Alec Guinness, Actor: Star Wars. Alec Guinness was an English actor. He is known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations. Find the latest movie reviews from Empire, the world’s biggest movie destination. Discover Empire's take on the latest cinema, Blu-ray and DVD releases. Watch Full movie: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Online Free. After settling his differences with a Japanese PoW camp commander, a British colonel co. Jordan Vogt-Roberts' 'Kong: Skull Island' Announced for Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 'The Lincoln Lawyer' 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Bound. The Bridge on the River Kwai. The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1. British- American epicwar film directed by David Lean and starring William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Alec Guinness, and Sessue Hayakawa. Based on the novel Le Pont de la Rivi. The movie was filmed in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The bridge in the film was near Kitulgala. Carl Foreman was the initial screenwriter, but Lean replaced him with Michael Wilson. Both writers had to work in secret, as they were on the Hollywood blacklist and had fled to England in order to continue working. 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. In 1. 99. 7, the film was deemed . It has been listed among the best American films ever made by the American Film Institute. The commandant, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), informs them that all prisoners, regardless of rank, are to work on the construction of a railway bridge over the River Kwai that will connect Bangkok and Rangoon. Based on: The Bridge over the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle: Starring. Amazon.com: Doctor Zhivago Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray Book Packaging): Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Courtenay, Alec Guinness, Siobhan McKenna. The senior British officer, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), informs Saito that the Geneva Conventions exempt officers from manual labour. At the following morning's assembly, Nicholson orders his officers to remain behind when the enlisted men are sent off to work. Saito slaps him across the face with his copy of the conventions and threatens to have them shot, but Nicholson refuses to back down. When Major Clipton (James Donald), the British medical officer, intervenes, telling Saito there are too many witnesses for him to get away with murdering the officers, Saito leaves the officers standing all day in the intense tropical heat. That evening, the officers are placed in a punishment hut, while Nicholson is locked in an iron box. Meanwhile, three prisoners attempt to escape. Two are shot dead, but United States Navy Commander Shears (William Holden), gets away, although badly wounded. He stumbles into a village of natives who help him leave by boat. Nicholson refuses to compromise. Meanwhile, the prisoners are working as little as possible and sabotaging whatever they can. Should Saito fail to meet his deadline, he would be obliged to commit ritual suicide. El puente sobre el río Kwai es una película dirigida por David Lean con William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, James Donald. Año: 1957. Título original.Desperate, Saito uses the anniversary of Japan's victory in the Russo- Japanese War as an excuse to save face and announces a general amnesty, releasing Nicholson and his officers from manual labour. Nicholson conducts an inspection and is shocked by the poor job being done by his men. Over the protests of some of his officers, he allows Captain Reeves (Peter Williams) and Major Hughes (John Boxer) to design and build a proper bridge, despite its military value to the Japanese, for the sake of maintaining his men's morale. The Japanese engineers had chosen a poor site, so the original construction is abandoned and a new bridge is begun downstream. Shears is enjoying his hospital stay in Ceylon with a beautiful nurse (Ann Sears), when British Major Warden (Jack Hawkins) informs him that the U. S. Navy has transferred him over to the British to join a commando mission to destroy the bridge before it's completed. Shears is appalled at the idea of returning to a place from which he nearly died during escape. He confesses he is not an officer, but merely had appropriated an officer's uniform prior to his capture, expecting that this revelation will invalidate the transfer order. However, Warden responds he already knew the truth and tells Shears that the American Navy's desire to avoid dealing with the embarrassment of his actions is the very reason they agreed to his transfer. Assured that he will be allowed to retain the privileges of being an officer and accepting that he actually has no choice, Shears relents and . The commando team consists of four men. Meanwhile, Nicholson drives his men hard to complete the bridge on time. For him, its completion will exemplify the ingenuity and hard work of the British Army for generations, long