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 Man Who Never Was The Man Who Never Was The Man Who Never Was is a 1956 UK Second World War film, produced by André Hakim, directed by Ronald Neame, that stars Clifton Webb, Gloria Grahame and Robert Flemyng. It is based on the book of the same name by Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu and dramatises actual events. The film's storyline concerns Operation Mincemeat, a 1943 British Intelligence plan to deceive the Axis powers into thinking Operation "Husky", the Allied invasion of Sicily, would take place elsewhere in the Mediterranean. "The Man Who Never Was" was entered into the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. Nigel