any any human being would take
[23:46] this like this is everything you need.
[23:47] What's the matter with you, He. Doesn't know how to deal with it
[23:49] so and it is actually funny when side or results to plead and
[23:53] then says he'll have to kill himself if the bridge isn't
[23:55] completed. What would Nicholson do?
[23:57] And he just goes, well, I suppose if I were you, I'd have
[24:00] to kill myself. She is.
[24:02] Cold as fuck that. Yeah, no compromise at all.
[24:05] And that's when he takes the drink, because that's the moment
[24:07] Nicholson knows I've won. I've got him now.
[24:10] It's brilliant. He's overshared, Yeah.
[24:13] He's very much overshared. Yeah, Nicholson finally gets out
[24:16] of the oven inside, who invites him for this corned beef dinner
[24:18] as if like, nothing's happened and you can't get there quick
[24:21] enough. But his legs won't take him.
[24:23] Will these all over the place. And he's white as a ghost.
[24:25] Looks like a walking corpse. Yeah.
[24:27] But it's great. I think Guinness is fantastic.
[24:30] Yeah. Yeah.
[24:31] I mean, the whole scene of a dinner is really good sight of
[24:33] trying to get Nicholson on side, but he saw, like, ham fisted
[24:37] with it. Johnny Walker Scotch says that
[24:39] he studied the London Polytechnic.
[24:41] Yeah. Kind of let himself down by
[24:42] throwing a hissy fit and shouting I hate the British.
[24:44] Yeah, he does a bit, yeah. What's interesting though, which
[24:47] is obviously one of the points they're making, is how similar
[24:50] sighted when Nicholson are both driven by duty, they have their
[24:53] cords of honour, they're both still with his mules.
[24:55] And this is the scene where we see that kind of parallel drawn
[24:57] out the most strongly, I think. Yeah.
[25:00] And Guinness called the moment he staggers out of the oven his
[25:02] best ever acting. And he said he bases the walk on
[25:06] his 11 year old son Matthew, who was recovering from polio.
[25:09] Wow. It's a great moment.
[25:11] He fights Star Theatre though. Did he forget that?
[25:14] I mean, there's no words. It's only a few seconds, but it
[25:17] reveals so much about Nicholson's character.
[25:19] He does have his dignity. He will literally die before he
[25:22] does something that goes against his code, it looks like.
[25:24] Yeah, Yeah. It feels like Saito's kind of
[25:26] going, I could kill this guy, he would just come back.
[25:29] Yeah, just like Obi Wan can only be 1.
[25:32] He would. Just come back, the second Blue
[25:33] Ghost with the Geneva Convention Jedi Neva Convention waving in
[25:38] his face. And that's the beginning of the
[25:42] bridge in the River Kwai. 2 colonels battling it out, and
[25:44] Nicholson comes out on top. For now.
[25:46] Yeah, more on that later. Should we talk a bit about the
[25:49] night of the realm that was behind what we're watching?
[25:51] Well, let's do it. I think you should.
[25:56] The director. The director of The Bridge in
[26:00] the River Kwai was Sir David Lean.
[26:03] This was his 12th feature film, having established himself with
[26:06] adaptations of Dickens classics like All of Our Twists and Great
[26:08] Expectations, as well as a Stone cold movie classic in 1945's
[26:13] Brief Encounter. Yeah, bit of a step up in scale
[26:16] with the vision of the river Cry though, Matt, Just a bit.
[26:18] So how was David Lean's work here?
[26:21] I mean, Spielberg's always said Lean is a huge influence on him
[26:24] and you can see why because. Well, yeah, just a bit, just a
[26:27] bit. Left, right and centre.
[26:29] All over the place is because this is filmmaking on such a
[26:32] grand canvas, but he never gets lost in that canvas.
[26:35] And, and you said it there, John, it's worth remembering his
[26:37] breakthrough film was Brief Encounter, which is such a
[26:40] small, intimate film. Like everything in that film
[26:42] just takes place in living rooms, in cafes.
[26:45] This is something else entirely, but it still works because Lane
[26:50] nails the emotion. And with Bridge, he combines the
[26:52] 2. So he can have epic scenes like
[26:54] the trek through the jungle to get back to the bridge or the
[26:57] countdown to the explosives going off as the train of
[26:59] portraits. But then he can have scenes like
[27:01] we've just talked about the Super with Sidewall or Sidewall
[27:04] having that warm to himself where he breaks down in tears
[27:06] because he he thinks he's failed.
[27:08] And if you look at Lane's filmography, it shouldn't be any
[27:11] surprise that he's great at getting performance because
[27:13] that's what his reputation was as a director at the time, I
[27:15] think. But to then go on to make a film
[27:17] with this huge scope entirely on location, He'd literally done
[27:21] nothing like this before, and yet somehow it feels like second
[27:24] nature, like he'd been doing it all his life.
[27:26] So that ability to juggle the epic and the intimate, to go
[27:30] back to Spielberg, I think he said Lawrence of Arabia is one
[27:33] of his favorite films, if not his all time favorite, and he
[27:35] always watches it before he makes anything.
[27:38] But everything Lean does in Lawrence of Arabia, he does here
[27:41] first. I think you're right.
[27:43] I think he does. I mean, I watched the film
[27:45] several times in advance of this episode, like we always do.
[27:48] Yeah. And something that struck me
[27:49] more strongly each time about David Lean was that he's not in
[27:52] a hurry. Is he a man of great patience?
[27:55] Clearly, yeah. I mean, in a Hollywood film, the
[27:57] first act is typically 30 minutes ish, give or take.
[28:01] Yeah. He had the first act ends when
[28:02] Nicholson slay out of the oven and was 70 minutes in.
[28:05] Absolutely massive. Yeah.
[28:07] Ridiculous. That's one of his trademarks as
[28:09] a director. I think he won't wish for
[28:11] anybody. And it's kind of is genius.
[28:14] You let the narrative unfold gently.
[28:15] He builds the tension. He does do the same thing in the
[28:18] legendary film a few years later.
[28:20] And I think you're right, Mark, quite definitely your forward at
[28:22] Lawrence of Arabia. Yeah, absolutely.
[28:24] It's not just the careful plotting.
[28:26] Every shot feels meticulously planned.
[28:28] The aerial view to the jungle that we talked about, the way
[28:30] that he frames characters against huge backdrops, which
[28:33] we're going to do later when we talk about the DP.
[28:35] But nothing feels like ad hoc, off the cuff.
[28:38] How the film looks feels very deliberate, yeah, but never,
[28:40] like, lifeless either. Never robotic, I think the
[28:43] control that lead has over the whole production just jumps off
[28:46] the screen. To me, he's juggling this
[28:48] massive cast with big names, shooting in the jungle, dealing
[28:51] with a mod management producer like Sam Spiegel, breathing down
[28:53] his neck, and it still feels like every frame looks just how
[28:56] you wanted it to when he planted months before.
[28:58] Yeah, I mean, that's impressive, but there's also a great
[29:00] handling of tones. We'll go from psychological
[29:02] drama in the camp to the outrageous boys Own style escape
[29:06] adventure with She Has that's Boys Own, not Boys Own,
[29:10] obviously. Yeah, Ronan Keaton's not.
[29:11] Forgot that's that's fine I. Mean they could have felt like
[29:14] different films, but lean we used it all together kind of
[29:16] like the master that he's known as yeah.
[29:18] So great director and this is where we see him, I think
[29:20] transitioning from that kind of intimate filmmaker I brief
[29:23] encounter to the epic storyteller of Lawrence of
[29:26] Arabia. Yeah.
[29:27] And he makes that shift look kind of effortless I think as
[29:29] well. Yeah.
[29:30] Yeah, I mean, bizarrely enough, lean on me.
[29:34] I think this is an intimate film.
[29:36] Yeah, bizarrely enough, it is very, very intimate.
[29:38] It's a really intimate story between people and it's very
[29:41] internal. And I think without them
[29:42] intimate films, you wouldn't be able to have this grandeur.
[29:45] But even he's framing feels intimate.
[29:47] Every small detail has a real place.
[29:50] Yeah, it's his camera. Movements on this, any scale,
[29:53] that camera doesn't move. I've said recently that we
[29:56] should just bring back tripods. And if you need to move the
[29:58] camera, you need to pay more money in which to move it
[30:01] because it needs to be motivated by the story.
[30:03] And watch this film because that is exactly what he does.
[30:05] If he pans that camera, there's a reason he's revealing
[30:08] something. If it tilts down, there's a
[30:09] reason he's revealing something. Everything else is just like
[30:12] watching a photograph with movement in it.
[30:14] And that's what Lean learned I think on the on the smaller
[30:16] films and how to frame. And then all of a sudden you
[30:18] have someone like that cinema scope and he still frames it in
[30:21] a really intimate way. And that's where he gets the
[30:23] depth in the distance and using 2 lenses, basically uses a wide
[30:28] prime to establish the scene. And then he just says who's
[30:31] important, this guy. So he uses then a long lens to
[30:34] punch in on that guy, blur the background out and really single
[30:37] that character. You can see it in the opening
[30:39] speech, you can see where they all walk in and then it's on
[30:41] nickels, it's on site. Or you know, we're talking about
[30:44] that machine gun at the start. When that reverses into the
[30:46] frame, he knows exactly where that's stopping, because that's
[30:49] perfectly done. Oh yeah, yeah.
[30:51] Like you said, it is. It's meticulous, but doesn't
[30:53] feel overworked. It doesn't feel like Kubrick
[30:56] overworked. No, it doesn't.
[30:57] There's improvisation here. There's room for that
[31:00] improvisation, there's room for the camera to go another two
[31:03] inches to the right if it needs to.
[31:05] But he needs a good fucking reason to do it.
[31:07] And that's why I love David Lean as a filmmaker, because he needs
[31:10] a reason. You'll listen to anybody I
[31:11] think, but he needs a really good reason to move away from
[31:14] his blueprint of what he wants to do and what he wants to make.
[31:17] And the scale that he makes this film on is absolutely ludicrous.
[31:21] He shot a lot of stuff himself on 16 mil.
[31:23] I think a lot of the externals, you see bats fly in trees, all
[31:27] these kind of cutaways. He just went off and did them
[31:30] and it was just, he took a crew with them and it was come hell
[31:32] or high water getting to the top of that waterfall and we're
[31:33] shooting this with that one person behind.
[31:36] It's not like the African Queen where they went out and shot a
[31:38] lot of the stuff. Well, nowadays you do I
[31:40] digitally probably wouldn't. You well, you did on the African
[31:42] We're going to just shoot these Rapids and we're just going to
[31:44] put some special effects in there.
[31:45] Every single thing is in camera and I think that's why a lot of
[31:48] people twisted rhythm on the film that didn't see that level
[31:50] of integrity. He's Nicholson.
[31:52] He's just got that level of integrity towards filmmaker.
[31:55] This is the code here. This is my shortlist.
[31:58] It is my shortlist, right? But should we pan to the right?
[32:00] Is it in the code? And I love that confidence in a
[32:03] film maker, and I don't really think there's been anyone like
[32:06] him. And there's so many things in
[32:08] this film. He's practicing for Lawrence of
[32:10] Arabia, where he's just got the confidence again to go higher.
[32:13] The scale in River Kwai is absolutely unprecedented.
[32:16] And from a photographic point of view, just a photographic point
[32:19] of view, just from a composition point of view, it's a
[32:23] masterpiece. Well, we said earlier that we'd
[32:26] be talking more about the producer of the film as well,
[32:27] Sam Spiegel. Yeah, and that's because he
[32:29] played a major role in getting the film made.
[32:32] It's a fairly outrageous story, so we have a fairly outrageous
[32:35] guy to tell it. Could that be Matt?
[32:37] Oh, it's me. Yeah, you turn at the Sam Gollum
[32:40] by the end of it. That's Sam Smeagle.
[32:43] Sorry. No one was getting that if you
[32:46] hadn't explained there. Wow.
[32:51] Well, yeah, who Wells novel The Bridge on the River Quite that
[32:54] was published in 1952 and the rights were snapped up by
[32:57] British Hungarian producer Alexander Corder, who said he
[33:01] saw just having huge cinematic potential.
[33:02] Yeah, he produced the Lord. Just stuff Alexander Corder, his
[33:06] biggest, probably the third man with Carol.
[33:08] Read. Oh yeah, lovely.
[33:09] Another classic. A lot of you, right?
[33:10] Yeah. But Corder passed away in 1956
[33:13] saw Spiegel, who warned Horizon Pictures stepped in.
[33:16] He bought the rice to Kwai from Corder's estate for $200,000 and
[33:20] struck a deal with Colombia to distribute and they put up a
[33:23] budget of $2.8 million. Right.
[33:26] Yeah, a big budget then. And Horizon, they had produced
[33:29] the African Queen a few years earlier, obviously a huge hit
[33:32] with an exotic setting. So Spiegel must have thought,
[33:34] hang on, this bridge in the jungle story looks right on my
[33:37] street. Yeah, we can do that, yeah.
[33:39] And then, after he had the right, Spiegel hired Cole
[33:41] Foreman. Then Michael Wilson tried the
[33:43] screenplay before he started approaching directors.
[33:47] Yeah, well, the writing's a story all of its own as well.
[33:49] We'll get into that more when we discuss the crew.
[33:51] It's probably bigger than the film itself.
[33:54] Absolutely crazy, yeah. The production of the film was
[33:56] mad madness, obviously. Madness, yeah.
[33:58] Yeah. So Spiegel first asked Carol
[34:01] Reed to direct, but he said no. He asked Howard Hawks, but he
[34:04] said no. He asked Fred Cinnamon, who said
[34:07] he didn't understand the book, so he said no John Ford said he
[34:10] didn't like Colonel Nicholson, so he said no.
[34:12] And apparently Siegel approached Orson Welles to direct and star
[34:16] in the film, but he just didn't like the script.
[34:18] Oh, really? Star as who, though?
[34:21] Seidel. Imagine massive on the bridge.
[34:27] You could have done that back then, would have been
[34:29] outrageous. A John Wayne is Genghis God.
[34:33] Exactly the same as that Wells screaming that he hates the
[34:37] British. So Spiegel was running out of
[34:41] options, and that's when David Lean came in.
[34:43] Katherine Hepburn, who starred in The African Queen, like we
[34:45] just mentioned, had just worked with Lean on a romantic comedy
[34:48] called Summertime, and she recommended him to Spiegel.
[34:51] Lean said he'd do it, and Spiegel said he'd hired him in
[34:53] absence of anybody else, which I'll love.
[34:57] That's flattering. Yeah.
[34:59] Not even any other director, just anybody else.
[35:02] Yeah, you'll. Do.
[35:04] Exactly. Dean wasn't keen on making the
[35:07] film either, but at the time he was getting divorced from his
[35:10] third wife and Todd. As soon as he signed, he asked
[35:12] Columbia for an advance on his salary.
[35:14] They weren't happy when he was used it to fix his teeth.
[35:20] Going through a divorce? Back on the market?
[35:21] Better get the Nasher sorted out.
[35:23] Smiling yourself up. Couple of fillings.
[35:26] And Spiegel sent a scouting team out to the real River Quay in
[35:30] Berman to check it out before filming, and they said the river
[35:32] was now nothing more than a trickling stream.
[35:35] They then came across a village called Kittlegula in Ceylon, now
[35:37] Sri Lanka, and production began there in 1956.
[35:41] Right. Well, yeah, tripling stream
[35:42] would have been a bit unimpressive.
[35:44] Yeah, what have I done? I've built a massive bridge.
[35:46] You can just walk through it. Yeah, there were some issues
[35:51] though. The sewers canal crisis of 1956
[35:53] meant that equipment had to be flown out to Ceylon rather than
[35:56] shipped and there was an incident where the finished film
[35:59] foot it didn't turn up in London for post production.
[36:01] After a week long search it was found sitting on a boiling hot
[36:04] runway in the Cairo airport. Well, somehow it was undamaged,
[36:08] amazingly. Imagine it was all ruined.
[36:10] Devastating, yeah. Just in a hot box with some
[36:13] corned beef. You're the key to open it.
[36:19] I mean, flying stuff about with a massively increased production
[36:22] cost, Spiegel would have been having kittens about it, yeah.
[36:24] Absolutely. But filming in such a remote
[36:27] location brought some dangers as well.
[36:29] One of the second assistant directors, John Carrison, he was
[36:32] killed in a car crash on the way to 1 of the locations.
[36:35] Oh really? And when filming the shootout on
[36:37] the bridge in the climax, a stuntman called Frank Howard was
[36:39] swept away. He was rescued, but he had to be
[36:42] thrown to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London.
[36:44] But he sadly died. No way.
[36:46] Yeah, ridiculous. I read that David Lane was swept
[36:49] away by the river at one point as well.
[36:50] He had to be rescued. Wow, dangerous.
[36:52] Not by Spiegel, I bet. Well, no, he wasn't bothered.
[36:55] Tell me. Run in the other direction, I
[36:57] think all the problems led to friction between Lean and
[37:00] Spiegel during filming. In terms of the story, Lean was
[37:02] interested in the rivalry between Nicholson and Seidel,
[37:05] while Spiegel one of the adventure elements to have more
[37:07] focus and he was asked to write us to add in more action scenes.
[37:11] They were all vetoed by Lean though.
[37:12] He was just absolutely insistent on his vision.
[37:14] I. Think Yeah, apparently Spiegel
[37:16] had the right house put in action scenes that were an
[37:18] elephant Stampede, a submarine battle, and an army of ants
[37:22] attacking the commandos. Like Kingdom of the Crystal
[37:25] Skull. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
[37:32] Lean also said that Spiegel cheated him out of credit and
[37:34] compensation for the film. He said they agreed to share
[37:37] credit equally, but Spiegel promoted the movie as the Sam
[37:40] Spiegel production rather than giving Lean equal billing.
[37:44] Well, the very first thing we'll say on the screen is the huge
[37:46] title as Sam Spiegel. Production, yeah, it's massive.
[37:49] Yellow SD for you. Yeah.
[37:50] Thank you. Yeah.
[37:52] But yeah, there was some friction.
[37:53] And that isn't the end of the Spiegel Lean shenanigans either.
[37:56] Not by a long way. No, no.
[37:57] Well, before we finish on David Lean, we have our first patron
[38:00] question. OK.
[38:01] So as well as all those many benefits we mentioned at the
[38:04] start, if you sign up to become an ATRM patron, we'll answer
[38:07] your questions on the show. We have the first of those now.
[38:10] It's on Classic Films and it comes from Andrew.
[38:13] Hello, Andrew. Hello, Andrew.
[38:14] So Andrew says, I've seen a lot of films.
[38:18] Self praise, No praise for Andrew.
[38:19] Fair enough. But I'm always embarrassed when
[38:22] classes come up. I've not seen AG the Bridge and
[38:24] the River Kwai. The podcast is getting me to
[38:26] watch movies I've never seen. But what classic movies have you
[38:29] not got around to watching yourselves?
[38:31] Right. Thanks for that, Andrew.
[38:33] We all have our blind spots, I think.
[38:35] Yep. Well, maybe not you, Matt.
[38:36] No, I've seen everything. See, it all just fell off.
[38:41] I've seen everything. I've seen everything.
[38:42] Are there any for you, Matt? Genuinely, a couple, Yeah, we
[38:45] covered maybe poppets not too long ago, but the other 60s
[38:49] musical with Julie Andrews? I've never seen The Sound of
[38:52] Music. Wow.
[38:53] I've seen bits and pieces of it, but I've never felt compelled to
[38:56] sit through the whole thing. Might you love it.
[38:58] Well, I love musicals, love Julie Andrews, I love
[39:00] Christopher Plummer, so I probably should take that one
[39:02] off. But yeah, I've not seen that.
[39:03] And then the other one, Breakfast at Tiffany's again,
[39:05] because I think, yeah, I know it's already Hepburn.
[39:07] I know it's just looking for a cat in the rear end at the end.
[39:10] I know Moon River, I know outrageously racist Mickey
[39:13] Rooney is a Japanese man in that.
[39:15] Yeah, Yeah. And I just think I don't feel I
[39:17] need to see that. I just know all the bits
[39:19] already. You just prefer pepper than the
[39:21] A-Team. Exactly.
[39:23] A-Team and nothing. Else.
[39:25] I want to see him smoking a cigar, not women, Audrey.
[39:27] Headphone. Yeah, well, I was feeling to
[39:30] think of any of the top of my head.
[39:31] So what I. Showed up, man.
[39:33] You sure? No.
[39:33] No, that's what I did. I was feeling to think that was
[39:36] all. Yeah.
[39:37] So what I did was I went through the IMDb top 250 and I've got
[39:40] the first three films that appear on that list that I've
[39:42] not seen. OK.
[39:43] OK. So 1st 25th in the IMDb top 250
[39:46] right? I've not seen City of God.
[39:48] Wow. Oh.
[39:49] Really. Really.
[39:50] OK. Brazilian classic.
[39:51] I'm sure you guys have seen it. Oh.
[39:53] Yeah, it's great for him. This is the most John answer to
[39:55] a question I've ever fucking heard of.
