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 general amnesty, releasing Nicholson and his officers and exempting them from manual labour. Nicholson is shocked by the poor job being done by his men. Over the protests of some of his officers, he orders Captain Reeves and Major Hughes to design and build a proper bridge to maintain his men's morale. As the Japanese engineers had chosen a poor site, the original construction is abandoned and a new bridge begun downstream. Shears is enjoying his hospital stay in Ceylon when British Major Warden invites him to join a mission to destroy the bridge before it is completed. Shears is