after the war's end. When he asks that their Japanese counterparts join in as well, a resigned Saito replies that he has already given the order. The commandos parachute in, with one man killed on landing, leaving three to complete the mission. Later, Warden is wounded in an encounter with a Japanese patrol and has to be carried on a litter. He, Shears, and Canadian Lieutenant Joyce (Geoffrey Horne) reach the river in time with the assistance of Siamese women bearers and their village chief, Khun Yai. Under cover of darkness, Shears and Joyce plant explosives on the bridge towers below the water line. A train carrying soldiers and important dignitaries is scheduled to be the first use of the bridge the following day, so Warden waits to destroy both. However, at daybreak the commandos are horrified to see that the water level has dropped, exposing the wire connecting the explosives to the detonator. Making a final inspection, Nicholson spots the wire and brings it to Saito's attention. As the train is heard approaching, they hurry down to the riverbank to investigate. The commandos are shocked that their own man is about to uncover the plot. Joyce, manning the detonator, breaks cover and stabs Saito to death. Aghast, Nicholson yells for help, while attempting to stop Joyce from reaching the detonator. As he wrestles with Nicholson, Joyce tells Nicholson that he is a British officer under orders to destroy the bridge. When Joyce is shot dead by Japanese fire, Shears swims across the river, but is fatally wounded as he reaches Nicholson. Recognising the dying Shears, Nicholson exclaims, . The dazed colonel stumbles towards the detonator and collapses on the plunger just in time to blow up the bridge and send the train hurtling into the river below. Witnessing the carnage, Clipton shakes his head muttering, ! The curved- shaped truss spans are the originals on the bridge (constructed by the Japanese military during WWII) while the two trapezoidal- shaped bridge spans were provided by Japan as war reparations after the war ended in 1. Allied aircraft. The largely fictional film plot. During its construction, approximately 1. An estimated 8. 0,0. Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, or conscripted in Siam (Thailand) and Burma. Two labour forces, one based in Siam and the other in Burma, worked from opposite ends of the line towards the centre. Some consider the film to be an insulting parody of Toosey. Julie Summers, in her book The Colonel of Tamarkan, writes that Pierre Boulle, who had been a prisoner of war in Thailand, created the fictional Nicholson character as an amalgam of his memories of collaborating French officers. Toosey in fact did as much as possible to delay the building of the bridge. While Nicholson disapproves of acts of sabotage and other deliberate attempts to delay progress, Toosey encouraged this: termites were collected in large numbers to eat the wooden structures, and the concrete was badly mixed. A transcript of the interview and the documentary as a whole can be found in the new edition of John Coast's book Railroad of Death. The documentary itself was described by one newspaper reviewer when it was shown on Boxing Day 1. The Bridge on the River Kwai had been shown on BBC1 on Christmas Day 1. Their roles and characters, however, are fictionalised. For example, a Sergeant- Major Risaburo Saito was in real life second in command at the camp. In the film, a Colonel Saito is camp commandant. In reality, Risaburo Saito was respected by his prisoners for being comparatively merciful and fair towards them. Toosey later defended him in his war crimes trial after the war, and the two became friends. The bridge described in the book didn't actually cross the River Kwai. Pierre Boulle had never been to the bridge. He knew that the 'death railway' ran parallel to the River Kwae for many miles, and he therefore assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just north of Kanchanaburi. This was an incorrect assumption; the bridge actually crossed the Mae Klong river. The destruction of the bridge as depicted in the film is also entirely fictional. In fact, two bridges were built: a temporary wooden bridge and a permanent steel/concrete bridge a few months later. Both bridges were used for two years, until they were destroyed by Allied bombing. The steel bridge was repaired and is still in use today. This was an entertaining story. But I am writing a factual account, and in justice to these men—living and dead—who worked on that bridge, I must make it clear that we never did so willingly. We worked at bayonet point and under bamboo lash, taking any risk to sabotage the operation whenever the opportunity arose. In fact, Japanese engineers had been surveying the route of the railway since 1. The two did not collaborate on the script; Wilson took over after Lean was dissatisfied with Foreman's work. The official credit was given to Pierre Boulle (who did not speak English), and the resulting Oscar for Best Screenplay (Adaptation) was awarded to him. Only in 1. 98. 