[39:56] Me like #28 I've seen the 1st 27 so in your face really
[40:02] backhanded. It's amazing.
[40:05] Well, I've not seen #32 either. Which is the pianist.
[40:07] Oh really? Wow, Yeah, brilliant.
[40:10] A shiri number from what I hear. Yeah, lovely.
[40:13] And #40 Japanese classic Harakiwi I've not seen.
[40:16] I'd imagine most people haven't seen that, to be honest.
[40:18] I've seen that. Of course you have.
[40:20] Yeah, but in terms of a massive title like Andrews will be
[40:23] looking for, I went back until I reached a huge one, which was
[40:25] 79, and that is Das Boot. I've not seen that.
[40:30] Right. Wow, yeah, it's on for about 5
[40:32] days, isn't it? I mean, it is, yeah, to be.
[40:34] Good five days. I don't.
[40:35] Know if you'll feel great at the end of it, but it's worth taking
[40:38] that. Or might you watch Sound of
[40:39] Music and I'll watch Das Boot? You've got the best part of that
[40:41] deal, but OK. And westy classic films you've
[40:46] not seen. There's a few, obviously, but
[40:48] there's some that Sunset Blvd. I've still not seen.
[40:52] And I've mentioned that because we've had this question before.
[40:54] Yeah, I've mentioned earlier on the podcast I've not seen Doctor
[40:56] Zhivago, David Lean Classic, but I'd love to get into that.
[40:59] But again, I've just, I don't know Cleopatra.
[41:02] Right, right. Yeah.
[41:03] Another one I'd like to check out but I just keep thinking,
[41:06] have I seen that? Burning and Taylor isn't it or
[41:08] was a treat. It is, yeah.
[41:09] So it'd be great, but I mean, I'd rather see Burning and
[41:12] Taylor in different films if I'm on.
[41:14] Fair enough. It happened one night I've never
[41:16] seen Oh. Yeah, I've not seen that
[41:17] actually. And the last one is the 400
[41:19] blows, which I've heard a lot about now.
[41:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've not seen that either. 3434,
[41:24] yeah, it happened One night. The first film to win the Big 5
[41:27] of the Oscars was it, I think. Yeah, it was.
[41:28] Yeah, one of the only three. Why that popped up and said I
[41:31] really should be checking out, but I mean you know, Robocops on
[41:34] gonna do. I watch out for a 15th time.
[41:37] What's that again? RoboCop, then Predator, then
[41:40] time Cop, then a kebab, then bed, then the crew, then I cry
[41:42] myself to sleep. Fuck, it happened one night.
[41:44] That happens every Saturday night for Wesley of.
[41:46] Course it does. Well, back to David Lean and
[41:49] Division. The River Choir was rewarded for
[41:51] all the hard work that went into it.
[41:52] Yeah, David Lean won the Oscar for Best Director and the film
[41:55] won Best Picture, beating out some of that classics in Peyton
[41:58] Place, Witness for the Prosecution and 12 Angry Men.
[42:02] Yeah. Oh, really?
[42:03] Yeah, wow. So major awards for leading the
[42:05] film and for us, the work of a huge director finding his epic
[42:09] voice. Yeah, very much.
[42:11] Definitely the cast. David Lean was on this way to
[42:19] becoming one of Hollywood's great epic directors, but he
[42:22] needed the right actors to bring the bridge in the river quieter
[42:24] life. We've already talked about Ceso
[42:27] High, a Coward Saito, and we'll be discussing William Holden.
[42:30] This she has, and Jack Hawkins's Warden.
[42:32] But there's only one place to start in the cast, surely?
[42:35] Absolutely. So Alec Guinness plays Colonel
[42:38] Nicholson, a British commander obsessed with military
[42:40] discipline. In order, we follow Nicholson as
[42:43] he arrives at the Burmese prison camp, sofas in the oven, and
[42:46] ultimately becomes so obsessed with the bridge that he loses
[42:49] sight of which side he's on. Yeah.
[42:50] Yeah. So, Westie, what do you make of
[42:52] Alec Guinness as Nicholson? I mean, this is so beautifully
[42:56] played. It's a beautiful performance.
[42:59] It's so nuanced, it's so theatrical in places, it's so
[43:02] focused. It's so tunnel vision that I
[43:04] can't believe he wasn't the first choice for this.
[43:07] It's almost like he's defy and lean.
[43:09] I'm going to show you how good I am.
[43:10] I'm going to show you how good this character can be and how
[43:14] confusing this character can be because you don't quite know his
[43:18] motivation. First time I watched this, you
[43:20] know, when he looks down, he sees the wire and you just think
[43:22] he's going to play along. He's going to see it and go,
[43:25] right, Yeah, I've been playing you the whole time, and it's
[43:27] going to spin on that and just be like, yeah, yeah, now I've
[43:29] got you. Yeah, I'm a real British after
[43:31] I've been putting this on, and it's just beautifully nuanced by
[43:33] Guinness because he just absolutely carries you through
[43:36] the film and it's so compelling. Where's he coming from?
[43:40] What's he doing? What's his motivation?
[43:41] You've got no back story for the character.
[43:43] He is born in war. That's all.
[43:46] He is this robot of a guy. But Guinness brings so much
[43:49] humanity to this. So he demands respect.
[43:52] You know when it's raining that when they first arrived at the
[43:54] company, walks through the hospital for the want of a
[43:57] better word. And he looks up and there's a
[43:58] leak in the roof and he just looks at the guy and he said,
[44:00] yes, Sir, get that fixed. Get that sorted.
[44:04] Probably me very, very favorite Alec Guinness performance.
[44:07] I'm always. Obviously when I was a kid, I
[44:08] knew it was Obi Wan. Yeah, of course.
[44:10] But then I thought, you just kind of filled a role in that.
[44:13] And I didn't know who he was and what he'd achieved to be Obi Wan
[44:17] Kenobi for everyone to go, oh, I'm going to take this guy
[44:19] seriously. I remember grand ago was Alec
[44:21] Guinness. Wow.
[44:23] This has got a bit of credit. This has got credibility.
[44:25] And I never really knew where that came from until I saw this
[44:29] and I thought that performance there is probably the only
[44:32] performance you need to do as an actor to be memorable and for
[44:35] anyone to sign you up to do any role whatsoever.
[44:38] Because if you can play this character, as nuanced as it is
[44:41] and as annoying as it is, and as inspirational as this is, this
[44:44] performance, people will be watching this.
[44:46] What I want to be an actor. I want to be able to do that.
[44:48] And if I can, that's all I need to do.
[44:50] It's just a wonderful performance and I'll never get
[44:52] enough of it. It's just amazing.
[44:53] Covers all the bases for me in this.
[44:55] I agree. I think he's pretty
[44:56] extraordinary Guinness, isn't he in this.
[44:58] He's amazing in the opening. As soon as he starts talking to
[45:00] site or about the Geneva Convention, it's like, all
[45:03] right, this guy can act. Yeah.
[45:05] And I kind of keep saying these words, but he does bring this
[45:07] stubborn dignity to Nicholson and it's there in everything the
[45:11] way that he talks like when the first start building the bridge
[45:13] in Corporal Weaver talking to him, he seems to have some kind
[45:16] of tick. And Nicholson's just like have
[45:18] you were nervous affliction. If not, stop making those
[45:20] phrases at once brutal. He's just a perfect human being
[45:24] and he's all eyes. But even the way Nicholson moves
[45:29] seems to have been thought through by Guinness.
[45:31] The way he carries himself is so specific.
[45:33] We talked about the way that he staggers in March it when he
[45:35] leaves the oven. But any other time he's always
[45:37] like ramrod straight and always got his leg up on something like
[45:41] he owns the place. Yeah, brilliant.
[45:43] What the character's probably most loaded for, critically is
[45:45] his journey. Started as principal officer,
[45:48] maintained discipline against all the odds, but by the end,
[45:51] he's so obsessive, building that bloody bridge that he's helping
[45:54] the enemy. It's such a crazy and huge arc
[45:56] that I find it kind of hard to believe they pulled it off.
[45:58] Yeah, but they did, and it's in the writing.
[46:01] But I think it's more so down to Guinness, to be honest.
[46:03] Yeah. By Nicholson as a character,
[46:05] every second is on the screen, and he's mental, so maybe I
[46:08] shouldn't. I think one of the most
[46:10] impressive things that's maybe lost now is that when Choir was
[46:13] released, Alegans was very much 3rd on the bill behind William
[46:17] Hold Nanjack Hawkins. Yeah, he is.
[46:18] Yeah, He's earning the credits, isn't he?
[46:20] It's there on all the marketing materials from the time.
[46:22] Yeah. Now, acting wise, it's his film.
[46:24] Yeah. He completely takes you away
[46:25] from two big stars. Yeah.
[46:27] One of the definitive films dealing performances for me.
[46:29] And possibly the greatest tragic character in war movies.
[46:32] I mean, there's a few, but Nicholson's right up there.
[46:35] Oh, definitely. Well, the interesting thing for
[46:37] me is when I was putting the notes together thing about what
[46:39] I wanted to see, I kept on thinking the thing about
[46:42] Nicholson in this instead of the thing about Guinness in this.
[46:46] And that's because this is one of those elite performances
[46:48] where the lines between actor and role are just completely
[46:51] blurred and they've become one and the same.
[46:53] Yeah, I totally agree with that. Yeah.
[46:55] Like, I don't see Alec Guinness in this.
[46:56] I just see Colonel Nicholson. And, you know, we've mentioned
[47:00] it already, but you know, we've covered the original Star Wars
[47:02] trilogy and we mentioned it. It's it's pretty well known.
[47:05] Guinness was pretty ambivalent at best about getting asked
[47:08] about those films again and again and again.
[47:10] And to be honest, you and you go.
[47:12] I can't really blame him. Like Obi Wan wasn't that much of
[47:15] A stretch. Have you seen what I did in
[47:17] River Kwai though? Why does no one ask?
[47:18] Me about that. Because that journey Nicholson
[47:21] goes on, that heroic figure who stands up for the rules and for
[47:24] his men and for what's right to imperceptible, ending up aiding
[47:28] in a betting the enemy. That 180 trajectory is so subtly
[47:31] done by Guinness because he keeps pushing Nicholson to the
[47:34] edge of what's acceptable, but then he rains him in and he
[47:37] brings him back. So you understand what he's
[47:39] doing and why he's doing it. When they're talking about the
[47:42] bridge potentially lasts than 600 years and he goes 600 years,
[47:45] imagine that. I get where he's coming from.
[47:49] To leave a mark on the world like that.
[47:51] That's a really laudable dream, see, and it's all he's dreamt
[47:54] of, doing something for Britain to that level.
[47:56] That's what his life has been devoted to.
[47:58] And that obsession is ultimately what blinkers him to how he's
[48:01] crossed over the line by the end.
[48:03] So it's a fascinating character, just perfectly played bikeiness.
[48:07] You know why people don't talk about this enough?
[48:09] Because he makes it look easy. He does.
[48:11] He does make it look easy. Yeah, Yeah.
[48:12] It just made it look so easy. Yeah, it's ridiculous.
[48:17] So Nicholson was kind of based on some real life people, which
[48:19] we'll talk about when we saw the writing.
[48:21] But a bit like David Lean's director Alec Innes is now
[48:24] synonymous with the film. But it could have been
[48:26] different. Lots of other big names were
[48:28] considered, approached. Some said no to play Nicholson.
[48:31] Yeah. It was all madness, wasn't it,
[48:33] Matt? Certainly was, because when
[48:35] Spiegel bought the rights to the novel first person, he tried to
[48:38] cast as Nicholson, Spencer Tracy.
[48:40] But he'd read the book and thought he just wasn't right for
[48:43] the parts and turned it down. Right, Yeah, apparently, he said
[48:46] the part must be played by an Englishman, which to be turned
[48:49] out all right, I think. Makes perfect sense.
[48:51] It does, yeah. And then Laurence Olivier was
[48:53] offered the part but he turned it down to direct and Co star in
[48:56] The Prince and the Show Girl and that's a ROM com star in Marilyn
[48:59] Monroe. Right, right.
[49:01] Love scenes with Marilyn or in the jungle.
[49:03] But Sam Spiegel and David Lean can't imagine that was too hard
[49:06] a choice. Yeah.
[49:09] Not really a coin toss, that is it.
[49:12] And then when Lean came in as director, he approached James
[49:15] Mason, Noël Coward and Ralph Richardson, but they all said
[49:18] no. But the actor he really wanted
[49:20] was Charles Lawton, who we just worked with on Hobson's Choice.
[49:23] But that fell through because Columbia refused to insure
[49:26] Lawton for health reasons. Right.
[49:28] So apparently Lawton was massively overweight at the time
[49:31] and Columbia's a not right as kind of went this guy in the
[49:34] jungle for eight months. Yeah, absolutely no chance
[49:38] standing up in the sun. Does he look malnourished
[49:43] waffling down their corn beef? Do you want some?
[49:45] That's great. Boom, sugar on the whiskey, Yes.
[49:51] And somebody that Lane didn't want as Nicholson was Alec
[49:54] Guinness because he thought he was too small.
[49:56] Sam Spiegel did want them though, so it invited Guinness
[49:58] to dinner in London. And initially Guinness said no
[50:01] because he saw the novelist being anti British.
[50:03] But he said by the end of the night they were discussing what
[50:06] kind of week he should wear. Right.
[50:08] He sounds like a right Wheeler dealer.
[50:09] Spiegel doesn't. He could sell umbrellas in the
[50:12] Sahara. After Guinness arrived on
[50:16] location in Sale On, they said the first thing David Lean said
[50:20] to him was to remind him that he wasn't.
[50:21] The first choice. Is what I took earlier.
[50:24] First thing he said you're not my first choice.
[50:26] So Guinness said he'd consider getting back on the plane and
[50:28] just leaving, but decided to stay.
[50:30] And I think that was a real motivation.
[50:32] I don't know if that's deliberate by Lean, but if it
[50:34] is, that's incredible direction. Yeah, maybe it was.
[50:36] Who knows? Yeah.
[50:37] Yeah, you never know. You never know.
[50:38] In the absence of Charles Laudon, no one was wondering on
[50:40] this film, though. It's mad.
[50:42] Yeah, I guess the first choice or the most obvious choice isn't
[50:45] always the best choice sometimes.
[50:46] Definitely not, no. And Guinness and Lane then went
[50:49] on to have a rocky relationship during filming because at the
[50:52] time, Guinness was best known in Hollywood for Ealing comedies
[50:55] like The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit and The
[50:58] Lady Killers. And he apparently tried to
[51:00] inject some humor in this portrayal of Nicholson, but Lane
[51:03] told them to play everything straight.
[51:05] Yeah, there are some dark moments in there though for
[51:07] comedy like we talked about, I think.
[51:09] But yeah, Ealing slapstick, probably a bit for custard.
[51:12] Pie in the face inside those face Combi pie in the face.
[51:18] Falling over in the sun, then just getting back up, pushing
[51:20] yourself up. And Guinness and Lane would
[51:23] apparently row during the shoot. Guinness wanted Nicholson to be
[51:26] more sympathetic and Lane said no.
[51:28] He should be a bore. Yeah, I get it from Guinness's
[51:31] point of view. I mean, Nicholson was really
[51:32] well defined in the writing, maybe too much.
[51:35] He's like a cardboard cut out. I think Guinness is bring so
[51:37] much to it beyond that. He does, absolutely.
[51:40] And in the middle of the shoot, Guinness told Lane he was
[51:42] concerned about his own performance and that Nicholson
[51:45] was coming off as anti British. So Lane screened a rough quote
[51:48] of what they had to Guinness, his wife and his son.
[51:50] And he said the next day Guinness said to him.
[51:53] We all think it's the best work I've ever done.
[51:55] Man. Yeah, Lane said they had that
[51:57] screening after the film finished.
[51:58] The Guinness has all said thanks and then just got up and walked
[52:00] straight out. So we thought they all hated it.
[52:02] It's classic British entertainment.
[52:05] The rows never stopped, however. The final scene Guinness shot
[52:09] was the scene at the end where Nicholson talks about his army
[52:11] Cree with Saito. Lane shot Guinness from behind
[52:14] which Guinness complained about and after the finished Lane said
[52:18] now you cannot fuck off and go home you English actors.
[52:20] Thank God I'm starting work tomorrow with an American.
[52:24] Brilliant. I mean that does sound pretty
[52:26] anti British to be fair. Sounds like James Cameron.
[52:30] It really does. Yeah, Guinness wanted to be shot
[52:33] and closer apparently, but Lane refused to and shot him from
[52:36] behind in that same course. Right.
[52:37] Yeah, just shoot a close up version of it and.
[52:39] Just be alive. Just do it.
[52:41] Just a piece and I've got the one I need, right?
[52:43] Do your close up. There's no film in the camera.
[52:44] Just turn on it. Either way, no one need of
[52:47] worried for his performance as Colonel Nicholson.
[52:50] Alec Guinness won the Oscar for best actor.
[52:52] Yeah, beating our nominees like Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn and
[52:56] Charles Laughton. Oh, wow.
[52:58] Crazy. It's the amount of nobody want
[52:59] that ends up winning the Academy Award.
[53:01] Not Alec Guinness most famous role.
[53:03] Maybe. That's probably something else.
[53:04] Yeah, but this his finest work. I think these most new ones
[53:09] definitely. So now the English actor has
[53:14] left, as Lean kind of put it, we can move on to the US star.
[53:17] Yeah. That's William Holden, who plays
[53:19] Commander Inverted commas. She has an American prisoner
[53:23] who's been in the camp long enough to work the system.
[53:25] We follow. She has, as he escapes, leaves
[53:28] it up and sail on. Outrageous.
[53:30] Before being recruited to blow up Nicholson's bridge,
[53:32] sacrificing himself on the mission.
[53:34] Yeah, he's a survivor. I mean, until the last five
[53:38] minutes. Well, yeah, isn't he, Matt?
[53:39] Who? Most of it, yeah.
[53:41] Brilliant. How's William Holden as she is?
[53:45] Just proper old school movie charisma here from William
[53:48] Holden. Yeah, like, he brings such a
[53:50] cynical streak to the film as she is, which contrasts
[53:53] Nicholson. He was all about the rules and
[53:55] discipline. And that introduction to him at
[53:57] the cemetery, he's so good when the bury and someone who's just
[53:59] died and he can barely remember the person's name in what his
[54:02] number was. Not out of disrespect, as he
[54:04] says. It's just he's been in there so
[54:06] long, this is commonplace to him now.
[54:08] Yeah, he's like serial number 123456 or whatever it is.
[54:12] Yeah. Exactly.
[54:13] And it takes like, real charm to make that line work, not be
[54:16] like, oh, this guy's a Dick. Yeah, yeah, you get where he's
[54:18] coming from. You get that He knows how to
[54:19] play the game. He knows how to get on the sick
[54:21] list. He knows it's pointless going up
[54:23] against Side or when he's scared that Side or will shoot
[54:26] Nicholson in the officers. We are scared as well because we
[54:29] know what this character she is saying and that he doesn't
[54:31] overreact to anything. So he brings all that to the
[54:34] system. He looks amazing.
[54:36] So when he springs interaction apart from the dummy bit, you
[54:38] know, he looks really convincing doing that.
[54:40] And for a pretty serious film, he does sprinkle in little bits
[54:43] of light relief even. I mean, we've been talking about
[54:46] about when he's rescued and he's got the nurses draped all over
[54:49] him. It's like he's James Bond in
[54:51] there. Yeah, you know, And one stays in
[54:53] the night and wardens like who she, where's she come from?
[54:56] So Holden, he's just great in this.
[54:57] And he plays off Guinness really effectively.
[55:00] I agree, I was like William Holden.
[55:02] I like him here as well. When he first shows up in the
[55:04] camp he's like a bronze God compared to everyone else.
[55:07] Been catching some rays clearly. He's straight out of Jason He.
[55:11] Really is where Guinness looks every inch to like suffering
[55:16] resolute military man, Holden looks every inch the 50s
[55:19] Hollywood movie star. It's ridiculous but he's great
[55:22] as a character. She has obviously there as the
[55:25] opposite kind of persona to Nicholson, where Nicholson has
[55:27] his duty in court of honor. She doesn't want to live by any
[55:30] rules, certainly not military ones.
[55:33] That's personified in that monologue I mentioned when he
[55:34] tells Warden that he and Nichols not living their lives the wrong
[55:37] way. But I also think he's there to
[55:39] kind of encapsulate another theme of the film, like the
[55:42] absurdity of war. She has goes from escapee to
[55:45] deserter to action hero, which is crazy and something he is
[55:49] constantly is the charmer always got an eye for the ladies when
[55:53] they've been guided through the jungle by the Thai girls.
[55:55] There's that shortwave leaning against the tree.
[55:57] All the girls were by him, and he looks every one of them up
[56:00] and down. Absolute sleazeball.
[56:04] I think it's testament to home. And he brings all these facets
[56:06] to. She has character and executes
[56:08] all of them really well. Yeah.
[56:09] Yeah, I mean, you don't think he's a sleazeball either, you
[56:11] know, You're just like, yeah, he's great.
