FREE: VHS BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI, Wm.HOLDEN ALEC GUINNESS & Sessue Hayakawa

The listing, VHS BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI, Wm.HOLDEN ALEC GUINNESS & Sessue Hayakawa has ended.

FAMOUS MARCHING SONG CAME FROM THIS MOVIE. (It's playing in my head but I can't remember the name of it!! Maybe it is the title theme)

David Lean's "Bridge on the River Kwai" is one of my favorite movies of all time, and one one the greatest war movies of all time, but a differnt war movie. Can the civilized Colonel Nichoson (brilliantly played by Alec Guinness and won him an Academy Award for best actor) defy the brutal Japanese Colonel Saito(Sessue Hayakawa, also brilliant)and win the war of wills? At first we think he won't but the plot takes a strange turn and this Nicholson turns out to be as fanatic as Saito is in the prison camp. Beautifully shot in Ceylon(Sri Lanka) serving well for Burma by Freddie Young, Lean's great photographer also for "Lawrence of Arabia" the viewer can feel the heat and humidity, see the starving appearance of the prisoners, who start building the bridge as a lark until Nicholson wins his points of honor and they work harder than ever. My favorite line in the movie is one of Colonel Saito's favorite sayings: "Be happy in your work," which takes on more and more irony as the film and story unfolds. There is a side plot, with William Holden barely escaping, only to be brought back back with hard-core commandos(led by demolitions expert Jack Hawkins) to the camp to blow up the bridge. This is a wonderful psychological and subtle war film, with just enough adventure and action to balance its war of words, over the Geneva Convention(Nicholson keeps a copy of it in his pocket and then is slapped with it by Saito)over points of British stiff upper lip and Japanese warrior code,Bushido, two vastly different viewpoints but in the end breed fanatics. The acting, editing, writing,and photography are all flawless. This is one of the few war movies made forty ago that still rank with any today. A true masterpiece, much imitated