THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957) | FIRST TIME WATCHING | MOVIE REACTION



Enjoy my reaction as I watch “The Bridge on the River Kwai” for the first time!

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42 thoughts on “THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957) | FIRST TIME WATCHING | MOVIE REACTION”

  1. Great choice for a reaction. I love this movie. The Japanese didn't treat the British officers well during WWII. That's why they were whistling a British marching song with lyrics they created when they marched into the prison camp. The song became known as Colonel Bogey. David Lean, the director, also created such epic films like Dr. Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia. You probably know this, but Alec Guinness became Obi-wan Kenobi in the 1970's. The Japanese offered a half-hearted apology for the atrocities committed during the war in 2015. During WWII, the movies were made as pro-war propaganda. Some years after the war, movies became more introspective and philosophical. Some examples are: From Here to Eternity and Caine Mutiny. Anyway, I love this movie.

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  2. Gustav T. Potthoff was a survivor of that POW camp. He was in the Dutch Indies Army during WWII. And a POW at the Burma-Thailand "Death Railway" and the "Bridge over the River Kwai. He died in 2016 at age 94. He was featured in a 2006 WFYI PBS documentary, 'Lest We Forget'.

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  3. Definitely one of the all time great movies, that I never tire of watching. David Lean truly was a master of cinema. Most people know of him for his epic movies but Hobsons Choice and Great Expectations (with an extremely young Alec Guinness!), two of his earliest films are also my personal favourite Lean movies.
    Coincidentally I watched another wartime classic just last night….Stalag 17, another WW2 drama set in a prison camp and again starring William Holden. Wonderful stuff!

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  4. Can’t imagine what those poor fellas went through slogging about that jungle building all that.
    I come traipsing through as a tourist with sunscreen and drinks and proper boots and I still ended up half delirious with sun stroke and bitten by midges like a walking buffet lol

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  5. My father passed in 2001. This is one of those movies we watched more than once together. Others include Von Ryan's Express, A Bridge Too Far, The Dirty Dozen (my personal favorite) and Escape From New York.

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  6. Another great William Holden movie is The World of Suzie Wong, a love story about an American painter and a Hong Kong prostitute. It was very controversial in its day but it's a wonderful, tragic love story.

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  7. There are documentaries on youtube about the film and the actual history. It wasn't only the British who built the bridge (and it was about building a lengthy railroad, not only the bridge).

    And hundreds of thousands of POWs and other prisoners died building that railroad.

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  8. Japanese culture was insulated after they closed off their borders to stop the spread of Christianity. This was known as the Edo period. They finally opened themselves back up to outside influences in the 1800s partially with pressure from the United States. Their culture was of the mindset that to surrender was worse than death, so they saw it as morally acceptable to harm prisoners of war, because they saw them as having no honor. Not being Japanese myself, this is how it was explained to me.

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  9. Not an expert on the WWII situation in east Asia, or the war at all, but I know that the organisation called Force 136 was real. The British put it together with what they had left of their intelligence organisation after the initial defeats in the region.
    Force 136 was led by mostly British (even a lot of civilians who had worked in the area that knew the languages and customs were recruited as organisers and commanders), but recruited a lot of local resistance groups as operatives, trained a lot of the native population to be able to work covertly and started up new resistance movements.

    One more thing I've heard: The real events this is based on was very different. The British commanding officer in the camp was actually sabotaging the building of the bridge as often as he could.

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  10. There is a book,"The Railway Man" which sheds light on the experience of the British slave laborers who worked on that railroad. It was later made into a movie starring Colin Firth. It is heartbreaking.

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  11. My mother took me to see this movie when I was 6 or 7 years old and along with the original West Side Story was my favorite! I’m 65 and the only movie I’ve liked as much was another Holden film, NETWORK, which I highly recommend to you. The horrors of war vs the horrors of corporate controlled news, both effect millions of people and are usually controlled by madmen! Excellent reaction, thank you!

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  12. I like how a lot of the plot is about how one brave British officer stands up to the Japanese camp commander to… make sure he and other officers don't have to do manual labour.

    That's the most British classist thing to ever have been British'd.

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  13. Nickleson saw the bridge as his legacy. It started as a way to get his men through the war but it ended up being the proof that he made a difference. It was the only thing he could point at to prove he existed.

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  14. Great movie but a VERY fictionalized version of an actual occurrence. The real British commander did not collaborate with the Japanese to build the bridge nor was the Japanese commander as cruel as depicted. In fact, after the war the British commander testified on behalf of the Japanese commander to keep him from being executed.

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  15. Must watch war movies – Stalag 17 -POW's in Germany (Willaim Holden again), the Bridges at Toko Ri (Willaim Holden again), Kelly's Heroes (fun action comedy), the Guns of Navarone – (my personal favorite), Lawrence of Arabia, The Outlaw Josie Wales, Where Eagles Dare, From Here to Eternity, Apocalypse Now, Das Boot.

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