[56:12] He's got them shampooed his head in the river. 10 minutes.
[56:17] He is over show by Guinness maybe, but a really good 50s
[56:20] style movie star work for me. I love to watch him.
[56:23] Great. Yeah.
[56:24] He's a great contrast to Guinness and they work really
[56:27] well off each other when they are on the same scene.
[56:29] It's just this absolute bitterness that just love his
[56:32] outlook and how much he believes in it and being a good human
[56:35] being. And none of this fucking makes
[56:36] any sense and it's just absolute madness.
[56:39] He's just having a great time when he needs to have a great
[56:41] time. You're only walking through that
[56:43] whole camp in the school, the commando school, and he's just
[56:46] like, he's fine one minute and then the Joe Buddy's like, oh, I
[56:49] just want to get out of here. This is ridiculous.
[56:52] But just the madness of it. He just highlights every single
[56:55] bit of it. But he knows he's painted into a
[56:57] corner. That scene with him on the beach
[57:00] with the girl that he's found and they're just running to the
[57:02] water. It kind of takes me out the film
[57:05] a little bit because I'm thinking it's a great character
[57:07] moment, but Bill Holden must be having a great time shooting
[57:11] this. Well, looks like.
[57:12] This must feel like a wonderful time, and he just brings that.
[57:17] It is a wonderful time and he's really, really good and he spins
[57:21] that on the character. It's like you should feel like
[57:23] he's a bit of a Dick for leaving everyone behind, for being
[57:27] selfish, for looking after himself.
[57:28] But you're like, don't, I don't want him to go back.
[57:30] I want him to just live his life.
[57:31] He deserves it. Like he sees reality.
[57:34] And I think that was the voice of many people who went over in
[57:36] World War 2 and they saw the madness of it.
[57:38] Nobody wanted to be there. Japanese didn't want to be
[57:41] there, British didn't want to be there.
[57:42] Americans didn't want to be there.
[57:43] There, there's more. 90% of the troops didn't want to be there.
[57:46] But you have Nicholson and you have Sido at the top of the
[57:50] bill. And unfortunately, and that's
[57:52] what people listen to, but if you listen to Shears, World War
[57:55] Two would have been over in about 20 minutes.
[57:57] Let's kill that. Let's kill us if they're nuts,
[57:59] right? This is mental.
[58:00] Let's everybody just stop. Let's break this down.
[58:02] Let's just run into the ocean and have a bit of a frolic,
[58:05] right? That's what life's about.
[58:06] He is humanity to me. He is the audience to me.
[58:09] And he's a great character and he does deliver it.
[58:11] He's wonderful in this so watchable heartbreak at the end,
[58:14] but it's so wonderful. And some, Spiegel wondered,
[58:17] Somebody with box office appeal to play She Is.
[58:19] And he'd worked with Humphrey Bogart on The African Queen in
[58:22] 1951, and that's who he initially wanted, Cole Foreman
[58:25] later said when he wrote the screenplay.
[58:27] Spiegel told him write the part of She Is with Bogart in mind,
[58:30] but Bogart was already signed up to start in The Harder They
[58:33] Fall, so he couldn't do it. Yeah, the boxing film.
[58:36] That was Bogart's last ever role in the film, The Harder They
[58:38] Fall just before he died. Yeah, well.
[58:41] All right, Yeah. And Spiegel then considered
[58:43] asking Cary Grant to play. She is, but he changed his mind
[58:46] when he realized in 1950 filler he'd been in called crisis to
[58:50] being a box office flop. Right, I can see Bogart and
[58:53] Grant in there to be honest. But I do like holding sticky
[58:55] charm. I wouldn't change it.
[58:57] I wouldn't change that for the world.
[58:58] No, definitely not so Bill Holden had served in the US Army
[59:02] during the Second World War and just won an Oscar for Stalic 17
[59:06] and was the next person Spiegel went for for playing shares.
[59:09] Holden was paid 300,000 and given wait for this 10% of the
[59:14] box office profits as well as wow and he's making some money
[59:19] off that. Really is doing well.
[59:20] Yeah, Guinness Lee, I said they're the Oscars where he won
[59:23] best actor, he said to Holden, I feel bad because I won the
[59:26] award, but you were the star. And Holden said you keep the
[59:29] Oscar, I'll keep my 10%. Massive.
[59:34] Didn't Guinness go into that with that kind of attitude to
[59:36] Star Wars, though? And he talked about the
[59:37] merchandise and. It's probably where he learned
[59:39] it from, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
[59:41] So Nuance's recognition for William Holden's performance in
[59:43] The Bridge and the River Kwai. He just won one in 1954 for Star
[59:46] Like 17, another POW film, so it was never going to again.
[59:50] Really. Yeah, but some movie star
[59:51] charisma from him here and providing a nice counterpoint to
[59:54] Guinness and Nicholson. Oh absolutely.
[59:56] Yeah. Perfect chalk and cheese.
[1:00:00] The 3rd and final member of the main cast we're going to talk
[1:00:03] about is Jack Hawkins, who plays Major Warden, a British commando
[1:00:07] task was destroying the bridge he recruits she has leads the
[1:00:11] mission through the jungle is successful and if the only lead
[1:00:14] character that still be alive as a credit roll.
[1:00:16] Yeah, but we does have a debilitating foot injury.
[1:00:18] Yeah. Just a crack ball and we can
[1:00:20] still put pressure on it. Another Englishman with a bridge
[1:00:24] obsession. Matt, How is Jack Hawkins as
[1:00:27] warden? He's one of those actors where
[1:00:29] it feels like he's in every British film ever made in the
[1:00:32] 50s and 60s. In everything.
[1:00:33] He's got that kind of face and he's got that ultra reliable
[1:00:37] vibe and authenticity where whatever the film is, he'll
[1:00:41] bring what that film needs in his convents.
[1:00:43] In this sense, that Warden is being trapped behind the desk
[1:00:46] for so long, he's just itching to get out there into the jungle
[1:00:49] to do the action, which contrasts so well to she his
[1:00:51] attitude, which is, I want to stay away from this and sit out
[1:00:54] the rest of the why you're crazy for wanting to go back to the
[1:00:57] bridge. You're insane.
[1:00:59] How good would have been if all could just stand by the desk
[1:01:02] being like I want to get out back in the shit.
[1:01:08] But that's the kind of attitude I get from him.
[1:01:10] On one hand, it is like a game to him.
[1:01:12] But underneath all that typical British politeness, there is
[1:01:15] some steal there. You know, he doesn't hesitate to
[1:01:17] kill the Japanese soldier in the jungle when Joyce does, I
[1:01:20] believe when he says he wouldn't hesitate to leave Joyce behind
[1:01:22] if he had been injured, like he gets injured.
[1:01:25] And in a lot of ways, I think Warden is probably the least
[1:01:27] likable person in the film, which just makes it all the more
[1:01:30] ironic that he's the only one who does get to walk way alive
[1:01:33] at the end. Yeah.
[1:01:35] He was another actor who served in World War 2, Jack Hogan.
[1:01:38] So we had experience to bring to it.
[1:01:39] Yeah. And like we mentioned before,
[1:01:41] Hawkins was second on the bill above Alec Guinness when the
[1:01:43] film came out. That's.
[1:01:44] Crazy, yeah. Even more surprising when he
[1:01:46] doesn't show up until 75 minutes in.
[1:01:48] Yeah. He's in the sequel, but.
[1:01:53] When he does arrive, he's memorable, yeah, warns another
[1:01:55] one of those duty obsessed officers.
[1:01:57] He's like Nicholson but on the other side, and I like his ark,
[1:02:00] which I think is really subtle. At first, Warden seems like the
[1:02:03] rational one. He's got a clear mission and a
[1:02:05] bit of a plan, but once he gets shot in the foot he goes mad as
[1:02:08] well. By the end he's boot off,
[1:02:11] basically crawling through the jungle, determined to get to the
[1:02:13] bridge no matter what. And at the end, during the
[1:02:16] battle, when he's firing off rounds, when he can't even
[1:02:18] stand, it's like, what you're doing, you're going to die, just
[1:02:20] go home. Well, I like about Jack Hawkins.
[1:02:25] He doesn't hammer home the points that Warden's going mod.
[1:02:28] There's no history. Onyx.
[1:02:29] He doesn't try to make Warden sympathetic.
[1:02:31] Another character would demonstrate the kind of blind,
[1:02:34] unthinking devotion to Judy. And again, upstaged a bit by
[1:02:37] Guinness maybe, but a good supporting turn I think.
[1:02:40] Yeah, I always knew Jack Horton's from Zulu, from when I
[1:02:43] was very, very young, of course. So I just expected him to be
[1:02:46] like standing up at the bridge we're all going to.
[1:02:49] Die. Firing mortars.
[1:02:53] Drunk out of his his head, yeah. Yeah, but I think he just makes
[1:02:57] it a lot more subtle. It's the same journey downwards.
[1:03:00] He's never going to recover from this.
[1:03:02] But the way he plays this is so refined, it's so gentlemanly,
[1:03:05] it's so British even like you just said, John losing your
[1:03:08] mind. But I'm not going to make it
[1:03:09] obvious it is there. Like he just wanted to get into
[1:03:12] this and see the action and do something meaningful.
[1:03:14] He does something meaningful, but at what cost?
[1:03:18] What do you believe in? Is it right?
[1:03:19] Is it true? And I honestly don't think his
[1:03:21] character believes that it is. And he kind of really doubts the
[1:03:24] war effort and the side he's on by the end of it.
[1:03:27] And really what is going on by the whole thing.
[1:03:30] He's read it on paper and now he's seen.
[1:03:31] You see it through his eyes and when he sees it, we see it.
[1:03:34] We think it's futile, it's pointless, it's violent and he's
[1:03:38] part of it now and his hands are dirty and you really feel that
[1:03:41] from that character at the end of the film.
[1:03:42] But he does play it really refined here.
[1:03:44] A great character actor and a great character for him.
[1:03:48] But the first person Lean wanted to play the part of Wharton was
[1:03:50] John Giel Good. He turned it down and he said
[1:03:53] that Wharton was anybody's part and not meaty enough for him.
[1:03:56] Yeah. No one wanted to be in this
[1:03:58] film, did they? I'll do it help you.
[1:04:04] Fine, yeah. I mean, if you want a custom
[1:04:05] distinguished British actors and deal, good.
[1:04:07] Probably a decent show. Yeah, it would be a great show,
[1:04:10] yeah. No award recognition for Jack
[1:04:12] Hawkins for Quite for Us, though.
[1:04:13] Another strong performance showing the different faces of
[1:04:16] military obsession. Yeah, exactly.
[1:04:18] He's just sitting on a beach with his 10%.
[1:04:24] So that is our principal cast. Aleken is giving the performance
[1:04:27] of his career as Nicholson, William Holding providing the
[1:04:29] voice of laid back pragmatism as she has, and Jack Hogan showing
[1:04:33] yet another version of duty driven modernist.
[1:04:35] Yeah, three different approaches to war all ending up in the same
[1:04:38] place. Not down bridge, yeah, but some
[1:04:41] good work all around. Great.
[1:04:42] Well. Amazing that all these guys are
[1:04:44] in the same film. Let's be honest, the middle.
[1:04:54] Heading into the middle act of the bridge on the river, Kwai
[1:04:56] and Lean finally gets his two main storylines running in
[1:04:59] parallel. We'll be talking about the
[1:05:01] command mission through the jungle.
[1:05:02] But first we've got some teams to put together, don't we?
[1:05:06] We do. So Nicholson's out of the oven
[1:05:08] and in EU turn to end all U turns.
[1:05:11] He agrees to build Saito's bridge after all that.
[1:05:16] Meanwhile she is still living it up with the ladies now in Sale
[1:05:18] on when Major Warden shows up to spoil the phone and recruit him
[1:05:21] for a mission to destroy that very same bridge.
[1:05:24] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:05:25] Two teams, 2 opposite objectives.
[1:05:27] Westie. Yeah.
[1:05:28] How does it go for you? Well, I'll go for the first one
[1:05:32] in that Nicholson's U-turn on this and he inspects the bridge.
[1:05:36] He gets everyone's feedback on it and he has this incredible
[1:05:39] teams meeting with everybody before teams meetings and he's
[1:05:42] so in charge of it. But the way he signs it off is
[1:05:45] just so fucking brilliant. And he's like, we have wasted a
[1:05:47] month and I wasn't to blame. So just this guy who's just
[1:05:53] pummeling home that he's right all the time, the placements
[1:05:56] wrong, they're getting it all wrong.
[1:05:58] This might be impossible. He knows what's at stake.
[1:06:00] And he's got no empathy whatsoever towards site.
[1:06:02] Or so they're getting a contractor in.
[1:06:03] Like, maybe kids are freezing. I need a new roof.
[1:06:05] Can you get it done? Well, you know, we are the best,
[1:06:10] but, you know, you could have got a month ago or so in your
[1:06:11] office. And there's a real question of
[1:06:13] trust here, Like, can't site or like, trust him.
[1:06:16] He's telling him to move the bridge completely.
[1:06:18] Yeah. He blames the Japanese for the
[1:06:20] men's conduct. When they're walking around,
[1:06:21] they're unruly, they don't know what they're doing.
[1:06:23] It's their fault, but it's not. It's your men.
[1:06:25] Like they should be following the cord as you do.
[1:06:28] And it's really great how that comes across.
[1:06:31] And then just sat there goodbye, have a cup of tea, obviously
[1:06:34] getting this stuff here. And it's like 400 yards
[1:06:37] downstream and he's talking about working his own men 30%
[1:06:40] harder. Well played.
[1:06:43] Because Sido was just absolutely fucking furious throughout all
[1:06:47] this. It's just like about a teeny
[1:06:49] just shout out the window and someone else shouts it and he's
[1:06:51] I should have dinner brought here and he shouts it out the.
[1:06:54] Window. And he said, will you please
[1:06:55] just get on with it? But it's just Nicholson lauding
[1:06:58] himself over everything here. You take charge of that and you
[1:07:01] take charge of that, and you do this and you do that.
[1:07:03] Right? We're on the same page.
[1:07:04] Thank you very much. I've spent some time in the Hot
[1:07:05] Books, but you're going to have to kill yourself if this doesn't
[1:07:07] work. See you later, mate.
[1:07:08] Bye. And that's not my fault.
[1:07:10] But I just love that there's that little undertone kind of
[1:07:13] can site or trust him. Can he trust what he's saying?
[1:07:15] Yeah. And you know that Guinness,
[1:07:17] should he be trusted? Should he not?
[1:07:19] And he plays that right to the end.
[1:07:21] But it's this scene that really highlights it for me.
[1:07:23] Yeah, I think this is where it all starts to kind of go wrong
[1:07:26] for Nicholson a bit. I like how he's expecting site
[1:07:28] there was bridge and he's just like, yeah, this is rubbish.
[1:07:31] He's so appalled by the shoddy craftsmanship that he just
[1:07:34] abandoned all those principles. So a massive change of heart,
[1:07:38] but I kind of buy it. He decides to build a bridge out
[1:07:41] of a sense of pride and achieving something with the men
[1:07:43] and ensuring British superiority.
[1:07:46] I mean, it's a mad motivation for a character in a mainstream
[1:07:48] film building the best bridge in Burma, but it works.
[1:07:52] The bridge works as a symbol of obsession and of hope and of
[1:07:55] duty, all kind of rolled into one.
[1:07:56] I think it's really excellent. It's almost like, what else are
[1:07:59] we going to do? Yeah, exactly.
[1:08:01] What I find kind of fascinating is Nicholson after construction
[1:08:03] starts, you could talk for England loves the sound of his
[1:08:06] own voice. But the things he says are
[1:08:08] really revealing. He's like, we can teach these
[1:08:10] Barbarians a lesson in Western methods.
[1:08:12] We'll put them to shame. So that's what it's about,
[1:08:14] showing them what's what, really.
[1:08:16] And we get that wide shot of the bridge after the star on it,
[1:08:19] putting down the whole thing to the river mass of that and shows
[1:08:22] us not just the scale of the bridge, but the scale of
[1:08:24] Nicholson's like obsession as it starts to grow great.
[1:08:28] He's building a monument to the British, but it's for the enemy,
[1:08:31] which is messed up and it messes him right up, obviously, yeah.
[1:08:35] It's the scale of his ambition as well, which is really
[1:08:37] poisoned. Yeah, exactly.
[1:08:39] Yeah. Yeah, so I'll go for the other
[1:08:41] scene, which is she has been recruited and briefed by Warden.
[1:08:44] Because two things really stand out to me about this scene.
[1:08:47] First of all, it's a great example of the devotion to
[1:08:50] realism and authenticity that Lane wonders.
[1:08:53] Because this scene is basically exposition.
[1:08:55] There's no need for it to be set where it is in the outdoors,
[1:08:58] with that huge Vista of the jungle behind them.
[1:09:01] Like, he could have done this inside on a set at ailing a
[1:09:04] couple of fake palm trees through the window.
[1:09:06] But feline it's authenticity or nothing through.
[1:09:09] The window Matt, I love you in a bits man, but I'm so pleased you
[1:09:12] didn't direct this. I'm so mad.
[1:09:14] To be fair, that's what I would have done.
[1:09:16] A little fan going so it's hot. Everyone knows, and it just
[1:09:20] completely adds to the film that authenticity.
[1:09:22] And the second thing that's important is that revelation
[1:09:25] about she is and he's not who we think he is.
[1:09:27] He isn't the kind of big American hero we've been led to
[1:09:30] believe. He's actually a liar and an
[1:09:32] impostor, and he's constantly trying to get out of action to
[1:09:35] see how they want comfort. And I've just seen that so much
[1:09:37] more interesting than if he was just a straightforward GI Joe
[1:09:41] looking forward again, stuck into the Japanese again for
[1:09:43] revenge. And it just adds to the sense of
[1:09:46] none of these characters or what the same.
[1:09:48] On the surface, she isn't a hero.
[1:09:51] Sido is obviously quite a bit of a bastard, but underneath
[1:09:54] there's some humanity and sensitivity to him and his
[1:09:56] predicament. Warden isn't this stuffy pen
[1:09:59] pusher and Nicholson definitely isn't what he thinks himself to
[1:10:02] be, which is a matter of principle, doing the right
[1:10:04] thing. So for exposition, it's a very
[1:10:07] important thing. Absolutely nobody's where they
[1:10:09] want to be in this film. On the no.
[1:10:12] None of the characters. I think while Nicholas is
[1:10:14] becoming the Japanese armies like #1 contractor, she is
[1:10:17] having a lovely time in sailor and he's on the beach with the
[1:10:20] nurse and. He's having a great time.
[1:10:21] Played by Ancias who was well known at the time, but the
[1:10:24] character isn't even given the name.
[1:10:25] She's just called Nurse in the credits and if I'm being honest
[1:10:29] I'd love to just follow. She has round sail on seeing
[1:10:31] what she gets up to. Follow her on the beach.
[1:10:38] Now who's the sleazy guy? I can't pull it off like William
[1:10:41] Olden. Can that's it?
[1:10:43] Died with him, I think. But once he gets to the
[1:10:46] hospital, the whole thing is just like, absurd Catch 22.
[1:10:50] You know, the classic satire novel.
[1:10:51] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:10:52] That came out in 1961. And I wonder if Joseph Heller
[1:10:55] was inspired by this film because it reminds me so much of
[1:10:58] the kind of situations he writes about.
[1:11:00] Warden goes on about a sense of duty and morals and then
[1:11:03] unashamedly blackmails she hasn't are going on the mission
[1:11:05] by saying they'll tell the US he impersonated an officer.
[1:11:08] And when she has accepts because he has no choice.
[1:11:11] Warden, just like. Jolly good show.
[1:11:13] Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[1:11:14] Possibly. I've got your file here if you'd
[1:11:16] like to read it. Oh for fuck's sake.
[1:11:18] You've got everything. And all these military types
[1:11:20] treating a suicide mission like it's a jolly adventure.
[1:11:22] Yeah, hilarious ways. Being briefed by Warden and
[1:11:25] Major Reeves about jumping into enemy territory.
[1:11:27] And she has. It's all sarcastic, like with or
[1:11:29] without a parachute, and they're all laughing it right up.
[1:11:32] It's outrageous. He's really serious, Yeah.
[1:11:37] He's like, yeah, seriously. But the we both storylines are
[1:11:41] showing us the same kind of like insanity but from different
[1:11:44] sides. I think the writing is really
[1:11:45] good. Yeah.
[1:11:47] So the hospital you just mentioned there during the film
[1:11:48] was the Mount Lavinia Hospital in Colombo and Sail On.
[1:11:52] It was a hotel that the British military repurposed into a
[1:11:54] hospital during the Second World War.
[1:11:57] And the production of Quite did the same thing, turning it back
[1:11:59] into a hospital fulfillment. Kicked everybody out, broke the
[1:12:03] legs. Stick around.
[1:12:07] It's still there, probably the hotel.
[1:12:08] So if you haven't Sri Lanka, Westie, you know where to stay.
[1:12:11] Why do we go to school? That would be meant.
