The Bridge on the River Kwai

The PH factor here tends towards the acid: "The film's success also marked the end of Lean as a director..." What nonsense. PH may be influenced by the attitudes of some British film critics who resented Lean's success in international cinema. There is often a backlash in Britain when one of their own strikes out and makes good beyond the "tight little island." This is the lingering snobbism of a nation that lost the biggest prize when America broke away from the mother country. After Lean's supposed "end as a director," he went on to make Lawrence of Arabia, a marvelous achievement, and Doctor Zhivago, a not-so-marvelous achievement perhaps, but a film well above the accomplishments of most filmmakers. Ryan's Daughter and Passage to India also do not betray an "end...as a director," however one may respond to those films. The Bridge on the River Kwai generated some controversy in Britain because of the character of Colonel Nicholson. That controversy has faded and the film has stood the test of time; it is appreciated as a superb example of filmmaking.

Historical accuracy? My father was a Japanese prisoner of war working on the railway. He watched this film avidly every time it came on TV. He said that it conveyed well, "for a film", the actuality of being a prisoner. The brutality of course, but also the tension between the longing for the satisfaction of building the railway well and the imperative to do it badly. He liked the ending too...even if that didn't quite happen.

I'm not sure what the reviewer meant by "the end of David Lean" as a director, considering his next film was Lawrence of Arabia. (now, if you wanted to talk about Dr. Zhivago, you might have something...)

Second only to "Saving Private Ryan" as the greatest war movie of all time. Who cares about its "historical accuracy?

Superb story of survival and perseverence in the face of deprivation and brutality, but it is all cinema and very little historical accuracy. The film sanitizes the true story to the point that it departs completely from actuality. Nevertheless, a fine story in its own right.