The ending of the Bridge Over The River Kwai is one of the best endings in the history of movies. Alec Guiness won the Academy Award for Best Actor. The movie won the Award for Best Picture. Jack Hawkins and William Holden co-stared. Enjoy!

With the Academy Awards coming up, I thought that it would be nice to view a GREAT MOVIE. David Lean, who also produced Lawrence of Arabia and Passage to India won the Academy Award for The Bridge Over The River Kwai. The movie was adapted from a novel that was based upon the very real enslavement of British prisoners of Japan during World War II in building a railway in Burma. This is a great movie and well worth your time.

According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission:
"The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project driven by the need for improved communications to support the large Japanese army in Burma. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also died in the course of the project, chiefly forced labour brought from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, or conscripted in Siam (Thailand) and Burma (Myanmar). Two labour forces, one based in Siam and the other in Burma worked from opposite ends of the line towards the centre."
The incidents portrayed in the film are mostly fictional, and though it depicts bad conditions and suffering caused by the building of the Burma Railway and its bridges, to depict the reality would have been too appalling for filmgoers. Actually, from what I've read, the conditions were very much worse than that which is shown in the film.

All is well in Malone. More on that, later.

--Joe