[1:12:13] For Christmas. Yeah, quietness.
[1:12:19] So the bridge building's underway and she has funds over,
[1:12:21] unfortunately. Shall we see what happens in the
[1:12:23] jungle? Let's.
[1:12:25] Let's do it. Both teams are now in motion.
[1:12:30] Nicholson's men get to work on the bridge, while Warden's team
[1:12:33] of shears, Lieutenant Joyce and their Thai guide is tracking
[1:12:36] through the jungle toward it. One man's obsessed with
[1:12:38] building, the other with destroying.
[1:12:41] Yeah. Yeah, what are you obsessed
[1:12:42] with, Matt? I'm obsessed with the hospital
[1:12:45] sick basing with Nicholson because.
[1:12:48] Oh yeah. Obsessed.
[1:12:51] No, I am obsessed with it. I've to be honest.
[1:12:53] Of course you are. Yeah, it's amazing.
[1:12:54] This scene is so important because this to me is the first
[1:12:58] time you really see those lines being blurred between taking
[1:13:01] pride in your work and aid and the enemy.
[1:13:03] And it's the first moment where I think you really see Nicholson
[1:13:06] lose in perspective because before this he's been so heroic
[1:13:09] and upstanding, but now you really start to doubt as
[1:13:11] motives. And it is kind of darkly funny
[1:13:14] the way Nicholson struts through that sick beer, pointing at
[1:13:16] various men and demand and know what's wrong with them.
[1:13:19] What's the matter with Haskins? Well, he has me big dysentery
[1:13:22] and black water fever. His temperature was 104 last
[1:13:24] night. I mean, yeah, OK, that's not a
[1:13:27] good combination. Let's leave him be.
[1:13:29] And then Clipton points out another man has an infected arm
[1:13:32] that won't heal because he's malnourished.
[1:13:34] Well, I wonder if fresh air and like you, these might do more
[1:13:36] good for a scratch on the arm like.
[1:13:38] You've. Just been told it's not a
[1:13:40] scratch on the arm and you've just been told he's
[1:13:42] malnourished. By a medical.
[1:13:44] Expertise by a medical an actual doctor.
[1:13:46] Exactly question said it's amazing so you're.
[1:13:49] Questioning and Nicholson's judgment for the first time.
[1:13:52] And everyone in the scene, you can see the confused buying, but
[1:13:55] at the same time, they still don't want to let him down
[1:13:58] because he stood up for them so much.
[1:14:00] And what's really interested me is the scene that ends on that
[1:14:02] music again, when he strides out that we heard when they first
[1:14:05] arrived to camp. Because again, in his head, this
[1:14:08] is brilliant. This is Britain standing up and
[1:14:10] being triumphant. Look, how have, you know
[1:14:12] motivated the men? It's anything but.
[1:14:14] Yeah, yeah, Nicholson's lost the plot.
[1:14:17] Cliptons already told him performing treason.
[1:14:19] He doesn't give him monkeys. Then he goes to the hospital
[1:14:22] dragging, clearly injure, mount a bed, and again, he's just
[1:14:24] like, good show. Jolly good show.
[1:14:26] Good, fresh elder, you good? And that shot as he leaves and
[1:14:29] all the guys are just like limping after him.
[1:14:31] It's really funny, but it feels powerful as well.
[1:14:34] Yeah. Earlier, he wouldn't let healthy
[1:14:36] guys build a bridge because of the Geneva Convention.
[1:14:38] Now he's got guys with one leg building it just to show the
[1:14:40] Japanese who's in charge. I mean, it's great dark
[1:14:43] satirical comedy, maybe a bit ahead of his time in films.
[1:14:47] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:14:47] And we're also cutting to the jungle.
[1:14:49] Forget that jungle trek montage with Warden's team showing their
[1:14:52] journey in the passage of time. Yeah.
[1:14:54] Every shot in that montage is stunning.
[1:14:56] Yeah. But what's brilliant, I think,
[1:14:57] is how the two narratives are tied together, where both teams
[1:14:59] are being driven by differently as obsession with a bridge in
[1:15:02] Nicholson and Warden. Yeah.
[1:15:04] And both men think they're being entirely rational about the
[1:15:06] whole thing when both of them are just, like, off the chain at
[1:15:09] this point. Yeah.
[1:15:10] And for those scenes where Warden she is, Joyce and the
[1:15:13] Thai girls we're through swamps. Lean had specially made swamps
[1:15:16] created because the real swamps in Ceylon were considered to be
[1:15:19] too dangerous. So they built someone location
[1:15:22] but then filled them with leeches.
[1:15:24] Yeah, those scenes all look really good.
[1:15:26] They do, yeah. It's impressive how we've got 2
[1:15:28] entirely different plot lines running now, often with
[1:15:30] different tones, but it all still feels of a piece I think.
[1:15:34] Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah.
[1:15:35] So there's a wonderful scene that I really love in this film.
[1:15:38] Are you obsessed with it? I am actually obsessed with it.
[1:15:41] Yeah, it's my happy place. Like if I'm having a bad time, I
[1:15:45] can just imagine this with these waterfalls.
[1:15:47] The rocks feel really warm. There's a beautiful woman just
[1:15:50] shampooing me hair. Everything's fine.
[1:15:53] We've just met 20 minutes ago, so there's no problems.
[1:15:56] And it's just this real kind of sense of serenity in all of this
[1:16:00] and you know that there's something bubbling underneath
[1:16:02] it. I think it's a really wonderful
[1:16:04] tilt It like we're talking about camera movements and motivations
[1:16:07] where you see the bats hanging and it tilts down to the scene.
[1:16:10] And again, visually, you get that wide shot and you get the
[1:16:14] Thai girls just washing them, enjoying themselves, and they've
[1:16:16] got their own space and that's great.
[1:16:18] But you've got the red towel, which like just simulates the
[1:16:21] blood for me. That's going to happen.
[1:16:22] It's like this foreshadowing that there's something bad is
[1:16:24] going to happen, something bad on the horizon.
[1:16:26] And it's just really, really wonderful how that is framed,
[1:16:29] that wide shot. Everyone has a place, but it
[1:16:32] doesn't look staged. And there's that classic
[1:16:35] Hitchcock, the girls walk and there's the pan, and then the
[1:16:38] Japanese soldier turns up and there's that scream and it's
[1:16:41] like, it's like a jump scare. The bridge on the river choir.
[1:16:43] Like it's amazing in broad daylight.
[1:16:44] It's really, really excellent. What's Warden in this sequence?
[1:16:47] For me? His call to arms, his now he can
[1:16:50] pounce. Yes, this is what I'm here for.
[1:16:53] Straight in there with a massive grenade.
[1:16:57] Absolutely love it. Just like his first opportunity
[1:17:02] grenade. Can we assess the situation for
[1:17:05] a second? Can we see what's going on?
[1:17:06] It's fine looking. Maybe sneak down.
[1:17:08] We can take these guys out with the knives.
[1:17:09] We can. No grenade boom, Brilliant throw
[1:17:15] as well, lads behind them perfectly.
[1:17:18] To me, I was like, oh, there's Terrence Malick, that's where he
[1:17:21] got it from. This whole sequence is a thin
[1:17:23] red line on a wide lens and it's just like this madness and it
[1:17:27] just cuts to the bats flying, the madness of the disrupted
[1:17:30] nature. They've disrupted what was going
[1:17:32] on. There's just everything's
[1:17:33] terrified to see shadows everywhere.
[1:17:35] And then it cuts to the scene again, probably the same shot,
[1:17:38] very, very similar framing. And it's just death.
[1:17:42] They're all dead. It was just this absolute
[1:17:44] carnage of this violence that he brings off screen.
[1:17:47] But he does it in such a beautiful way that you just see
[1:17:49] this disruption of nature. And I think Terrence Malick
[1:17:51] watched that and he said, I'm going to do every film like
[1:17:53] that. I'm going to cut away from it.
[1:17:55] And I was going to bring the the destruction of beauty and then
[1:17:57] cut back to absolute destruction of humans of death, because
[1:18:01] that's what it is. But when Joyce stands face to
[1:18:04] face to this Japanese soldier and you just think there's just
[1:18:06] a couple of fucking kids. They're just children.
[1:18:09] What is going on with this? And that's David Lee.
[1:18:12] And he shoots everything on a wide lens.
[1:18:14] Anyone else tried to do this? You wouldn't even feel a
[1:18:16] slightly bit involved in it really is heart wrenching.
[1:18:19] And it's beautiful. And you can get it on that
[1:18:21] level. But the level I love to get it
[1:18:23] on is Warden just going for that grenade.
[1:18:25] Doesn't even ask advice. Boom.
[1:18:31] I love it. Yeah.
[1:18:32] It's wonderful. That's wonderful.
[1:18:33] It's wonderful. It's a great team.
[1:18:35] Yeah, it's the first action moment since the first act, so
[1:18:37] maybe we do kind of need it at this point.
[1:18:39] Yeah. And the scene where Warden kills
[1:18:40] a Japanese soldier is brutal. He stabs him to death, and as we
[1:18:44] move away, the camera shows the soldiers photo of his wife next
[1:18:47] to his body. Yeah.
[1:18:48] Yeah, that's right. I.
[1:18:49] Find that really sad. Pretty shocking as well, yeah.
[1:18:52] Really harrowing. So there is more going on here
[1:18:53] than just, like, a jolly old adventure.
[1:18:55] And it's, yeah, when Warden gets shot in the foot as well, isn't
[1:18:57] it? So it does come with
[1:18:59] consequences. Yeah.
[1:19:00] But we still keep cross cutting by Nicholson to see their
[1:19:02] progress with the build. Yeah.
[1:19:03] And tell you what, see what you want about Nicholson, but the
[1:19:06] man knows how to construct a bridge.
[1:19:07] Oh, absolutely. It's turning out to be a beauty.
[1:19:09] Yeah. It's really nice.
[1:19:11] And after the scene where Warden stabs the Japanese soldier, we
[1:19:14] get a shot of loads of bats full in the sky.
[1:19:16] Yeah, Eddie Fowley, the props manager, said the startled the
[1:19:19] bats in the flying by firing rifles, But when they started
[1:19:22] trying because they were so scared, they just urinated over
[1:19:25] the custom crew. Yeah, you said it was like hot
[1:19:28] stinking rain falling all over us.
[1:19:31] That's disgusting. The glamour of Hollywood when
[1:19:32] you're on location. Yep.
[1:19:34] Totally worth it, the shots are amazing.
[1:19:35] They are, and we're through the track that is the middle of the
[1:19:38] bridge in the River Kwai. Our two teams are in position.
[1:19:41] One is built a great bridge, the other has come to destroy it.
[1:19:44] Speaking of men on collision courses, should we talk about
[1:19:47] the writing and other crew members?
[1:19:49] Absolutely. Let's go for it, the crew.
[1:19:57] David Lean had a pretty epic vision for the Bridge on the
[1:19:59] River Choir, as we've been talking about, and he had quite
[1:20:02] the team behind the camera to help achieve that.
[1:20:05] We'll be talking about Malcolm Arnold, who composed the music,
[1:20:07] and Jack Hildyard as director of photography.
[1:20:10] But let's start with the writers.
[1:20:11] Yeah, OK, all should I say the writers who actually wrote it?
[1:20:14] Yeah, I was going to say which ones.
[1:20:15] Yeah, David Lean. So the credited screenwriter on
[1:20:20] The Bridge on the River Quiet the time of release was Pierre
[1:20:22] Boule, who wrote the original novel, except he didn't actually
[1:20:26] write the screenplay. We'll talk about that more
[1:20:28] shortly. With the real screenplay,
[1:20:29] writers were Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson.
[1:20:32] Both established Hollywood writers formed and written 17
[1:20:35] films before this, including Western classic High Noon, no
[1:20:38] less. Right, that's why I bought it on
[1:20:39] DVD same time. Something in the water.
[1:20:42] Yeah, and Wilson had 13 screen writing credits, including A
[1:20:46] Place in the Zone and three Hopalong Cassidy films.
[1:20:50] Right. Right.
[1:20:50] So, Matt, what are your thoughts on the writing of Hopalong
[1:20:53] Cassidy or The Bridge on the River Quiet.
[1:20:55] Either or we'll do both. It's the same thing.
[1:20:57] Similar things. I think you can tell this came
[1:21:00] from a novel because there's a depth to this, right?
[1:21:02] And that's quite unusual for the genre.
[1:21:04] I think if all this film was about was blown up a bridge, I
[1:21:07] don't think it would have anything like the reputation
[1:21:09] that it does have. And part of what really elevates
[1:21:12] is is that characterization, particularly of Nicholson
[1:21:15] inside. Or I mean, Nicholson starts off
[1:21:18] as such a hero, but with his sense of naivety to him, like
[1:21:21] actually thinking that side will care about the Geneva Convention
[1:21:25] to the point of offering him to lend him his copy.
[1:21:27] And then just imagine actually having that on your person at
[1:21:30] all times, you know, trekking in the drug.
[1:21:32] Well, I better hold on to that, lads.
[1:21:33] This will be important and that adherence to the rules or that's
[1:21:37] what makes him a hero to the man when he's put in the oven, in
[1:21:39] the cheering, when he finally makes sight or relent and
[1:21:41] they're saying he's a jolly good fellow.
[1:21:43] But then the way that the stubbornness and the pride plays
[1:21:46] out and develops and there's something else that gets called
[1:21:48] out, but the rightness so good that it always pulls it back at
[1:21:52] the same time. Like when Clipton first brings
[1:21:54] sort of Nicholson that what they're doing and what he's
[1:21:57] doing could be seen as collaboration.
[1:22:00] Nicholson comes back with a really good point.
[1:22:01] Well, if you were operating on side or wouldn't you operate to
[1:22:04] the best of your ability? And that's a great argument
[1:22:07] because of course Clifton would. He wouldn't sabotage that.
[1:22:10] So you can't say anything against that.
[1:22:11] It's the same principle. So right up until the end, the
[1:22:14] rightness, what keeps Nicholson so ambiguous in terms of his
[1:22:18] argument for what he believes in and for what he's doing is
[1:22:20] right. And it's the same for side.
[1:22:22] Or he could have been just a very cliched villain, but it
[1:22:25] gives him these moments of humanity where you actually
[1:22:27] empathize with him a little bit, like when he's sobbing after he
[1:22:30] finally relents to Nicholson's stubbornness you do feel from
[1:22:33] just a little bit. So think the character writing
[1:22:36] in this is exemplary and it just jumps off the page and right
[1:22:38] onto the screen. I agree it does.
[1:22:41] I mean, to start, I would have bet my bottom dollar that the
[1:22:44] first time we talked about Pierre Boole on this podcast
[1:22:47] would have been planned of the year.
[1:22:48] Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, which is also based on one
[1:22:50] of his books, but no. So well done Matt.
[1:22:52] Straight in with the Milky War epic.
[1:22:57] Yeah. Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson
[1:22:59] here adapting a successful novel, obviously.
[1:23:01] And I've not read the book, The Vision, The River Kwai, but I've
[1:23:03] seen the film and I think the writing is very, very good.
[1:23:07] Two very different storylines, like we talked about one drama,
[1:23:10] one kind of action, and I think the weave them together pretty
[1:23:13] expertly. Lean does that by managing the
[1:23:15] tone and formally Wilson do it by reflecting the themes across
[1:23:18] both narratives. This idea of duty and obsession
[1:23:22] driving mentor madness that we've been talking about, it's
[1:23:24] there in both storylines. Nicholson builds the perfect
[1:23:27] bridge for the enemy because of his principles.
[1:23:30] Warden pushing his injured body through the jungle because of
[1:23:33] his mission. Both of them acted in ways that
[1:23:35] make no sense really because of duty, and the fact that the two
[1:23:38] storylines don't come together until the climax is a brave
[1:23:41] choice but a great one. I think it still works because
[1:23:44] they keep drawing these thematic parallels between the two plots.
[1:23:47] I would say the pacing is unusual.
[1:23:49] Like we said, we spend over an hour with Nicholson before we
[1:23:51] even meet Warden and she has properly.
[1:23:54] And after being such a strong antagonist in the first act,
[1:23:57] Sido fades away in the nothingness as a character.
[1:24:00] He doesn't even speak during the climax, following Nicholson
[1:24:03] around the riverbed like a mute. And in the She Hasn't Warden
[1:24:06] plot, I think you can tell this was written two or three decades
[1:24:09] before Hollywood really mastered action movie writing.
[1:24:12] I wouldn't call those segments thrilling action film writing.
[1:24:15] It's not Mad Max Huey Rd. is it? Not at all.
[1:24:19] Nicholson with a flaming guitar. I love that.
[1:24:23] But overall the writing is excellent for the reasons I
[1:24:25] mentioned. I think it's intelligent, I
[1:24:28] think it's thoughtful, it's layered, I think it's a really
[1:24:30] elegant put your screen writing on the whole.
[1:24:32] Yeah, it is. That's a good word for you.
[1:24:34] It is elegant. But the thing that strikes me
[1:24:36] about this is that this is almost 3 hours long.
[1:24:38] Yeah. Does it need to be kind of?
[1:24:41] Probably not. Probably.
[1:24:42] Not it does work on all of them things, but it flies over
[1:24:45] because you are so engaged in the characters and it's like
[1:24:48] Matt said, it's the current right in here and the dialogue
[1:24:51] is of the time. The dialogue is believable, and
[1:24:54] there is this difference in each of their delivery, in each of
[1:24:56] their dialogue and what each of them believe.
[1:24:59] There's three different beliefs throughout the whole film and
[1:25:01] they're intertwined beautifully. But what people miss about this
[1:25:04] film and the way it was marketed and the way it was shot and the
[1:25:06] way it's actually put forward is this is a film about an
[1:25:10] inanimate object. The bridge is the antagonist,
[1:25:13] the bridge is the story. This could have been six hours
[1:25:16] long, but you know, the bridge is going to get destroyed, but
[1:25:18] it's how it's going to get destroyed.
[1:25:20] What's going to happen to this thing?
[1:25:22] And it's always working towards that thing.
[1:25:24] And the bridge as a character stands there in the background
[1:25:27] and it looms so big, which is why it had to be built for real,
[1:25:30] I think, for the audience to see this.
[1:25:32] It's like sour on at the end of Lord of the Rings.
[1:25:34] You don't really see the character, but it's just has
[1:25:37] this presence. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:25:38] And. Because of that presence, it
[1:25:39] really leads you through it. And I think having the bridge as
[1:25:42] the main character, no one, it's going to be destroyed.
[1:25:44] You can have the film as long as as you possibly want it to be,
[1:25:47] but it's the choices they make by getting to that and that this
[1:25:50] is 1 tiny story in the middle of World War 2, and I've no doubt
[1:25:54] this type of thing happened, but it's so small in the scale of
[1:25:58] it. They don't involve anything
[1:25:59] else. They don't do this with DDA
[1:26:01] happening in the background, they don't do this with an
[1:26:03] Allied invasion. And this needs to be done
[1:26:05] because they're invading and then the forces are going to win
[1:26:08] the war. It's so pointless.
[1:26:10] It's like a minor inconvenience for the enemy.
[1:26:12] Yeah, it's a minor story in this in World War 2, but he makes it
[1:26:16] front and centre and makes this story everything about World War
[1:26:20] 2. And that's part of the writing
[1:26:22] and that's part of the characterization, and that's
[1:26:24] what the actors bring to it. They just zoom in.
[1:26:26] It reminds me at the end of the burbs where it comes out and
[1:26:29] it's like there's planet Earth, but you've been concentrating on
[1:26:32] this cul-de-sac. It's like that was World War 2
[1:26:36] and we've just been looking at this for 3 1/2 hours and it
[1:26:38] seems so big. And I think that is down to the
[1:26:41] right and characterization, the way the play you through that
[1:26:43] story and that everything that you do in life, no matter how
[1:26:45] small you think it is, does have a big impact on the bigger
[1:26:48] picture. But you just saw zoomed into
[1:26:51] this, it speaks volumes. And then the volumes turned
[1:26:55] right down at the end and you don't even hear it anymore.
[1:26:58] It's brilliant, brilliantly done.
[1:27:00] The babes on the River Kwai you'll.
[1:27:02] Be trying to say that for the last 10 minutes.
[1:27:06] So Pierre Bull's novel The Bridge on the River Kwai was
[1:27:08] published in 1952. Yeah, he based on his own
[1:27:11] experiences as a prisoner of war in Hanaoi and Saigon in World
[1:27:14] War Two. Yeah, he wasn't involved in the
[1:27:16] building of a bridge, but based on the real life building of the
[1:27:19] Burma Railway in like 194243, right, For which the Japanese
[1:27:23] really did use Allied prisoners as labour.
[1:27:25] Yeah, apparently about 100,000 people died building the Burma
[1:27:29] Railway, which is absolutely crazy.
[1:27:31] That's insane. And the first person Sam Spiegel
[1:27:33] hired to adapt Builds book was called Foreman, mainly because
[1:27:37] of his writing on High Noon. But when Lean came in, he didn't
[1:27:39] like the script. So Spiegel hired another writer
[1:27:42] called called A Willingham to have a crack.
