The Bridge on the River Kwai

See also AZON. The French Connection was also the nickname of a line of hockey players for the Buffalo Sabres in the 1970s consisting of Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin, and Rene Robert. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. It was followed in 1975 by a less-acclaimed sequel, French Connection II. In 1986, a television movie, Popeye Doyle, appeared. At about the same time a new release of the film finally gave them proper screen credit. It was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Roy Scheider), Best Cinematography and Best Sound. Only in 1984 did the Academy rectify the situation by awarding the Oscar to Foreman and Wilson retrospectively (and posthumously in both cases, although Foreman did live long enough to know that it was going to happen). It also won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role, (Gene Hackman), Best Director, Best Film Editing, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Pierre Boulle, who did not speak English, was given screen credit for adapting his own novel, and the Oscar was awarded to him. It was the first R-rated movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (Midnight Cowboy had won in 1969, but it was X-rated at the time).
The screenwriters, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, were on the Hollywood blacklist and could only work secretly. The movie established the careers of both Friedkin and Hackman, and was instrumental in ushering in an era of neo-realist directors in Hollywood during the early 1970s.
Award nominations:. This car chase was parodied in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers.
Award wins:. Other shots involved stunt drivers who were supposed to barely miss hitting the speeding car, but due to errors in timing accidental collisions occurred and were left in the final film.

One memorable feature of the movie is the tune that is whistled by the POW's—the "Colonel Bogey March"—and is now widely associated with the movie, and even sometimes referred to as the "River Kwai March." Besides serving as an example of British fortitude and dignity in the face of privation, it suggested (whether or not intended by the screenwriters) a specific symbol of defiance to many movie-goers of the period: WW II veterans (and many of their baby-boom sons) thought of the tune as that of a mockery of Japan's principal ally. The production team of course received no prior permission from the city for such a dangerous stunt, and the only precaution taken was to place a "gumdrop" police siren on the car's roof and blare the horn. (Buster Keaton's The General includes an almost identical scene.). Many of the shots in the scene were "real", in that Hackman actually drove the car at high speeds through uncontrolled traffic and red lights, with Friedkin running a camera from the backseat while wrapped in a carpet for protection. The destruction of the bridge in the film was accomplished by blowing up a full-sized bridge as a real train drove over it. This may have been the first time such a scene had been attempted without model shots since the silent film era. The chase involved Popeye securing a civilian's car and then obsessively chasing an out-of-control elevated train, on which a hitman was trying to escape. The steel bridge has been repaired and is still in use. The film is often cited as containing one of the greatest car chase sequences in movie history, and car chases, with elaborate stunt work, became de rigueur afterward.

In reality, a parallel steel bridge was added a few months after the wooden bridge was completed, and both were destroyed by Allied aerial bombing, the steel bridge first. However, after Rabal was finally reached, they discovered he spoke neither French nor English, and Rey was kept in the film.
The plot of the film is built around a fictional destruction of the wooden bridge by prisoner sabotage. Rey was instead contacted but did not speak a word of French.
. Friedkin had asked his casting director to get a Spanish actor he had seen in the French film, Belle de Jour, who was actually Francisco Rabal, but Friedkin did not know his name. About a hundred thousand conscripted Asian labourers and 16,000 prisoners of war died on the whole project, which was nicknamed the Death Railway. The casting of Rey as the main French heroin smuggler, Alain Charnier (irreverently referred to throughout the film as "Frog One"), resulted from mistaken identity.

This was part of a project to link existing Thai and Burmese railway lines to create a route from Bangkok, Thailand to Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) to support the Japanese occupation of Burma. However, Gleason at the time was considered box office poison by the studio after Gigot had flopped, and Breslin refused to get behind the wheel of a car, which was required of Popeye's character for an integral car chase scene. The story is based on a real event, the building in 1942 of a railway bridge over the Mae Klong (not the Kwai) in the Thai town of Kanchanaburi. He was strongly opposed to the choice of Hackman for the lead, and actually first considered Jackie Gleason and a New York columnist, Jimmy Breslin, who had never acted before. It was filmed in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and England. Though the cast ultimately proved to be one of the film's greatest strengths, Friedkin had problems with casting choices from the start. An Anglo-American film in English based on the book appeared in 1957 and the name was changed slightly, to The Bridge on the River Kwai. The film portrays a group of British captives in a Japanese POW camp forced to build a railway bridge spanning the River Kwai in Thailand. The film was adapted by Ernest Tidyman from the novel by Robin Moore.

Le Pont de la Rivière Kwai (The Bridge over the River Kwai) is a novel by Pierre Boulle, published in 1954, that won France's "Prix Ste Beuve." It dramatizes the plight of Allied prisoners of war during World War II forced to build the 258-mile Death Railway by Japanese forces. It stars Gene Hackman as New York City police detective "Popeye Doyle", Roy Scheider as his partner, Sonny, Fernando Rey, Tony Lo Bianco and Eddie Egan, the real-life police detective on whom Hackman's character was based. Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album, Dramatic Picture Score or Original Cast (Malcolm Arnold). The French Connection is a 1971 Hollywood film directed by William Friedkin which tells the story of two New York City policemen who are trying to intercept a heroin shipment coming in from France, based on the actual, infamous "French Connection" trafficking scheme. Golden Globe Award Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Sessue Hayakawa). Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (Sessue Hayakawa).

Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay - Pierre Boulle - Carl Foreman - Michael Wilson. Academy Award for Original Music Score - Malcolm Arnold. Academy Award for Film Editing - Peter Taylor. Academy Award for Best Cinematography - Jack Hildyard.

New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Actor (Alec Guinness). Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama (Alec Guinness). Academy Award for Best Actor (Alec Guinness). New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Director (David Lean).

Golden Globe Award for Best Director - Motion Picture (David Lean). Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (David Lean, Assistants: Gus Agosti & Ted Sturgis). Academy Award for Directing (David Lean). New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Film.

Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama. BAFTA Award for Best Picture. Academy Award for Best Picture. M.R.B. Chakrabandhu  : Yai.

Miura. Keiichiro Katsumoto  : Lt. Kanematsu. Heihachiro Okawa  : Capt.

Ann Sears  : Nurse at Ceylon hospital. Baker. Harold Goodwin  : Pvt. Percy Herbert  : Pvt. Grogan.

John Boxer  : Maj. Hughes. Green. André Morell  : Col. Reeves.

Peter Williams  : Capt. Geoffrey Horne  : Lt. Joyce. Clipton. James Donald  : Maj.

Warden. Jack Hawkins  : Maj. William Holden  : Shears. Saito.

Sessue Hayakawa  : Col. Alec Guinness  : Colonel Nicholson.