David Lean in scale and more extensively released internationally. "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957) was based on a novel by Pierre Boulle recounting the story of British and American prisoners of war trying to survive in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. The film stars William Holden and Alec Guinness and became the highest-grossing film of 1957 in the United States. It won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Alec Guinness, who had battled with Lean to give more depth to his role as an obsessively correct British commander who is
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