[1:27:44] But Lean didn't like that either.
[1:27:46] So Spiegel then hired Michael Wilson, who would just win an
[1:27:49] Oscar for A Place in the Sun. Right.
[1:27:51] Yeah. Tragic love story with Liz
[1:27:52] Taylor, A Place in the Sun. Yeah.
[1:27:54] And Speaking of beauties, and see, as Nurse wasn't in the
[1:27:57] book, she was out of the request of the studio because it said
[1:28:00] one of the characters needed the love interest.
[1:28:02] Yes. So obviously that had to be.
[1:28:03] She has. Yeah.
[1:28:04] Obviously, I thought you're going to say if the request of
[1:28:06] William Holden, he wouldn't do it unless they added that in.
[1:28:09] Absolutely. They said there was no white
[1:28:10] women in the film. Like we need to rectify this
[1:28:12] immediately. Right.
[1:28:13] Exactly. Yeah.
[1:28:14] So like we said earlier, Pierre Bull received credit for writing
[1:28:17] the screenplay when the film came out, even though he didn't
[1:28:20] write it whatsoever. The real writers, Michael Wilson
[1:28:22] and Carl Foreman, had been blacklisted in Hollywood after
[1:28:25] being accused of communism in the McCarthy witch hunt.
[1:28:28] That meant they couldn't be credited at all as writers.
[1:28:31] Yeah, apparently they fled to the UK in the middle of writing
[1:28:33] the film so they could finish it.
[1:28:34] Right. And Sam Spiegel had to credit
[1:28:36] someone as the writer for the obvious choice was Pierre Boule,
[1:28:39] right? Right.
[1:28:40] I was surprised he didn't just choose himself.
[1:28:42] To be honest. A picture by Sam Spiegel.
[1:28:48] And PA Bull couldn't even speak English, let alone write it.
[1:28:50] Exactly. How would you take all the
[1:28:52] credit though? Unbelievable.
[1:28:53] Yeah, but he didn't turn off for the Oscar in person, or did he?
[1:28:56] No, it was Kim Novak. Yeah, turned up to the Oscar.
[1:28:59] Yeah, OK. So the film had a fictional
[1:29:01] narrative, like we said, but lots of it is based on real life
[1:29:04] events. Bill said the character of
[1:29:06] Nicholson was an amalgamation of several collaborating French
[1:29:09] officers he came across in the camp and he was also based on a
[1:29:12] British officer called Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosie
[1:29:15] and he was a Japanese POW in Thailand and the men under his
[1:29:19] command were forced to build Bridge 277 to support the Burma
[1:29:22] Railway. Right, Yeah, he was a real life
[1:29:24] war hero, apparently. Philip to see.
[1:29:26] He sabotaged the building of his bridge by collecting termites to
[1:29:29] eat the wood. Nice.
[1:29:30] And he apparently made sure the concrete was mixed poorly.
[1:29:32] Right. Not a lot for Nicholson.
[1:29:33] No, No. How does the Peacock?
[1:29:34] Yeah, he. Loves it, yeah.
[1:29:36] Leg up. And Saito was based on Major
[1:29:39] Rasabiru Saito, who was the commandant at the camp where
[1:29:42] Philip Tusi was based. But unlike the Saito in the
[1:29:45] film, however, he had a reputation for being fair and
[1:29:48] reasonable. Yeah, and apparently the Tusi
[1:29:50] defended the real Saito. What?
[1:29:52] His war crimes trial after the war and he saved them from
[1:29:54] execution and they became friends.
[1:29:56] I can't imagine Nicholson and Saito becoming pals, no.
[1:29:59] Going for. Drinks, probably afterwards, you
[1:30:01] never know. And the real bridge wasn't built
[1:30:04] to run over the River Kwai, it was built over the Meklong
[1:30:07] River, which was nearby Bull. It seemed it had been built over
[1:30:10] the Kwai and just got the location wrong.
[1:30:12] Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.
[1:30:13] Well, plus it's a better title than the Bridge on the River
[1:30:15] Meklong, surely. Yeah.
[1:30:18] But in 1960, the Meklong River was renamed Kwai Yeah, because
[1:30:22] of the book in the film, So it's now called that.
[1:30:25] Oh, brilliant. OK, wow.
[1:30:26] For they're working right in the bridge in the River Kwai.
[1:30:28] Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson did not win an Oscar, but yeah,
[1:30:32] Bull did. Yeah.
[1:30:33] Unbelievable. He did all the work, obviously.
[1:30:35] Yeah, I think he was crediting the screenwriter by Spiegel.
[1:30:37] He was the person nominated. Absolutely shameless.
[1:30:40] Oh, Oscar is it. Thanks very much.
[1:30:42] Yeah. I love that.
[1:30:43] Yeah. Cheers.
[1:30:44] But he did turn up in person for, though, just really rubbing
[1:30:47] it in. And it wasn't Kim Novak.
[1:30:49] He's turned up. He's like now see.
[1:30:53] Gives the speech in French, Yeah.
[1:30:56] Brilliant. But then in 1984 the Academy
[1:30:58] corrected the screen writing credit and awarded the Oscar to
[1:31:01] call form in a Michael Wilson ride.
[1:31:03] However, sadly, neither were like to see it, so the studies
[1:31:05] were given to their families instead.
[1:31:07] Right. Yeah, better late than never, I
[1:31:09] guess. And for us, some excellent
[1:31:11] writing here that works on multiple levels.
[1:31:13] It does for multiple people, which is probably why.
[1:31:16] Just like a bridge. Absolutely.
[1:31:21] From the writing to the music. And the composer on the bridge
[1:31:23] in the River Kwai was Malcolm Arnold, a British writer with
[1:31:27] over 100 film scores to his name at this point.
[1:31:30] That's a lot. It is.
[1:31:31] Arnold had already worked with Lean twice before on The Sound
[1:31:34] Barrier and Hobson's Choice. Right?
[1:31:37] How is music here though, Matt? Does it make you cry?
[1:31:46] The music? I mean, it's always interesting,
[1:31:48] I think when you go this far back and you're talking about
[1:31:50] the music, because I kind of made this point on The Great
[1:31:52] Escape episode. This is obviously the era before
[1:31:55] the likes of John Williams would reinvent film music as
[1:31:58] soundtracks as we know them today.
[1:32:00] With music from beginning trend, this is much more soundtracks as
[1:32:04] flourishes, less is more. The music at the start, for
[1:32:06] example, is incredible, really dramatic, really bombastic.
[1:32:10] Let's you know what you're in for.
[1:32:12] And then the music after that, it's just like it just adds
[1:32:14] punctuation to the scene. So the use of Colonel Bogey that
[1:32:17] we've talked about the music right at the end, which is
[1:32:20] deliberately upbeat because that contrast to how bleak the actual
[1:32:23] ending is. But apart from that, there's not
[1:32:25] lost. And I'll talk about this later.
[1:32:27] But some scenes I think are all the more effective because they
[1:32:29] take place without music. So it's a different kind of
[1:32:32] musical error in film we're talking about.
[1:32:34] But what there is of it is excellent.
[1:32:37] I agree. I think the score isn't
[1:32:39] necessarily something that leaps out immediately when you first
[1:32:41] watch the film. But the more that you watch it,
[1:32:43] like we obviously have, yeah, I think you start to appreciate it
[1:32:45] more. Yeah.
[1:32:46] What stands out now is how sparingly the music's used.
[1:32:49] Huge parts of the film have no score at all.
[1:32:51] Yeah. Just the sounds of the jungle,
[1:32:52] birds chirping or insects buzzing.
[1:32:55] So when the music does come in, it's usually big and rousing and
[1:32:58] has a big impact. I think the finale is especially
[1:33:00] effective where there's no music at all, just like gunfire and
[1:33:03] shouting and explosions and sight or wandering around like a
[1:33:06] mute. Gives it all the sense of
[1:33:07] realism instead of heroism like you might normally get in this
[1:33:10] kind of film. And the main theme, I think does
[1:33:13] what Lee needed to. It's military and dignified, but
[1:33:17] seems to have this underlying sense of tension as well.
[1:33:20] Pretty perfect for a film about military guys kind of gone mad.
[1:33:23] And I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Arnold incorporates
[1:33:26] the Colonel Bogey March into the main theme.
[1:33:28] You kind of adapts the melody to fit the score.
[1:33:30] Yeah, which is a nice touch. OK, really nice.
[1:33:32] All right. Yeah, so an experience head in
[1:33:34] Markham Arnold, and I think that's yours.
[1:33:36] You know, when they come in big, you know when to hold back, when
[1:33:38] to stay silent even. I think this isn't just a
[1:33:40] talented composer, but one who understands film as well.
[1:33:44] Yeah. I think David Lean had a lot to
[1:33:45] say about it, as he did with everything else in the
[1:33:47] production. Yeah, and there's some big
[1:33:50] pounding themes in this. It just accentuates the visuals.
[1:33:53] As I've said so many times with great soundtracks, it just makes
[1:33:56] the visuals better. But it's the sound design of
[1:33:58] this film as well as the soundtrack itself that really
[1:34:01] sit together for me. And the way that they've both
[1:34:03] been thought through and they've both been really used as part of
[1:34:08] the layers of the visuals is the real layer to this soundtrack.
[1:34:11] Like you've just said there, you know that you use that whistle,
[1:34:13] but you've really got to look for it and it's very, very
[1:34:15] subtle and some very subtle moments in this.
[1:34:17] It's a really bombastic film with really bombastic visuals.
[1:34:21] There's some really bombastic bits on the soundtrack, but
[1:34:23] there's also bits that you'll really miss unless you listen to
[1:34:26] it independently, which I have done, and it's fantastic,
[1:34:28] nuanced, but a really, really wonderful, a really rounded
[1:34:32] soundtrack. I think it really marries the
[1:34:33] visuals very, very well. It does.
[1:34:35] It's a big part of it, isn't? It.
[1:34:37] Yeah, definitely. Sam Spiegel He actually wanted
[1:34:39] to release the movie by December 31st, 1957, because that would
[1:34:44] make it eligible for the Oscars. But in early December, the
[1:34:47] scores still hadn't been written.
[1:34:49] So we hired Malcolm Arnold, who had a reputation for working
[1:34:51] quickly and told me at 10 days tried all the music.
[1:34:54] That's crazy. It is crazy.
[1:34:56] Well, Arnold said. It was the hardest job he ever
[1:34:58] did, but he did finish all the music in time.
[1:35:00] Boom. That is an insane brief.
[1:35:02] James Cameron Brief. It is for aliens, isn't it?
[1:35:05] Is. Yeah.
[1:35:07] I mean, not that it's yours. I think the music sounds pretty
[1:35:09] like sophisticated. It does even more so when you
[1:35:12] know you had 10 days to do it. For the amount of nuance that's
[1:35:14] in it as well, like the depth in the layers, it's thinking he
[1:35:17] must have loads of time to do this, but no.
[1:35:19] Exactly. Yeah, it's impressive.
[1:35:20] Yeah, The sound that on the film was Eric Boyd Perkins.
[1:35:23] He was the person who had to record the men whistling the
[1:35:25] Colonel Bogey March when they came in.
[1:35:27] Now, that's no hard feat at this point.
[1:35:28] That's got to be really difficult to do that.
[1:35:31] And the men he brought in was struggling to whistle in time,
[1:35:33] so he brought in Malcolm Arnold's flute player called
[1:35:36] John Scott to help. He came in with his piccolo and
[1:35:39] played the March while watching the film, and the others all
[1:35:42] whistled along. And that's what we hear in the
[1:35:44] final film, like the Pied Piper. Absolutely brilliant.
[1:35:47] Just walking along, loving that. Yeah, John Scott said that he
[1:35:51] was furious because helping with the recording made him miss his
[1:35:54] lunch. Is that it?
[1:35:56] I'll be gutted as well. On B for lunch.
[1:36:00] But despite only being given 10 days to write the score for The
[1:36:02] Bridge in the River Kwai, Malcolm Arnold managed to be
[1:36:05] nominated for and win the Oscar for Best Original Score.
[1:36:08] Brilliant. Surely there can't be too many
[1:36:10] Oscar winning scores Compose as quickly as that.
[1:36:12] Surely I. Don't think so, Definitely.
[1:36:14] Not and for us, a sparing score, but pretty expertly judged.
[1:36:18] Yes, wonderful. Now let's talk about the man who
[1:36:22] was responsible for capturing the Burmese jungle on the
[1:36:24] screen. That's Directory of Photography,
[1:36:26] Jack Hildyard. Yeah, like Mark Model, he'd
[1:36:29] already worked with Lean on the sound barrier and Hobson's
[1:36:31] Choice. Yeah, which is why Lean brought
[1:36:33] him in here. A bit different.
[1:36:35] Filming in sale on Northwest here.
[1:36:37] Absolutely. How did Jack Hildyard's work
[1:36:39] hold up? I mean, these patients held up.
[1:36:42] Let's be perfectly honest. That's the first thing.
[1:36:43] I mean, this was shot on the Mitchell BNC, which was the
[1:36:46] Mitchell Blimp noiseless camera, which was invented so there
[1:36:49] wasn't any noise on set, which was famously used in Citizen
[1:36:52] Kane. It was invented in 1934.
[1:36:55] Big camera metal construction. Heavy as hell.
[1:36:58] Really heavy. It's like shooting IMAX now, I
[1:37:01] guess back in there and putting that through the jungle and
[1:37:03] going through everything else and making sure it worked and
[1:37:05] was, yeah, it's just an incredible task, an incredible
[1:37:08] feat. A lot of this is David Lean, as
[1:37:11] I've mentioned before, kind of shooting on a 16 mill frame and
[1:37:14] it got themselves taking the crew with them.
[1:37:16] But Jack Hildyard's work on this, I mean, shooting this
[1:37:18] anamorphic as well, which for anyone who doesn't know,
[1:37:20] basically what would happen is this is going to be in cinema
[1:37:22] scope, which is 70 mil when it's projected.
[1:37:24] So it's shot in 35 mil film, but it's shot in anamorphic lenses.
[1:37:27] So it squashes the frame, right? Yeah, right.
[1:37:29] Through anamorphic lens. And then when it's projected,
[1:37:31] it's projected to a different lens which stretches it to fill
[1:37:34] that full wide screen cinema scope.
[1:37:36] And that's where cinema scope came from.
[1:37:38] It's kind of one of the earliest films shot anamorphic as well.
[1:37:41] So he's really, really finding his feet here and does some
[1:37:44] incredible work. I mean, just the frame into this
[1:37:47] film, just the composition by itself is incredible.
[1:37:50] A thorough war film. The camera doesn't really move.
[1:37:53] It's the composition. You could just put all of the
[1:37:55] frames of this film next to each of that, walk around the room
[1:37:57] and look at it and it'll tell the story.
[1:38:00] Incredible, incredible work. And for somebody to achieve
[1:38:04] David Lean's vision on his step towards Lawrence of Arabia from
[1:38:09] smaller films, Hildyard needs massive kudos for this, massive
[1:38:14] credit for this. Like I say, he's patient.
[1:38:16] Stays intact. Because I'm sure Lean absolutely
[1:38:18] dragged him through every conceivable nightmare to make
[1:38:22] this film happen. And he did it so beautifully
[1:38:25] that the look of this film cannot be debated.
[1:38:28] It cannot be. Because without this, you
[1:38:29] haven't got Lawrence of Arabia. Without Lawrence of Arabia, you
[1:38:31] haven't got 2001. It starts stepping up from this.
[1:38:34] And somebody had to do it. And that person who did it was
[1:38:37] David Lean. But the person who should have
[1:38:39] taken a little bit more of the credit was Jack Hillyard.
[1:38:41] And nobody talks about him enough.
[1:38:42] And they really should, because he fucking pulls it off here.
[1:38:45] I agree. Jack Hill yard jumping, Jack
[1:38:47] Flash, yeah, what he does, he has incredible.
[1:38:50] And when you consider the shooting entirely on location,
[1:38:52] in a sail, on jungle with 50s equipment like you're seeing
[1:38:54] rusty, it's even more impressive how it still holds up. 30s
[1:38:57] equipment 1934 This camera came out exactly Yeah, ridiculous.
[1:39:02] Although he frames the characters, there's a shot in
[1:39:03] the first act when Nicholson leaves the Hut after he's been
[1:39:05] talking to She hasn't the men. He walks away but stays centred
[1:39:08] in the door frame in the background.
[1:39:10] Yeah, like a classic wave showing us when someone, like,
[1:39:12] trapped or confined. And Nicholson is by his own,
[1:39:14] like, rigid thinking. But I think it's a landscape
[1:39:17] shots that I love most. So many moments where we see
[1:39:20] these tiny human figures set against a backdrop of, like, the
[1:39:23] massive jungle or mountains. There's a shot when we were on
[1:39:26] the jungle track with Walden and his team.
[1:39:28] He's lagging miles behind him because he's injured.
[1:39:30] He's in the front of the frame with one of the Thai girls.
[1:39:32] In the distance. We can see the rest of his party
[1:39:34] climbing the mountain. Yeah.
[1:39:35] What a shot that is. Yeah.
[1:39:37] Hang it in the Louvre that. Yeah, I mean, there's so many
[1:39:39] shots at the tour boat, but just look at how much depth there is
[1:39:41] to these frames. Yeah.
[1:39:42] How much is in the foreground and not lit and out of focus.
[1:39:46] Seidel steps out and in between his legs is Nicholson stood with
[1:39:50] attention. Sergio Leone shot.
[1:39:51] It's just incredible. It's just you've got all of this
[1:39:54] foreground sort of happening in everybody's frame, within a
[1:39:57] frame within a frame in the background.
[1:39:59] Watch this film again. At any point, just pause it and
[1:40:02] look at it and go there's foreground, there's mid ground,
[1:40:04] there's background, there's depth to this frame.
[1:40:07] It's so, so well done, the depths.
[1:40:09] Unbelievable. It's difficult to look past
[1:40:11] Lawrence of ABS David Lean's most stunning looking film
[1:40:14] probably, but quite definitely a 4 runner of that.
[1:40:16] Oh absolutely. You can see him building up to
[1:40:19] it and he's relying hugely on Jack Hildyard to do it.
[1:40:21] Yeah, To me, it was striking that Hildyard didn't come back
[1:40:24] for Lawrence of Arabia, which was Freddie Young, obviously.
[1:40:26] But I mean, his work here really sets the.
[1:40:28] He's made Freddie Young's life a little bit easier by going, this
[1:40:31] is a bit of a blueprint, yeah. Maybe come up with some cool
[1:40:34] transitions and we're pretty much there.
[1:40:35] Yeah. I mean, by no means about
[1:40:38] bringing down Freddie Young's work there at all.
[1:40:39] I mean, he's incredible as well, but he set some perimeters here.
[1:40:42] It just boggles my mind the challenges of shooting this on
[1:40:45] location, the heat, the train, changeable weather conditions,
[1:40:49] none of those are conducive to a comfortable shoot.
[1:40:52] So the fact that they did do it, and they've pulled it off to a
[1:40:54] degree where everything is seamlessly put together, there's
[1:40:58] no actual sense of stress in how this film looks, which, if I'm
[1:41:01] quite remarkable, they've made it look easy, which we'll keep
[1:41:03] saying they make this look easy. And it was surely anything but.
[1:41:07] I mean, you're obviously shooting these locations.
[1:41:09] Of course it's going to look incredible.
[1:41:10] And those fast landscapes are staggering.
[1:41:13] But the shooting in water, there's so many potential
[1:41:16] pitfalls, and it cleaves them all.
[1:41:17] And they don't just rely on the location doing the work for
[1:41:20] them. There's that incredible shot
[1:41:21] where the camera is looking up at Nicholson as he's standing in
[1:41:24] the heat with a sun blazing above him.
[1:41:26] So yeah, yeah, yeah. It's something where the more
[1:41:28] you think about it, the more impressive it is what they've
[1:41:30] done here. Yeah, the crew don't look like
[1:41:32] they're struggling at all. No, they don't.
[1:41:34] Everyone in front of the camera is really struggling where the
[1:41:36] crew look like they're in a lovely tent just having a great
[1:41:38] time. This is perfect.
[1:41:40] Yeah, it is crazy. So getting into some Jack Hill
[1:41:43] Yards work and what he went do in this is just incredible.
[1:41:46] He went to some lens to capture the kind of visuals we're
[1:41:48] talking about here. So to film the scene when the
[1:41:51] paratroopers jumped from the plane, Hilliard strapped himself
[1:41:54] to the wing of the plane. We'll talk about Tom Cruise.
[1:41:56] I'm talking about Jack Hilliard every single step of the way,
[1:41:59] strapped himself to the wing of the plane and shot the jump
[1:42:01] himself with a handheld 16 mil camera.
[1:42:05] Unbelievable. He is jumping Jack Flash.
[1:42:07] He is. One of the paratroopers dies in
[1:42:08] that jump as well, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah, probably.
[1:42:10] He's one of the cameramen. Yeah.
[1:42:12] Just fell, man. Probably Hilliards.
