Bridge on the River Kwai

[Duer 157099]

This was on TCM this weekend and I recorded it and watched it today.

Remember when, in war, the Geneva Conventions meant something, at least to some?

What a striking contrast to today's military.

What a damn fine film.

[Coventina]

1. One of my favorites. A great tragedy in the Greek tradition.

Fine performances by all involved.

[crispini]

2. FYI, it's mostly fiction.

In real life, the POWs were horrifically tortured, and they certainly never got the chance to blow up the bridge. It was blown up by bombers. Also, over 10,000 POW's died, and over 100,000 Asian laborers died, many beaten or starved to death. One of the more stomach churning episodes of the war, and one of the (many) reasons why the Japanese are still hated throughout Southeast Asia.

As, I have no doubt, we will be hated throughout the Middle East for years to come. Sad, that.

[lpbk2713]

3. Madness! .... Madness!

Read the book. It's not like the film in a lot of ways. (No spoiler here)

[GOPisEvil]

4. It wasn't a wooden bridge either. It was made of steel.

:)

[Sequoia]

7. Man, you just had to burst my make-believe world!

Actually, I know, but that movie is pretty good. I tried to read the book but it wasn't the same.

[NNadir]

10. I saw an interesting special, run by an engineer, who marveling at the

death railway as an engineering feat, decided to tour the remains of it.

During the effort, he learned how it was made from curators and documents.

He was appalled when he learned how the "remarkable engineering feat" was accomplished.

It was a awful war crime.

All war is a crime though. There is nothing in war but cruelty and horror.

I can't remember the name of the television documentary, but it was amazing.

[Catch22Dem]

5. The Great Escape was on yesterday

One of my all time favorite movies. Steve McQueen was a damn badass!

[pokerfan]

8. The Real Great Escape

http://www.historyinfilm.com/escape/real10.htm
http://www.b24.net/pow/greatescape.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape

One of my favorite films and surprisingly accurate. Some characters were combined but for the most part the incidents happened as shown.

Interesting bit of trivia: Donald Pleasence actually had been a WW2 prisoner of war. When he kindly offered advice to the film's director John Sturges, he was politely asked to keep his "opinions" to himself. Later when another star from the film informed Sturges that Mr. Pleasence had actually been a RAF Officer in a WW2 German POW Stalag camp, he embarrassingly requested Donald's technical advice and input on historical accuracy from that point forward.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000587/bio

Great Escape trivia:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057115/trivia

[AllieB]

6. That's one of my favorites, along with "Stalag 17"

Alec Guinness and William Holden were excellent!

[pokerfan]

9. The Colonel Bogey March

I'm whistling it as I type...

"Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,
Himmler has something sim'lar,
But Goebbels has no balls at all."