In 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Bridge on the River Kwai the 11th greatest British film of the 20th century. David Leans classic 1957 World War II movie Bridge on the River Kwai depicted the horrors endured by the Allied prisoners of war (POWs) forced to build the. It has been included on the American Film Institute's list of best American films ever made. In 1997, the film was deemed 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant' and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. The film won seven Academy Awards (including Best Picture) at the 30th Academy Awards. It was the highest-grossing film of 1957 and received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. The Bridge on the River Kwai is now widely recognized as one of the greatest films ever made. British POWs are forced to build a railway bridge across the river Kwai for their Japanese captors in occupied Burma, not knowing that the allied forces are planning a daring commando raid through the jungle to destroy it. With William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa. As a result, Boulle, who did not speak English, was credited and received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay many years later, Foreman and Wilson posthumously received the Academy Award. The Bridge on the River Kwai: Directed by David Lean.

Both writers had to work in secret, as they were on the Hollywood blacklist and had fled to the UK in order to continue working. It was initially scripted by screenwriter Carl Foreman, who was later replaced by Michael Wilson. A British POW colonel orders his men to build and also sabotage a strategically important railway bridge for their Japanese captor in the Burmese jungle.

Bridge on the river kwai novel