[1:42:15] Why he didn't come back for Lawrence of Arabia?
[1:42:19] Yeah, it's spiel goes like just fake.
[1:42:20] He's dead. It's part.
[1:42:22] And David Lane had a reputation for being a bit of a taskmaster
[1:42:24] and a perfectionist. The crew had to go through
[1:42:27] difficult conditions in the shoot, like personally looking
[1:42:30] heavy 1930s camera equipment around the jungle for hours on
[1:42:33] end, and there was a famous myth about quiet that Lane made the
[1:42:36] crew trek 150 miles to just get one shot he wanted for the film.
[1:42:40] However, it isn't true and Lane said if he did do something like
[1:42:43] that, he'd have been out of a job out.
[1:42:45] Of the job, yeah, I've seen that interview.
[1:42:46] It's amazing, that interview. Though, Yeah, it's great.
[1:42:48] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:42:49] That shot in question comes towards the end when sighted,
[1:42:52] when Nicholson. They're on the finished bridge.
[1:42:54] Sighter comes over and goes beautiful and we're cut to the
[1:42:56] sun setting over the mountains. Yes, like 3 seconds or
[1:42:59] something. And people were like, you made
[1:43:00] them walk 150 miles without one shot.
[1:43:03] Even he's not no. It's Fincher esque, a cool bit.
[1:43:06] Maybe for his work on The Bridge in the River Choir.
[1:43:09] Jack Hildiard won the Oscar for Best Cinematography.
[1:43:12] Good. Beating out in A Fair to
[1:43:13] Remember, Funny Face and Peyton Place.
[1:43:16] And you went on to be a founding member of the BSc?
[1:43:18] Yeah, the British Society of Cinematographers.
[1:43:20] So, right. Significant career legend.
[1:43:22] Absolutely. Definitely.
[1:43:24] And for us, a well deserved Oscar for what you did here, I
[1:43:26] think incredible. Work.
[1:43:27] And he did the wild keys. Brilliant.
[1:43:29] Yeah, so that is the crew behind the bridge, and it's a notable
[1:43:32] 1. We've got Carl Foreman and
[1:43:34] Michael Wilson crafting a complex screenplay they couldn't
[1:43:37] put their names on, Malcolm Arnold writing in Oscar winning
[1:43:39] a score in 10 Days Flat. And Jack Hill, you are risking
[1:43:42] life and limb to capture some stunning vistas.
[1:43:45] No wonder, really. The film looks and sounds as
[1:43:47] good as it does. Yeah.
[1:43:48] Absolutely the end. The final act of the bridge on
[1:43:57] the River Kauai sees our two major storylines come crashing
[1:44:00] together. The climactic battle on the
[1:44:02] bridge where Nicholson discovers the explosives is coming up, but
[1:44:05] first we're going to see how both sides get ready for what's
[1:44:08] about to go down. They are.
[1:44:10] So nightfall at the bridge and Borden and Shia's commando team
[1:44:13] are in position while Nicholson throws a party to celebrate his
[1:44:16] bridge. He loves that bridge.
[1:44:18] He really does he. Really.
[1:44:19] Does the commandos float downriver to plant their
[1:44:21] explosives? Two very different preparations
[1:44:24] for what will be a pretty eventful morning.
[1:44:26] Yeah. So times like the fuse, Westy.
[1:44:28] As you would love to do. Yeah.
[1:44:30] How is it all looking for you? I mean, when they float down and
[1:44:33] the start set the charge, it's a great sense of peril here.
[1:44:36] There's a real slow move and it's really building it and
[1:44:40] there's just these layers to everything that's going on and
[1:44:43] it's just intercut with this wonderful song and dance
[1:44:45] routine, which is like Tropic Thunder.
[1:44:48] You know, it's ripped that off massively and it's played
[1:44:51] through and through all, but it's just wonderful to see
[1:44:54] Nicholson laughing at that point.
[1:44:56] Again, this is shot day for night, which you can really
[1:44:58] tell. I mean, the sunlights bouncing
[1:45:00] off the river for God's sake. It's not like moonlight.
[1:45:03] It is fucking golden. Maybe desaturated slightly, but
[1:45:08] I mean, at the time it would have just been, this looks
[1:45:09] great, fantastic role with it, but you've got that peril.
[1:45:12] And again, we're talking about camera motivations and camera
[1:45:15] movements. They're coming down the Rapids
[1:45:17] and that is in a wanna. That's just, we'll pan down with
[1:45:19] it because the movement then matches the movement of the
[1:45:22] characters. It's not unnecessary.
[1:45:24] And we're not in the boat with them, with the with the water
[1:45:26] splashing over the side. You don't need that.
[1:45:29] You need this slow build. This is the start of the end
[1:45:33] now. It's like the start of a roller
[1:45:34] coaster where you go, you don't go up quick.
[1:45:36] You just, he really builds the tension because it's good to
[1:45:39] each character. They've got them brilliant
[1:45:42] little beanies on. He's like completely covered in
[1:45:45] the darkness. And you just think, surely
[1:45:48] someone would say that the Japanese are absolutely rubbish.
[1:45:50] Like if Nicholson was on that bridge, which you should have
[1:45:52] been patrolling it, you could have seen them a mile away.
[1:45:55] But it's great because you just see that what I wanted to see
[1:45:57] through all of the films is really great wooden spools of
[1:46:01] the charges getting put on and wrapped around the bridge.
[1:46:04] And you're like, yeah, this is a World War Two film.
[1:46:06] This is what I remember from these epics.
[1:46:08] But it's just the build attention, that slow, slow build
[1:46:11] of tension of them moving down the river, attacking this
[1:46:14] bridge, which everyone's now proud of.
[1:46:17] There's a model that's built behind them.
[1:46:20] Again, exact model. Who's done that?
[1:46:22] Who's had the time to do that? But they're not so busy.
[1:46:25] It's an impossible task to build the actual bridge.
[1:46:28] But get someone on this because we're doing a song and dance
[1:46:31] thing. So we need a little model behind
[1:46:32] them. Let's do that.
[1:46:33] Who the fuck's in charge of that?
[1:46:35] But at the same time, Aline should have seen that and went
[1:46:38] well. If we just blow that up, we're
[1:46:40] going to save yourself a substantial amount of money, get
[1:46:42] the train set and just put it across it and blow that up.
[1:46:45] But yeah, this is just the start of the end, the build of the
[1:46:47] tension. Let's see where it goes.
[1:46:49] But you've always got this element of doubt.
[1:46:51] Your heart starts to sink at this point.
[1:46:52] You think this isn't going to go well?
[1:46:55] No, it doesn't for most of them. I mean, those wide shots where
[1:46:58] we finally see the bridge in all its glory?
[1:47:00] Fantastic. And this whole sequence where
[1:47:02] the commandos are sneaking down the river up to the bridge.
[1:47:05] Yeah, it feels like the template for every kind of I've seen in a
[1:47:07] war film since. Yeah, it's pitch black, creeping
[1:47:11] through the water, guards patrolling above, everyone
[1:47:13] holding the breath. Every Bond film has one of these
[1:47:16] scenes. It's normally the opening, isn't
[1:47:19] it? Yeah, the only true lies.
[1:47:20] Yeah, it is. Yeah.
[1:47:21] Spielberg's seen this as well for sure.
[1:47:24] But this does feel like the original and no wonder it seems
[1:47:26] to influential because I think it's really well done.
[1:47:28] I love how he lean shifts the tone.
[1:47:30] Everything has gotten darker, literally with the day for night
[1:47:32] in the lighting, but the whole atmosphere has suddenly got more
[1:47:35] serious. Sinister, isn't it?
[1:47:37] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she has to.
[1:47:39] Joyce, I wish you were long and happy life before he swims off.
[1:47:42] It feels like things are about to kick right off and then
[1:47:45] everyone just goes to sleep, Yeah.
[1:47:48] Amazing. I know it leaves up in any rush,
[1:47:50] but Gordon should be. Surely we'll do it in the
[1:47:53] morning. Yeah, but it's really good,
[1:47:55] Those images of the commandos floating down the river and the
[1:47:57] dog, beautiful and ominous at the same time.
[1:48:00] I love it. Yeah.
[1:48:01] But building the bridge for the film was a whole project of its
[1:48:03] own. So to design how wood would
[1:48:06] look, Lane gave his concept artist a photograph of the real
[1:48:08] bridge to base his designs on. It was designed and planned over
[1:48:12] 2 years of pre production and then built on location over 8
[1:48:15] months. 1500 trees were cut down to build it. 500 workers were
[1:48:19] involved and it cost $250,000, which was the biggest
[1:48:23] construction in sale on at the time.
[1:48:25] That amount of money back then, do you know how much that would
[1:48:28] cost now? And we're talking about, you
[1:48:29] know, the bridge in the song and dance sequence, right?
[1:48:31] If they're blowing that up, you know how much they would have
[1:48:33] saved, £2.8 million. Wow, wow.
[1:48:37] Bloody hell. 2.8 million is what it would cost now to build that.
[1:48:41] Wow, that yeah, I mean, it looks incredible, isn't it?
[1:48:44] It looks unreal. And they had 35 elephants to
[1:48:46] help carry the wooden the materials, but the wild
[1:48:48] elephants. So they would just wander off
[1:48:50] where the light and go for a swim.
[1:48:52] Spiegel just be like, here's the action scene.
[1:48:54] Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a beautiful bridge,
[1:48:58] to be fair. Fair player.
[1:48:59] Nicholson, he delivered it. He did.
[1:49:01] Yeah. Yeah, it's lovely.
[1:49:03] Yeah, so we've mentioned that there's a party going on at the
[1:49:05] same time. And I know again, it's like the
[1:49:06] food situation. Beggars can't be choosers, but
[1:49:08] this is my ID of entertainment. Like Prince and the bar with
[1:49:11] coconut Ros and like the Madonna or something like Ballou.
[1:49:15] Ballou. Yeah, I think just have an early
[1:49:16] night instead, lads. No thanks.
[1:49:19] But seems you know what's great about the scene?
[1:49:20] It's another example of how the film is constantly pulling
[1:49:24] Nicholson back from the S just when you think he's gone too far
[1:49:26] because just before this, he saw that amazing monologue on the
[1:49:29] bridge. Yeah.
[1:49:30] About his past achievements and military life.
[1:49:33] And he gives a speech about, yes, I understand why you may
[1:49:36] feel let down by what you've done, but you'll get home one
[1:49:39] day. And when that day comes, you can
[1:49:41] reflect what you've done in the face of adversity, and you can
[1:49:43] be proud of it. And you listen to it, and you
[1:49:45] go. He's got a point.
[1:49:47] Yeah, it's a speech. It's fantastic.
[1:49:49] Yeah. Yeah, well, it is.
[1:49:50] And you go maybe ever. The Nissan up until now has been
[1:49:53] for the men's morale and for the greater good.
[1:49:55] And maybe it's our perspective that's wrong on it.
[1:49:58] So Guinness really sells out. But what's also interesting is
[1:50:01] Lean is into cutting this with those scenes of sight or
[1:50:04] seemingly preparing to kill himself.
[1:50:06] But then he kind of shelves it. And you think, is he going to
[1:50:09] wait until he at least has the satisfaction of seeing the train
[1:50:12] cross the bridge and then do it? Is he going to kill Nicholson at
[1:50:15] some point for busy humiliating him for the last few months?
[1:50:18] Or even at this late stage? The film would just get in these
[1:50:21] really the interesting character moments that show them in a
[1:50:23] different light. Yeah, it is really good.
[1:50:25] I mean, while the commanders are sitting there, bombs,
[1:50:27] Nicholson's having his moment of glory.
[1:50:29] Finally, that speech that he gave us talking about how when
[1:50:32] the wars are over and they've all gone, the bridge will still
[1:50:34] be there. I mean, he's wrong, obviously.
[1:50:35] He'll be blown to smithereens in a couple of hours.
[1:50:38] But he still doesn't seem to grasp that he hasn't built this
[1:50:40] for king and country. He's built it for the enemy.
[1:50:42] Yeah. And Gainer sells that really
[1:50:43] well. And Seidel just sitting there
[1:50:45] grinning, can't believe his luck.
[1:50:46] Yeah, he tortured Nicholson Fume in the oven, and he's building
[1:50:49] the best bridge in Burma. But Nicholson in this whole
[1:50:53] scene with the weeds, kind of sells the pompous pride in what
[1:50:55] they've done. Yeah.
[1:50:56] Absolutely fantastic. Yeah.
[1:50:58] Ian Watt was a professor of English at Stratford and had
[1:51:01] been a prisoner of a real camp and worked on the real bridge.
[1:51:05] Liam brought him in act as a consultant during the shoot to
[1:51:07] advise on how the team worked and how the bridge looked.
[1:51:10] From POW to David, lean out of the frying pan of the fire.
[1:51:14] Absolutely. It's like it would be easier.
[1:51:18] But Ian what said that the film didn't capture the real horror
[1:51:21] and the real like suffering of building the railway except for
[1:51:24] like a few scenes. Of course not.
[1:51:25] I mean it must have been bad. 100,000 people died building the
[1:51:28] railway. Yeah, be.
[1:51:29] Disgusting. We don't see that side at all
[1:51:31] really. That does seem like a bit of a
[1:51:33] missed opportunity storytelling wise maybe.
[1:51:35] It's hard, though, because then who are you supposed to follow?
[1:51:38] Because Nicholson would look even more maniacal.
[1:51:40] You'd look even even more insane.
[1:51:41] Yeah, he would in the face of that.
[1:51:43] Like he doesn't care about his men then, because he wouldn't
[1:51:45] let this happen. Yeah.
[1:51:46] Yeah. So you have to go down one Rd.
[1:51:48] I guess. It's a fairpoint, yeah.
[1:51:50] Either way, the bridge is there, and Nicholson's probably as can
[1:51:53] be for now. He is, yeah.
[1:51:54] Should we see what happens in the climax?
[1:51:56] Let's do it. The sun rises on the bridges
[1:52:00] first day of operation, but as Nicholson goes for his morning
[1:52:03] inspection, he notices something.
[1:52:05] The tide is lowered, showing the wires leading to Warden's
[1:52:08] explosives. Yeah.
[1:52:09] What follows is one of the cinema's most famous for now is,
[1:52:12] which is destroyed. Every main character.
[1:52:14] Bob Warden is killed in a shoot out and Nicholson delivers one
[1:52:17] of Hollywood's most famous final lines.
[1:52:19] Yeah, he does. Matt, what has he done?
[1:52:22] What has he done indeed? I mean, I'll tell you what
[1:52:25] Lane's done. He's delivered a master class in
[1:52:27] building tension. Because this plays that note if
[1:52:31] we know something some of the out of the counters don't, that
[1:52:33] the bridge is being rigged with explosives.
[1:52:35] Yeah, so effectively you sort of hear the trainer, and this is
[1:52:39] what I mean by seeing some play with no music and it's all the
[1:52:41] better. No music here, just the sound of
[1:52:44] it on the tracks getting closer and closer.
[1:52:46] See, we know they've got a hold out just for a couple of minutes
[1:52:50] until it's close enough to blow the bridge and the train at the
[1:52:53] same time. And I think she is speaks for
[1:52:56] everyone when he's watching Nicholson, who's seen The Wire,
[1:52:58] and he's going back and forth. What's he doing?
[1:53:01] Because, yeah, what is he doing? Has he gone so far over the side
[1:53:04] he's actually going to stop this from happening?
[1:53:06] Because he walks away at 1st and he pauses and he comes back and
[1:53:09] he can see it all ticking over in his mind.
[1:53:11] And as it's ticking over again, the constant sound of that train
[1:53:14] in the whistle getting louder and louder and closer and
[1:53:17] closer. And then that's it.
[1:53:19] It's that realization that Warden makes.
[1:53:21] He's gone mad. He's leading them right to it.
[1:53:24] Our own man. So all that character ambiguity
[1:53:27] with Nicholson has been building up to this moment.
[1:53:29] So it's not just the tension of or they're going to be able to
[1:53:32] blow up the bridge at the same time as the train comes across.
[1:53:35] It's also the tension of is Nicholson actually going to stop
[1:53:38] them at this point? Yeah, I always get that.
[1:53:40] Yeah. And.
[1:53:41] It's superbly ramped up, and I just love that visual of
[1:53:44] Nicholson finding the white and slowly pulling it up out of the
[1:53:48] sand. And they're being revealed.
[1:53:50] Yeah, brilliant. The men comes trading onto the
[1:53:52] bridge, whistling Colonel Bogey again.
[1:53:54] Nicholson had a plaque made. Yeah.
[1:53:56] Who made the plaque? Who made the plaque?
[1:53:58] That guy. That's the hero for me because
[1:54:01] that plaque is fucking Immaculate.
[1:54:02] Beautiful, isn't it? It's a placulate, if you will.
[1:54:08] Craftsmanship. Yeah, brilliant.
[1:54:10] Mean the pride in what they've done is madness.
[1:54:11] But I buy it. I buy the illusion.
[1:54:13] It all works really well. Yeah.
[1:54:15] The reveal, the way the Nicholson spots the wires and
[1:54:17] follows them. It is great sight.
[1:54:18] Or just after him with no words. Yeah.
[1:54:21] These guys are meant to be enemies.
[1:54:22] They're now on the same side basically.
[1:54:24] Yeah. And the look on Nicholsons face
[1:54:26] when he realizes someones trying to destroy the bridge.
[1:54:28] He still doesn't get it. And again, it's great stuff from
[1:54:31] Guinness to sell it. Yeah, and Joyce just throwing
[1:54:33] sand on the wire to try and hide the bomb.
[1:54:35] You'll need more than that, pal. It's massive.
[1:54:38] He does all right, though, to be fair, he.
[1:54:39] Does do, all right. And then he stabs sight.
[1:54:41] Or about time, to be honest. He's done nothing for two hours,
[1:54:44] Sido. But that reveal of the wires in
[1:54:46] the water when he pulls them out, I think that's really good.
[1:54:49] Yeah, yeah, it's great. I mean, there's that lovely
[1:54:51] speech when he's on the bridge and he's talking about his life.
[1:54:53] Yeah. And I think that's an incredible
[1:54:55] performance from Guinness because he's just, he feels like
[1:54:57] he's achieved something and he feels like this is the end of
[1:54:59] his journey and this is something he's really
[1:55:01] accomplished and he's proud of. Which hits home even harder
[1:55:04] because I always think he's going to turn around and go
[1:55:06] upright nor right. I know what side I'm on.
[1:55:08] And you're right, he's a complete turncoat here.
[1:55:10] He is working for the enemy whether he likes it or not.
[1:55:13] And he she would probably be court martialed if he got out of
[1:55:15] it. I would imagine so, yeah, he
[1:55:16] would. Probably be held accountable
[1:55:18] before what he's done. Why would why is this being done
[1:55:20] so well? Why was it moved 400 yards
[1:55:22] downriver? Well, you wondered.
[1:55:24] Duress, like we've said, this build a tension that goes up and
[1:55:26] up and up. Lean builds the tension better
[1:55:28] than he builds the bridge. And it costs them 2 million to
[1:55:31] do that. So that's how good this sequence
[1:55:33] is. And it just gets better from
[1:55:34] here. And the swords are tasked with
[1:55:36] detonating the bridges. Lieutenant Joyce and he's played
[1:55:38] by Geoffrey Horne. But Lean's first choice to blame
[1:55:41] was Montgomery Clift. And Lean and Sam Spiegel had
[1:55:44] dinner with Clift at a famous restaurant in New York called
[1:55:46] Danny's Hideaway, but it went very badly.
[1:55:49] Sam Spiegels wife Betty said Monty was taking pills and was
[1:55:53] only vaguely coherent. He'd answer with non secateurs
[1:55:56] like the sky is blue. And he then collapsed into
[1:55:59] Bettys lap and they decided to cast somebody else.
[1:56:03] Yeah, Montgomery Cliff had a famous Cox and in 1956 and
[1:56:07] apparently became addicted to painkillers afterwards and then
[1:56:09] alcohol, which is what was going on at the time.
[1:56:11] And I imagine the role would have been made quite a lot
[1:56:13] bigger if Montgomery Clift had been cast as Joyce.
[1:56:16] Yeah, yeah, He's a big name at the time, wasn't he?
[1:56:18] He would have been stabbing no problem.
[1:56:20] Yeah. I would have done it.
[1:56:22] I did do it. Clifton there.
[1:56:25] I will mention that wonderful speech on the bridge that
[1:56:27] Douglson has. That discussion was said about
[1:56:29] his career in the military. He's looking over the sunset and
[1:56:32] Lean shot Guinness from behind, which Guinness didn't like at
[1:56:36] all. He thought it should have been
[1:56:37] done in close up. I mean, he's going to argue with
[1:56:39] Lean about that kind of shit. Like obviously he hadn't seen it
[1:56:42] then, but that an argument on set about it.
[1:56:44] But Lean obviously got his way. Yeah, I like that's how he's
[1:56:47] delivering this huge monologue, but it's shot as if it's like
[1:56:50] nothing. Yeah, kind of four showers in a
[1:56:51] few minutes. All his work will have been for
[1:56:53] nothing. Exactly.
