The Bridge on the River Kwai The Bridge on the River Kwai The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British-American epic war film directed by David Lean and based on the novel "Le Pont de la Rivière Kwaï" (1952) by Pierre Boulle. The film uses the historical setting of the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–1943. The cast included William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Alec Guinness, and Sessue Hayakawa. It was initially scripted by screenwriter Carl Foreman, who was later replaced by Michael Wilson. Both writers had to work in secret, as they were on the Hollywood blacklist and had fled to England in
The Bridge on the River Kwai months later. Both bridges were used for two years, until they were destroyed by Allied bombing. The steel bridge was repaired and is still in use today. Japanese viewers disliked the film's "glorification" of a fictitious and indemonstrable "superiority of Western civilization". In particular, they resented the implication in the film that Japanese military engineers were less capable than their British counterparts. In fact, Japanese engineers had been surveying the route of the railway since 1937 and were highly organized. "Variety" reported that this film was the No. 1 moneymaker of 1958, with a US take of $18,000,000. The second