4 did the Academy rectify the situation by retroactively awarding the Oscar to Foreman and Wilson, posthumously in both cases. Subsequent releases of the film finally gave them proper screen credit. David Lean himself also claimed that producer Sam Spiegel cheated him out of his rightful part in the credits since he had had a major hand in the script. Shears, who is a British commando officer like Warden in the novel, became an American sailor who escapes from the POW camp. Also, in the novel, the bridge is not destroyed: the train plummets into the river from a secondary charge placed by Warden, but Nicholson (never realising . Boulle nonetheless enjoyed the film version though he disagreed with its climax. Lean had a lengthy row with Guinness over how to play the role of Nicholson; Guinness wanted to play the part with a sense of humour and sympathy, while Lean thought Nicholson should be . The Plague of the Zombies Blu- ray: Special Edition. Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov, June 2. John Gilling's . The supplemental features on the disc include original theatrical trailer; making of featurette; restoration comparison; and . In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. In 1. 86. 0, Sir James Forbes (Andre Morell, Barry Lyndon, The Bridge on the River Kwai) and his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare, Ice Cold in Alex) decide to visit Dr. Peter Tompson (Brook Williams, Where Eagles Dare) and his wife Alice (Jacqueline Pearce, The Reptile, Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River), who live in a small Cornish village not too far away from London. Tompson is a former student of Sir James, while Alice is a high- school friend of Sylvia. Upon arrival in the village, Sir James discovers that Dr. Tompson is on the verge of a serious nervous breakdown because the locals have lost their faith in him . Feeling that something just isn't right, Sir James decides to find out more about the plague. When he begins questioning Dr. Tompson, he is shocked to discover that none of the deceased were examined after their death because the village's most powerful man, Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter), warned the doctor to stay away from them. While investigating her death, Sir James befriends Sergeant Jack Swift (Michael Ripper), who is also curious about the plague. From him, Sir James learns that Squire Hamilton is a strange man who has travelled a lot and made a fortune abroad. He has also purchased the local tin mine but for no apparent reason abandoned it. When Sir James visits Hamilton's lavish home, all hell breaks loose. John Gilling's The Plague of the Zombies flows much better than his The Reptile. The plot is again fairly straightforward, but the atmosphere is far more effective. It has that unique Gothic flavor the best Hammer films are known for. Additionally, the tension builds slowly without ever letting up, and the climax does not disappoint. The Reptile was shot back to back with The Plague of the Zombies and the two used many of the same sets and even exterior shots, but the latter looks far more impressive. Particularly once the action moves to the abandoned mine, it becomes clear that a lot more work must have gone into the set designs and costumes. The cast is very good, but admittedly the script for The Plague of Zombies is also better. Morell, in particular, is excellent as the persistent professor who quickly realizes that something evil has taken over the sleepy Cornish village. Ultimately, The Plague of the Zombies delivers exactly what a good Hammer film should . I don't know about other viewers, but I find the overwhelming majority of the Hammer films quite charming. They certainly look dated and the acting in many of them is often quite rough, but there is a degree of enthusiasm in these films that is difficult not to admire. Note: The Reptile and The Plague of the Zombies were recently restored and scanned at 2. K resolution from the original negatives stored at Pinewood Studios. I find this a bit surprising as the two films must have been worked on at the same time, but I definitely like this high- definition transfer better. Most close- ups convey strong depth and clarity (see screencaptures #2 and 4), while the outdoor footage looks pleasingly crisp. During the nighttime footage clarity is also very good. There are no traces of problematic lab tinkering. Some careful denoising corrections have been applied, but a good dose of well resolved grain has been retained. Naturally, the film has a pleasing organic look, and detail never appears compromised. Color reproduction is also very convincing. There are a variety of natural and stable greens, blues, browns, grays, and yellows. Lastly, there are no scratches, cuts, and damage marks. All in all, this is a competent presentation of The Plague of the Zombies that is guaranteed to please its fans. Therefore, you must have a native Region- B or Region- Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content). El puente sobre el r. El copyright del poster, car.
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