[1:56:54] Being a bit pointless. Yeah.
[1:56:56] But the monologue is powerful. Like he ruminates on his life,
[1:56:58] how he's like. There are times when suddenly
[1:57:00] you realize you're nearer the end in the beginning.
[1:57:02] Yeah. I love that line.
[1:57:03] That's great. Obviously, he's very near the
[1:57:05] end now. He just doesn't kind of know it
[1:57:06] yet. Yeah, so are we.
[1:57:08] It's great when near the end of the film, when near the end of
[1:57:10] the story. I thought you made us free our
[1:57:12] lives. Not us personally.
[1:57:13] Like we're not going to die tomorrow.
[1:57:18] You know something we don't? I wish I did.
[1:57:20] No, I don't. But that's how we feel as an
[1:57:22] audience because we're near the end.
[1:57:24] We're thinking, how is this going to end?
[1:57:25] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:57:25] Where are we going from here? And then you get to the final
[1:57:28] bit, which the film has been building up to the battle, the
[1:57:31] explosion and the build up to this has been so painstakingly
[1:57:35] put together by Lean. It's like watching someone
[1:57:38] playing Chessy's 15 moves ahead of everyone else, and this is
[1:57:41] when he brings it together for checkmate.
[1:57:43] We know the river's gone down, we know where Joyce is with the
[1:57:45] plunger and how exposed he is. We know she's is on the other
[1:57:49] side of the river so he gone too much.
[1:57:50] And we know Warden stuck up on the hill with his broken ankle,
[1:57:53] so he can't do very much either. And Lean just brings it together
[1:57:57] so masterfully and it always shocks me, no matter how many
[1:57:59] times I see just how badly this goes for them.
[1:58:02] Like we've had our doubts about Joyce's ability to kill face to
[1:58:05] face from the soldier in the jungle, but here he knife sight
[1:58:09] or no problem. But then he shot and killed.
[1:58:12] And then she is tries to get across and stop Nicholson, but
[1:58:14] he shot and killed Warden just firing indiscriminately.
[1:58:18] And then it comes to the moment, which is all about Nicholson and
[1:58:21] Guinness's finest one. Because that realization, just
[1:58:24] that one small line of dialogue, what have I done?
[1:58:28] That could be really Harmy. But he feels it was so much
[1:58:30] horror and regret. And this could have ended in
[1:58:32] such a variety of ways. Joyce could briefly recover and
[1:58:35] get to The detonator. She is could get there and make
[1:58:38] it his die in action. But no, it has to be Nicholson,
[1:58:41] the man who's done so much to build a bridge.
[1:58:43] He has to be the one to destroy it.
[1:58:44] And his collapse is justifiably iconic.
[1:58:47] But the bit that gets me is just before that, when he picks
[1:58:50] himself up after the explosion from the water and he just
[1:58:53] starts to dust down his hat because even now his first
[1:58:57] instinct is, well, I've got to be proper, that's a British Army
[1:59:00] cup. That's got to look smart.
[1:59:02] I mean, this is a film which is built into precisely 1P off the
[1:59:06] explosion. And it doesn't disappoint on a
[1:59:09] visual level or on a character level.
[1:59:11] It's absolutely spectacular. Yeah, we have been building up
[1:59:14] this moment since star of the film, more or less.
[1:59:17] And when it comes, it's chaos slightly.
[1:59:19] When Joyce, I go on gunfire everywhere.
[1:59:22] She has confronts Nicholson and he's like you, you anyone but
[1:59:27] the bronze God. Great.
[1:59:29] But the famous part of the ending is obviously Nicholsons.
[1:59:31] What have I done? He finally realizes what's
[1:59:33] happened and it's massive. Does he fall on the plunger
[1:59:36] deliberately? Do you think to blow up the
[1:59:38] bridge? I think so.
[1:59:39] Yeah, I like the ambiguity of it, I'm just not sure.
[1:59:42] I like the ambiguity of it as well, and I guess it doesn't
[1:59:44] really matter. The royal dead, it's all been
[1:59:46] pointless except for Warden. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:59:48] But for a 1950s war movie, it's such a bleak ending.
[1:59:51] There's no heroes or villains, really, just the point that says
[1:59:54] of it all. Yeah.
[1:59:55] The bridge collapsing is a great show.
[1:59:57] And there does feel like, well, yeah, that was all pointless
[1:59:59] then, which I guess is the point.
[2:00:01] That's the point, yeah. The point is the pointlessness.
[2:00:03] I think the whole narrative and the themes, it all resolves
[2:00:06] really tightly at the end as well.
[2:00:08] Yeah, I think the whole point of this, like we've been talking
[2:00:10] about is kind of does he fall on it intentionally?
[2:00:14] Is all of this for nothing? Does he then resort to Sidos
[2:00:19] code of you have to kill yourself?
[2:00:21] Because to me it's him falling on the sword.
[2:00:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's him literally killing
[2:00:25] himself, killing who he was, killing all of his beliefs, and
[2:00:29] it is a suicide for him because he kills everything he's built,
[2:00:32] and it's under principle and it's under the code that he's
[2:00:35] gone for, but the codes have been mixed.
[2:00:37] But what an ending to a film that is really uplifting at the
[2:00:43] same time that it's really bleak because you walk out of it
[2:00:46] thinking I've seen something spectacular there where you
[2:00:49] should really walk out of it going, but the first thing you
[2:00:52] want to do is get it right back to the start and watch it again.
[2:00:55] And that's the genius of David Lean, and that's the genius of
[2:00:57] this last scene. It's absolutely fantastic.
[2:00:59] It's some climax, isn't it? Yeah, it's amazing.
[2:01:01] So the train we see in the film was a real train that Sam
[2:01:04] Spiegel had bought from the Sylanese government.
[2:01:06] It had belonged to an Indian Maharaja and had been in service
[2:01:09] for 65 years. Spiegel had it refurbished
[2:01:12] completely and then had one mile of railway track laid forward.
[2:01:15] How long does it take for the train to arrive?
[2:01:18] 5 to 10 minutes, apparently. Yeah, it should be a 5 to 10
[2:01:21] minutes. Yeah, Basically just like
[2:01:23] waiting for the fucking metro. Yeah, could be any time.
[2:01:28] Yeah. So this is incredible.
[2:01:30] I mean, check this out. Imagine being this fucking dude.
[2:01:32] All right, so filming the explosion the moment the bridge
[2:01:35] is blown up was a really complex setup.
[2:01:37] Lean had five cameras set to record the explosion.
[2:01:40] There's 1000 LB of dynamite rig to blow the whole bridge that
[2:01:44] one shot of doing it. So all 5 cameramen had to turn
[2:01:47] on a light when they were in a safe distance.
[2:01:49] So they turn the cameras over, then they get with safe distance
[2:01:51] turn the light on just to confirm they were filming, and
[2:01:54] the stuntman had to do the same signal to say he was off the
[2:01:57] train. So a guy had jumped off a train
[2:01:59] to do a light right and this guy nailed it.
[2:02:02] The stuntman, he jumped off a train, nailed it fine.
[2:02:05] One of the cameramen forgot to turn his light on so they didn't
[2:02:08] blow it up and had to reset everything.
[2:02:10] There was executives on the set that couldn't see it blow up
[2:02:13] because 1 cameraman and I would guarantee that would be fucking
[2:02:17] me on this set. I'll be on camera 5 and I'll be
[2:02:22] like, oh, it's not that important, right?
[2:02:24] Yes. Oh shit, I didn't turn the light
[2:02:26] on. Oh yeah, God, I'm sure he was
[2:02:28] out of there immediately. The guy jumping out the train
[2:02:31] managed it, and then the train, they said crashed into the
[2:02:35] generator truck or something, didn't it?
[2:02:37] It was just absolutely crazy. Yeah, that's right.
[2:02:39] Yeah, He was filling me. He just didn't turn the light
[2:02:41] on. He did a.
[2:02:42] Nightmare. He turned the camera over, just
[2:02:44] so excited about it, he started. Didn't turn me light on.
[2:02:47] Yeah, the guy had second time round apparently, but the sound
[2:02:49] design team didn't. So what we hear in the film is a
[2:02:51] sound effect that's been added in post, right?
[2:02:54] It's not that you can tell, I don't think.
[2:02:55] Yeah, you hear the train, can't you?
[2:02:56] More predominantly, yeah, in the sound design, because that's
[2:02:59] from the first take. Yes, and Lean had originally
[2:03:02] wanted to film the movement the bridge collapses differently.
[2:03:05] He wanted to blow up the pilings on one side of the bridge so it
[2:03:08] would topple towards the camera as it fell.
[2:03:10] Spiegel said though, they couldn't risk the bridge not
[2:03:12] collapsing completely, so they just destroyed it completely
[2:03:15] instead. Right.
[2:03:16] Yeah. I mean that would have been a
[2:03:17] great shot falling towards the camera with the train on it it.
[2:03:20] Would have been amazing, yeah. Yeah, something else I did as
[2:03:22] well was for every carriage of the train that all had their own
[2:03:25] engine to make sure that it kept going for the whole train would
[2:03:27] go over the bridge. Right.
[2:03:29] OK, the film is pretty fearful of the novel, but in the book
[2:03:32] the bridge was not destroyed. It is minor damage.
[2:03:34] I mean, imagine that it's that court of axes.
[2:03:37] Just Jack Torrance giving it 6 now, Leon said.
[2:03:43] We can't talk about blowing it up for two hours and then not do
[2:03:45] it whatsoever. So had the end and change.
[2:03:47] I mean, it's in the posters, in the promotion machine.
[2:03:49] It has to happen. It does.
[2:03:51] It needs that climax, for sure. Yeah.
[2:03:53] Yeah. But different in the book and
[2:03:54] real life. The real bridge was destroyed by
[2:03:56] Allied aerial bombings during the war.
[2:03:58] It was rebuilt though, and it's still there today apparently.
[2:04:01] Wow. Amazing.
[2:04:02] Yeah, yeah. So the bridge in the film is
[2:04:03] done, but the film itself isn't just yet.
[2:04:06] We got time for a fleeting final scene with Clifton to lead us
[2:04:09] out. Yeah.
[2:04:10] We do in a the field's really fitting that he gets the last
[2:04:13] line because I think James Donald has been brilliant in
[2:04:15] this and he kind of gets overshadowed by everyone else.
[2:04:18] But he's been the voice of sanity throughout the film, the
[2:04:21] only one who's able to stand back a bit from Nicholson and
[2:04:24] go, what is he doing? Why are you doing that?
[2:04:26] So for him to stand and survey the wreckage and the carnage and
[2:04:30] like we've been saying, everyone has been killed, it makes
[2:04:34] perfect sense that the team that just gets to look and go
[2:04:36] madness, madness. Yeah.
[2:04:38] Clipton's been the audience, hasn't he?
[2:04:40] All the way through. Definitely been the audience,
[2:04:42] yeah. Yeah, same in The Great Escape
[2:04:44] as well. He's in the Great Escape.
[2:04:45] He's great in that as. Well, yeah, it's the same
[2:04:47] character. It's pretty much yeah, Yeah.
[2:04:49] It is a great final line, but it's not just about what you're
[2:04:51] seeing in front of him. I don't think it's about
[2:04:53] everything that we've seen or Declan's obsession with the
[2:04:55] bridge sight was tyranny. Warden hopping along with that
[2:04:58] injured foot. Yeah.
[2:04:59] The real hop along Cassidy. Yeah, I'm a helicopter shot
[2:05:03] pulling away from all the Cornish to finish.
[2:05:05] Just perfect. Yeah, we started with those
[2:05:07] aerial shots that we talked about and we end the same way
[2:05:10] again. Kind of highlights how pointless
[2:05:11] it all was. Nothing's really changed.
[2:05:13] They built the bridge and then they blew it up.
[2:05:16] What was the point in any of that?
[2:05:18] Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Eagle shot that we
[2:05:19] got at the start, to me this is like the Eagles point of view at
[2:05:22] the end of the film. Yeah, see it from the guy's
[2:05:24] point of view and then we're almost seen from the Eagles
[2:05:26] point of view. So yeah, the final helicopter
[2:05:28] shot, that was the last year they filmed.
[2:05:30] Lean had the idea to mirror the opening shot at the end of the
[2:05:33] production, but most of the crew had left sail on.
[2:05:36] So Lean had to film himself on a wind up 35 mil camera and had to
[2:05:41] get a stand in for James Donald as Clinton because he'd already
[2:05:44] left the set. Right.
[2:05:45] So it's literally it's like the end of we were soldiers.
[2:05:47] Like Lean's the last one to leave the set.
[2:05:49] He's taking his foot off the ground.
[2:05:50] This was a 35 mil just pulling away.
[2:05:53] So yeah, I'm the I'm the first one there.
[2:05:55] I'm the last one. But yeah, it gets that whole
[2:05:57] vibe, doesn't it? Of like this tiny thing that I
[2:06:00] spoke about in the right and it it makes no difference.
[2:06:02] Exactly, Yeah. It's fun.
[2:06:03] Nothing. I saw anything to do with Lean
[2:06:05] where he said later as well that that shot because it's not James
[2:06:07] Donald. That's why the actor walks like
[2:06:09] a mannequin in that shot, which I can't see I've noticed to be
[2:06:12] honest. Right.
[2:06:12] Not really I. Didn't know that's.
[2:06:13] Just Lean's attention to detail, isn't it?
[2:06:15] Yeah, he noticed, obviously, Yeah.
[2:06:17] Wasn't Guinness. Wasn't Mannequin Skywalker?
[2:06:21] Before we finish with the climax, we have our second data
[2:06:24] to your own patron question. This one comes from JJ Brat.
[2:06:28] Hello, JJ. Hello.
[2:06:29] JJ. So JJ says this film has a great
[2:06:32] final line summing up everything we've just seen in one word.
[2:06:35] Madness. Yeah, another classic war film,
[2:06:37] Apocalypse Now with a similar final line as Kurtz whispers the
[2:06:40] horror with his dying breath. Definitely.
[2:06:42] What other films come to mind that have great final lines like
[2:06:45] these? Good question, JJ.
[2:06:48] It is a good question. What do you think about
[2:06:49] memorable final lines, Westie? There's Lords, there's lots that
[2:06:53] I remember because that if your film ends on a really good line
[2:06:56] that sums the whole film up, it really just makes the film for
[2:06:59] me. And you want to go back and
[2:07:00] watch it from the start. So one we've already mentioned
[2:07:03] that is tight to This is planet, the Earth.
[2:07:05] Yeah. Yeah, of course.
[2:07:07] Blew it up your maniacs. It's like, OK, that's what the
[2:07:10] whole film is about. I'm finished from There Will Be
[2:07:13] Blood. Yeah, lovely.
[2:07:14] Absolutely love that. Now where was I from the mentor?
[2:07:19] Of course. Yeah, Great.
[2:07:20] Yeah. Love that.
[2:07:21] Yeah. Where was I Bang?
[2:07:23] Yeah. And we've absolute favorite.
[2:07:25] And there's people talk about different ones, different
[2:07:27] classics, but I wish I could chat longer, but I'm having an
[2:07:30] old friend for dinner, Science of the Lambs.
[2:07:33] That's just wonderful. And there's that shot.
[2:07:35] It's very still at the end of this where it just pulls away
[2:07:38] and he disappears into the crowd.
[2:07:39] Then for me, absolute favorite. That fixed me out, that final
[2:07:42] shot in that final line because like, what's going to happen
[2:07:45] next kind of thing? Exactly, but that's the great
[2:07:47] thing about it. You can just see eat in his
[2:07:49] face. It's 1.
[2:07:52] Well, I've got a few different ones.
[2:07:54] I love the One in Seven, Somerset Voiceover and Hemingway
[2:07:57] Once Row. The world's a fine place and
[2:07:59] worth fighting for. I agree with the second part.
[2:08:01] That's great. Yeah, Venture hated that though,
[2:08:03] didn't he? Did he?
[2:08:04] Yeah, he didn't want it in. Wow, I love it.
[2:08:06] Yeah, he just wanted it just to cut the black.
[2:08:09] Obviously, Jim Gordon's outrageous monologue at the end
[2:08:13] of The Dark Knight. He's not our hero.
[2:08:15] He's a silent God, you know, watchful protect Dark Knight,
[2:08:18] talking like he's the Riddler. But I do love it.
[2:08:20] Yeah. Especially alongside that final
[2:08:21] shot of the back pod. Incredible.
[2:08:23] Yeah. And Billy Wilder, always a
[2:08:25] master of the final line. Yeah.
[2:08:27] Nobody's perfect. And some like it.
[2:08:28] Hots. Probably his most famous.
[2:08:30] My favorite is from the Apartment.
[2:08:32] Francine should have been Deal after Bud tells her your
[2:08:34] daughter. Yeah.
[2:08:35] It's funny, heartfelt. It's pretty perfect.
[2:08:37] Yeah. Just like the film.
[2:08:39] Yeah. Great.
[2:08:40] Yeah, I mean, you have covered most of the ones.
[2:08:42] I was going to say. I was going to say some like it
[2:08:44] hot in particular, because nobody's perfect, but that film
[2:08:47] pretty much is perfect. It's just really nice way of
[2:08:50] summing it up. I know that when they wrote that
[2:08:51] final line of the placeholder and they were always planning to
[2:08:53] replace it, but they never did, yeah.
[2:08:55] Yeah, they never did. I think it's the same with
[2:08:56] Casablanca, isn't it? You know this is the beginning
[2:08:58] of a beautiful friendship. Is it right?
[2:09:00] OK. Written on the fly.
[2:09:01] We'll come up with something better actually, that's perfect
[2:09:04] for Casablanca. And then the other one I wanted
[2:09:06] to mention was just AT. I'll be right here.
[2:09:09] Because that's like, it's not not just ET saying that to
[2:09:11] Elliot. I think that's like Spiegelberg
[2:09:13] saying this character is going to be writing in popular culture
[2:09:16] for everyone forever. And he was right.
[2:09:18] He was right. And that's the end of the bridge
[2:09:20] in the River Kwai. What started the battle of wills
[2:09:22] between two stubborn mules ends in destruction.
[2:09:25] Yep. Nichols in the moment of clarity
[2:09:26] comes too late. The bridge is gone.
[2:09:29] Pure madness. Bought some great filmmaking for
[2:09:31] us. Oh yeah.
[2:09:32] Yeah, it's a masterpiece. Reception and awards.
[2:09:40] So that's the story of the Bridge on the River Kwai, from
[2:09:42] military discipline to complete madness.
[2:09:45] But how did it fare when it hit theaters in October 1957?
[2:09:49] Time to look at the numbers. And Mark, you've been building
[2:09:52] bridges with the box office figures.
[2:09:53] I have indeed. How to all pan out on release?
[2:09:56] So production budget was $2.8 million and Bridge on the River
[2:10:01] Kwai grossed $33.3 million worldwide to a massive hit for
[2:10:05] Colombia and at the Academy Award triumph winning seven
[2:10:09] Oscars out of eight nominations. So those winners were best
[2:10:12] picture for Sam Spiegel, best director for David Lean, best
[2:10:15] actor for Alec Guinness, best cinematography for Jack
[2:10:18] Hilliard, best film editing for Peter Taylor, best original
[2:10:21] score for Malcolm Arnold and best adapted screenplay somehow
[2:10:25] for Pierre Boule. Yeah, we know the story there.
[2:10:28] Shameless bull. Yeah.
[2:10:30] Messi. Bullshit.
[2:10:33] And apparently at the Oscars ceremony, even though they
[2:10:36] cleaned up speaking and Lean still weren't getting on, things
[2:10:39] became heated and then physical and they ended up duelling each
[2:10:43] other with the Oscars, which sounds amazing.
[2:10:45] It's. Amazing.
[2:10:46] Like Errol Flynn. Love that.
[2:10:50] Yeah, it's great. That's what the critics thought.
[2:10:54] Let's start with the Sultan of Cinema, Roger Ebert for his
[2:10:58] time. But he did review the vision on
[2:10:59] the river choir later, right? So what more did he give it to,
[2:11:02] you think? I reckon the 4/4.
[2:11:04] I'm gonna go for marks. He did give her the maximum four
[2:11:07] stars over the four and said most war movies are four or
[2:11:10] games. There was the bridge on the
[2:11:12] river. Kwai focuses not on larger
[2:11:14] rights and wrongs, but on individuals.
[2:11:16] Yeah, by the end, we are less interested in who wins, but in
[2:11:19] how characters will behave. Yeah.
[2:11:21] It's not about the politics, it's about the people.
[2:11:23] Yeah, according to Rog. He's a big character, man, Rog.
[2:11:26] Yeah, yeah, he loves it. He's a character, all right. 2
[2:11:28] right? My cap land Variety was equally
[2:11:32] impressed, saying a gripping drama expertly put together and
[2:11:35] handled with scale in all departments.
[2:11:37] William Holden is easy, credible and always likable.
[2:11:40] That's true enough, but the film unquestionably belongs to Alec
[2:11:44] Guinness. Yeah, yeah.
[2:11:45] And Holden would rather I was 10%.
[2:11:47] So everyone's a winner, everyone's happy, definitely.
[2:11:50] And Bosley Crow, there in the New York Times, said about the
[2:11:52] bridge in the River Kwai. The mounting of drama upon drama
[2:11:55] makes it more than a towering entertainment of rich variety
[2:11:57] and revelation of the ways of men.
[2:11:59] It makes it one of the niftiest bargains to be had on the screen
[2:12:02] this holiday. Lovely.
[2:12:04] A nifty bargain. Spiegel probably didn't put that
[2:12:06] on the poster. High praise.
[2:12:09] Regretting it now? A nifty bargain from some
[2:12:12] Spiegel. And so today on Rotten Tomatoes,
[2:12:17] Bridge on the River Kwai has a critic score of 96% and an
[2:12:21] audience score of 93%, And on IMDb it sits at an impressive
[2:12:26] 8.1 out of 10. Yeah.
[2:12:28] Massive scores, big. It is a classic, likely always
[2:12:32] will be. Yeah, yeah.
[2:12:33] So The Bridge in the River Kwai was received is pretty much the
[2:12:35] classic it became massive box office numbers, scrapped the
[2:12:38] Oscars, loved by critics and still highly regards the day.
[2:12:41] Yeah, not bad for a film where the director and producer were
[2:12:44] dueling it out at the Oscars. Until the very end, yeah.
[2:12:48] And then did Lawrence of Arabia. I don't know how this works.
[2:12:55] Sequels and influence. Unlike many successful war
[2:13:00] films, The Bridge on the River Kwai never spawned a sequel.
[2:13:03] I mean, it's hard to imagine where you go off that blowing up
[2:13:05] your cast and the bridge that is the title of the film.
[2:13:08] But the influence, that's a different story.
[2:13:11] So, Matt, what kind of influence and legacy has been left by the
[2:13:14] film? I think Huge Ron, I mean, we've
[2:13:16] been seeing it already, but David Lane can't and doesn't
[2:13:19] make Lawrence of Arabia until he makes this and he can prove he
[2:13:23] can make films on location, fast canvas, huge cast, big lady
[2:13:26] themes and pull it off. And I don't know if this is the
[2:13:30] first to do this, but it does feel like this was the first
[2:13:33] film with mainstream appeal to put on screen how different the
[2:13:36] Japanese POW experience was compared to the German one and
[2:13:41] also what the Japanese military attitude was.
[2:13:44] So I think the DNA from this film is in the likes of Merry
[2:13:47] Christmas, Miss Lawrence, Letters from Iwo Jima and even
[2:13:50] on TV. You mean people in this country
[2:13:52] might remember show from the 80s called Tenkor, which was about
[2:13:55] women civilians in a Japanese POW camp?
[2:13:58] So the may well have been other films before Kwai that explored
[2:14:02] that, but I can't think of any of that broke through in the way
[2:14:04] that this one did. And then just an individual
[2:14:07] scene. So I think the trek through the
[2:14:08] jungle feels very, very Temple of Doom.
[2:14:10] And then the train crash. I think huge influence on Chris
[2:14:13] McCrory when he made Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning.
[2:14:16] For sure, yeah. I think for us, there's people
[2:14:18] that grew up watching 80s and 90s films.
[2:14:20] The influence of the bridge in the River Kwai, we've seen it in
[2:14:23] many places. On a technical level it evolved
[2:14:25] how large scale films could be made.
[2:14:28] Before Quiet, big films were almost always shot in studio
[2:14:31] lots with dropped in backdrops. The African Queen, we mentioned
[2:14:34] it, that's exactly how that was created.
[2:14:35] And because of that, it hasn't aged half as well visually as
[2:14:38] Cry has. Not at all, no.
[2:14:40] Lean insists on shooting everything on location in sale,
[2:14:43] on dealing with all the headaches that brought, and that
[2:14:45] approach kind of became the standard afterwards.
[2:14:47] I wonder if this was an inspiration for Spielberg when
[2:14:50] he decided to shoot Jaws on location in Martha's Vineyard.
[2:14:52] Oh, absolutely. Yeah, 100%.
[2:14:54] And so, yeah. And Speaking of Spielberg, I see
[2:14:56] influences on him, specifically Indiana Jones, constantly.
[2:15:00] Once you get to the jungle. There are many times I'm
[2:15:02] watching this thinking, like you said, Matt, that looks like
[2:15:04] Raiders. Yeah.
[2:15:04] That looks like Temple of Doom. Yeah.
[2:15:06] I mean, if you're influencing Spielberg, you're influencing
[2:15:08] just about everybody else since. Yeah.
[2:15:10] But I think it's influence that major film makers as well.
[2:15:12] You can see it's influence on Sergio Leone.
[2:15:14] You mentioned in Westie. Yeah.
[2:15:15] The Bad and the Ugly. There's a scene in that where
[2:15:17] they blow up a bridge. Yeah, that's right.
[2:15:19] Like 9 years later. So surely inspired by Kwai.
[2:15:22] Yeah. And I think the storytelling
[2:15:23] influence stands out. This was made around the time
[2:15:25] when Hollywood war films were very much about heroes, like Way
[2:15:29] He Goes. There was a few years later that
[2:15:30] kind of thing, the kind of Western set behind enemy lines.
[2:15:33] This exposed the idea of taking a war film and making it more
[2:15:37] about moral ambiguity rather than good versus evil.
[2:15:40] Yeah, we've mentioned Apocalypse Now and I think the influence of
[2:15:43] Kwai and Coppola is bringing noticeable as well.
[2:15:45] Definitely. So I think it's influence is its
[2:15:47] legacy. One of those films that's so
[2:15:49] influential that a filmmaker could make a war movie, and even
[2:15:52] if they have not seen The Bridge in the River Kwai, they'll be
[2:15:54] influenced by it whether they know it or not, either directly
[2:15:56] or indirectly. Yeah.
[2:15:58] I mean, like you both have just said, I don't think it's
[2:16:00] necessarily an influence. I think it's more of an impact,
[2:16:02] yeah, that this made on the whole business of cinema.
[2:16:06] I mean, The Great Escape came later and it's in.
[2:16:08] It's the shadow of this. It's the opposite.
[2:16:10] There's no barbed wire. There's no way to get out.
[2:16:11] What if there was barbed wire? What if there was a way to get
[2:16:13] out? Similar kind of characters with
[2:16:15] it, you know, it's not as heavy Guns in Avarone, I think is
[2:16:18] massively, massively influenced by this.
[2:16:21] Again, going into Lean's career without this, you don't get
[2:16:24] Lawrence of Arabia. Without running to Arabia, you
[2:16:25] don't get a lot of other films. But again, more of the date.
[2:16:29] I say Full Metal Jacket shooting on location, even though it's
[2:16:32] not the correct location. I say 2001, just the scale of
[2:16:36] 2001. The cinema scope feel of it is
[2:16:38] very, very similar. I've mentioned the Thin Red Line
[2:16:40] from Terrence Malik, but more of the day, I don't think you would
[2:16:43] get anywhere near the output from Chris Nolan that you get
[2:16:47] now without this or without Lawrence of Arabia.
[2:16:50] Watch Dunkirk again. It is framed very, very similar.
[2:16:54] It has a very similar tone. He only moves the camera when he
[2:16:57] absolutely needs to. All of this really comes into
[2:17:00] the fact that, yes, there's an epic scope, but at the same time
[2:17:04] there's an epic scope. There's an incredible attention
[2:17:06] to detail. It's a wonderful thing.
[2:17:08] It doesn't mean you kind of wonder with what Lean could do
[2:17:11] with just a camera, Yeah. What would he be able to do if
[2:17:13] he had the technology that Spielberg and Nolan and all
[2:17:16] those guys had? If he had it now, just the
[2:17:18] vision that he had, he could have made something absolutely
[2:17:21] outrageous. And I think that's why Tarantino
[2:17:24] was turning around going, I'm making The Hateful 8 and 70 mil.
[2:17:26] Yeah. And Nolan's going, I'm shooting
[2:17:28] everything in IMAX on the next film because this is what David
[2:17:31] Lean would have wanted to do. And I think everyone's kind of
[2:17:34] any shadow a little bit. If you're a serious filmmaker,
[2:17:36] you can't really progress your career without giving it a bit
[2:17:39] of a nod to David Lean and going if you can make something now,
[2:17:43] you don't have the same parameters that David Lean had
[2:17:46] when he made this masterpiece, and that's why this really
[2:17:49] lasts. Yeah, I mean, he's a filmmaker.
[2:17:50] That's filmmaker in a lot of ways, isn't he?
[2:17:52] Definitely 100%. In one of the legacy it has is
[2:17:56] that the film aired on you as TV for the first time in 1966 and
[2:18:00] typically at that time long films would be screened over 2
[2:18:03] nights. But Choir was screened by ABC as
[2:18:06] one uninterrupted broadcast and it was the longest single
[2:18:09] network telecast of a film up to that point.
[2:18:11] It was 60 million viewers which was a record for a movie on TV.
[2:18:15] In short, networks the pulling power films on prime time TV and
[2:18:18] from then on big films were screened as major events rather
[2:18:22] than shown in late night slots like they previously have been.
[2:18:25] Right. 60 million. 60 million. Huge.
[2:18:28] Another two years before that, The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan
[2:18:31] Show, which was one of the biggest TV events ever.
[2:18:33] Like at 70, 3,000,000, Yeah. So not too far off.
[2:18:36] We're talking serious numbers. Yeah, one person wasn't pleased,
[2:18:39] though. William Holden tried to sue
[2:18:41] Columbia for screen in the film, and that's basically because his
[2:18:44] 10% deal was tied to box office receipts, so he would make far
[2:18:47] less. Right.
[2:18:49] Hilarious Holden, isn't it? Hang on a minute, this isn't
[2:18:52] right. And then Guinness did sign that
[2:18:54] whopping deal with George Lucas a few years later.
[2:18:56] Yeah, yeah, keep your 10%. I'll keep my Oscar and my 2.25%
[2:19:01] on Star Wars. Thank you very.
[2:19:02] Much cheers. So no sequels to The Bridge and
[2:19:05] the River Choir course, but its influence on film making sense
[2:19:08] is pretty widespread from large scale location shooting,
[2:19:12] psychological war films, how television broadcast major
[2:19:15] films. The Bridge was destroyed, but
[2:19:17] its legacy still standing. Definitely.
[2:19:19] Its legacy, its influence, and more importantly, its impact.
[2:19:25] All the right movies ranking. And that's the end to end story
[2:19:30] of the bridge in the River Kwai from the kick off whistle of
[2:19:33] Colonel Bogey to how it's viewed today.
[2:19:35] Now it's time for us to build our Rome monument with our
[2:19:38] scores out at 10. Very nice.
[2:19:39] So Matt, you chose this one for US.
[2:19:42] Want to tell us what you think of it one last time?
[2:19:44] One last time. This is such a monumental
[2:19:47] achievement. It would be impressive enough if
[2:19:49] this was a straightforward action film to go out and shoot
[2:19:52] it entirely on location and having the incredible climax
[2:19:55] that this film has, that would be enough to make a memorable.
[2:19:59] But what really elevated is the writing for me, which has such
[2:20:02] thematic and character depth, this streak of tragic irony
[2:20:06] running all the way through it of what was the point?
[2:20:10] And it somehow never presents Nicholson as an out and out
[2:20:13] villain. He's just so tragically
[2:20:15] misguided. And I mean, all the
[2:20:17] performances, all great, but particularly from Guinness, that
[2:20:20] is an all timer for me. Just one of the great
[2:20:22] performances of all time. And I've referenced The Great
[2:20:25] Escape a few times doing this now.
[2:20:27] This isn't as easy watch as The Great Escape.
[2:20:30] You can watch The Great Escape from the halfway point, and it's
[2:20:32] brilliant. Yeah, Choir, you have to watch
[2:20:34] it from the beginning. You have to be in a certain
[2:20:35] frame of mind to watch it. Yeah.
[2:20:38] But to me, the two sides of the same coin.
[2:20:40] You've got the big romp in action adventure film of World
[2:20:42] War 2, and then you've got this one which really examines the
[2:20:45] madness and the pointlessness and the tragedy of so much of
[2:20:48] it. And as we've said, the influence
[2:20:51] this film has, it really is one of the most important films ever
[2:20:54] made, and I don't think people appreciate it on that level
[2:20:56] enough. So for me, it's not as easy to
[2:21:00] watch as The Great Escape, but it's still up there as an
[2:21:02] absolute masterpiece. So it's a 10 for me.
[2:21:04] Nice. Why was that coming in with the
[2:21:06] big guns? Just like Warden, the more it
[2:21:09] has. All over the place, grenades,
[2:21:11] everything. The guns of matter run.
[2:21:17] So yeah, coming back this film, like years after I first watched
[2:21:19] it, one of the first things that was struck is by how a man used
[2:21:22] to be both intimate character study and an epic war film at
[2:21:25] the same time. No easy task.
[2:21:27] The performance is all grace across the board.
[2:21:30] Alec Guinness gives us one of the great tragic figures in
[2:21:32] Nicholson, a man who loves a bridge more than any man should
[2:21:35] ever love a bridge. And William Holden brings the
[2:21:38] charisma, provides a great counterpoint, the Nicholson's
[2:21:41] obsession, as she has a man who doesn't seem to care about
[2:21:43] anything. Except the women, obviously.
[2:21:45] Obviously, priorities. And David Lew's direction I
[2:21:48] think is masterful, the handling of piercing, the handling of
[2:21:51] torn, and then bringing it all together in the climax.
[2:21:53] It's become kind of like textbook big scale filmmaking in
[2:21:56] a lot of ways. I do have some slight issues
[2:21:59] like I talked about sight or fade into the background a bit
[2:22:01] too much after being such a strong presence in the first
[2:22:04] act. And the action scenes by today's
[2:22:06] standards, leaves something to be desired a little bit of
[2:22:08] times. But this is a Great Wall film
[2:22:11] with a great message. It's about how blindly following
[2:22:14] any kind of ideology can lead to making some morally questionable
[2:22:17] choices. Yeah, all symbolized in that
[2:22:19] damn bridge. So a classic, without doubt.
[2:22:22] Massively influential and settling on the path to
[2:22:25] Hollywood greatness. Not one of my personal favorites
[2:22:27] by any stretch, but massively significant.
[2:22:30] So it's a nine out of 10 for me. Lovely, nice and rusty.
[2:22:34] Your submarine score for the Bridge on the River Cry.
[2:22:37] Yeah, it was one that hit me when I bought it and I realized
[2:22:39] that I should have seen it earlier, and I'm kind of glad
[2:22:42] that I didn't because I got a lot more from it I haven't
[2:22:44] appreciate and the technique behind it.
[2:22:46] If you can watch this at any point and you'll get something
[2:22:48] from it, I think that's really important from a filmmaking
[2:22:51] point of view. And I think from just from a
[2:22:53] story point of view, this still stands up.
[2:22:55] This still makes sense. Yeah, there's still people out
[2:22:57] there with this completely closed mindedness in this
[2:23:00] moronic sense of self worth for nothing.
[2:23:03] And it really is an exploration of that without getting too deep
[2:23:06] into any one of those themes. It shows that everybody, no
[2:23:09] matter where you're from, has a code of conduct and has this
[2:23:13] belief in what is absolutely right.
[2:23:16] And I think what this film shows you is nothing is absolutely
[2:23:19] right. And what you have to do is learn
[2:23:20] from each other. And I think if everyone learned
[2:23:22] from each other, it would be a lot better and a lot safer and a
[2:23:25] lot more enjoyable to be alive. But from a filmmaking point of
[2:23:29] view, from a craft point of view, from an enjoyment point of
[2:23:31] view, it's just a masterpiece. David Lee put everything into
[2:23:34] this film. It still stands up now, like
[2:23:36] I've said. And there's so much effort
[2:23:38] that's got into it and you can see it in every single frame.
[2:23:41] And it's been a lesson for all of our film makers since then.
[2:23:45] And we'll probably wouldn't have the podcast to the point that we
[2:23:48] love and enjoy talking about films without someone like like
[2:23:51] David Lean having the vision in the 1st place.
[2:23:54] It's a 10 all day. It's brilliant.
[2:23:56] Beautiful, wonderful. Well, we also put this out there
[2:23:58] to our ATRM patrons, and they were pretty much unanimous in
[2:24:01] their prayers as well. First up, Gareth Benmore said.
[2:24:05] I think this is one of the great epic war films, but it's also
[2:24:08] much more than a simple World War two-story with levels of
[2:24:11] complexity. Yeah.
[2:24:12] And I think it's Guinness's best role.
[2:24:14] Yep. A great.
[2:24:15] Hard to argue with Gareth there. Yep, Yep, Kim Jackson wrote.
[2:24:18] I cannot count how many times in the last 10 years I've thought
[2:24:21] about Sir Alec Guinness's What Have I Done?
[2:24:23] Yeah, it shot me when I first watched it.
[2:24:25] It shocked me today. And as a reminder how far we may
[2:24:28] travel from what is right when ego and obsession become
[2:24:30] involved 10. Absolutely correct.
[2:24:32] Beautifully. Beautifully put by came here as
[2:24:35] usual and he had that moment of Nicholson's realization.
[2:24:38] Does kind of stay with you, I think.
[2:24:40] Yeah, it does. And Tim Brucelle had some big
[2:24:42] words as well. He said this one has always been
[2:24:45] personal as my father served in Burma for three years in World
[2:24:48] War 2. Like many veterans, he never
[2:24:51] talked about the war much. And seeing what these men went
[2:24:53] through, I can see why. It's been my top ten since I
[2:24:56] first saw it. And that ending is top three.
[2:24:59] Cinematography, acting, screenplay, direction and score.
[2:25:02] Fantastic. I'm happy in my work.
[2:25:05] Easiest 10 ever. Nice.
[2:25:07] Can't argue with that. Personal connections make any
[2:25:09] film more powerful doing this or.
[2:25:10] Definitely, yeah. And to know that this was more
[2:25:13] of a diluted version of what is doubt we went through as well is
[2:25:15] incredible. Overall then, our page ones
[2:25:17] rated the bridge in the river choirs.
[2:25:19] What do you think out of 10? Could go with the full bifter.
[2:25:23] I want to say 9, you know. I'll go 9 as well then, yeah.
[2:25:26] It was even more impressive 9.5. 9.5 All right, OK.
[2:25:30] Brilliant. So total that all up and the
[2:25:32] bridge in the River Kwai gets 38.5 out of 40.
[2:25:35] Lovely. So a proper score for a proper
[2:25:37] classic too, right? Next time out, Luke, Westie and
[2:25:41] Matt are going on the run. Or are you chasing?
[2:25:44] It depends who you're talking to.
[2:25:45] I don't care I didn't kill your wife.
[2:25:49] I've got 2 arms, it's not me. You are tackling Andrew Davis
[2:25:55] classic 90s thriller The Fugitive.
[2:25:57] Andrew Davis, classic thriller. Fucking love it.
[2:26:01] I'm looking forward to that one. That's going to be fun.
[2:26:03] It will be fun. Harrison Ford pick of his
[2:26:05] powers. So you're happy with that one,
[2:26:06] Misty? Yeah, absolutely.
[2:26:08] Yeah. You could do no wrong then.
[2:26:09] He could do no wrong now. If I'm.
[2:26:12] Socially, you can keep up with all the right movies on X,
[2:26:14] formerly Twitter, where you're at AT right movies, the movie
[2:26:17] making or threads we post are all based on coming from people
[2:26:20] involved in the production, all three separate sources, the same
[2:26:23] as the podcast. And we're also on YouTube,
[2:26:26] Instagram threads, Blue Sky, TikTok, and we have an active
[2:26:29] Facebook group where you can discuss films with fellow movie
[2:26:31] lovers. So we'll get into it.
[2:26:33] Yeah, yeah, try and get rid of it.
[2:26:35] Impossible. Exactly and our website pop with
[2:26:38] great features and articles all the right movies.com sure is and
[2:26:42] we have a listen to us. We have a favor to ask.
[2:26:44] Please leave us a five star review.
[2:26:46] Yes, Apple podcasts ideally, but any platform would be great.
[2:26:50] That really helps us out. It really, really does.
[2:26:52] You don't even have to write a review, just five stars.
[2:26:54] Just give it a click. And yes, thank you so much.
[2:26:56] That really, really helps us Lords.
[2:26:58] It really does. We're all off now to whistle
[2:27:00] Colonel Bogey while building a massive bridge.
[2:27:03] Probably not, to be honest. I'm just going to try and sleep
[2:27:05] without that repeating in me head for the next six weeks.
[2:27:08] Maybe a little model bridge like the one at the end?
[2:27:10] We'll do that. I've got some fireworks in the
[2:27:12] back of the car. We'll get to that.
[2:27:14] The Fugitive. So we'll be back, and you should
[2:27:18] definitely come back for The Fugitive for more Madness 1.
[2:27:20] 100%. Until then, thanks for listening
[2:27:22] everyone. Thanks for listening, guys.
[2:27:24] Yeah, cheers. Stay safe.

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