PARTISAN REVIEW
Siamese there who didn't show the ravages of malaria, trachoma, and
a host of other diseases.
One shouldn't, I suppose, make too much of the implications of a
tropical daydream that was cut short all too soon (although of course
one shouldn't forget either that a lot of little distortions can add up to
a thumping lie); but whatever the results of the box-office concern
for sex, its concern for the Japanese viewer, which was presumably the
cause of the transformation of Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) from
the incompetent and sadistic drunkard of the novel to the movie's frus–
trated artist with an unhappy childhood, had very damaging results;
the larger implications of Nicholson's conflict with Saito were imme–
diately reduced to the level where all life's problems are resolved into
the psychological fatuities of soap opera. Nor were we spared the last
grinding cliche when we were shown Saito preparing to expiate his
shame by committing hara-kiri, just like all the proud Samurai warriors
in the movies and just unlike all the hundreds of real Japanese officers
who were concerned with prisoners of war.
The part of
The Bridge on the River Kwai
which was least changed
was the character and role of Colonel Nicholson; perhaps because, al–
though Alec Guinness has considerable dramatic range as well as skill,
his typical screen personality rests on a stereotype of the British char–
acter which is very similar to Boulle's conception of Colonel Nicholson:
clever and ridiculous by turns, amiable and yet self-centered, sophisti–
cated in manner but not really grown-up. The more exactingly realistic
nature of the film medium seemed to make the childish and self-com–
placent side of the duality a good deal more obvious than it had been
in the novel, especially in the scenes where Nicholson defied Saito.
If
the movie started by confusing Boulle with Kipling, it ended
as pure Western: the train tooted and chugged round the same old
comer and-yes-the bridge was actually blown up. In the credits I'd
read that the screenplay was "Written by Pierre Boulle," but I'd
remained sceptical. Later I came upon an article in the French maga–
zine
N
ef
by Boulle himself in which he stated that he had taken only
a "modest" part in preliminary discussions of the screenplay with
Spiegel and Lean, although he had later approved their final version.
Only, however, after he'd unavailingly objected to many of their
changes, and above all to the blowing up of the bridge. The answer
given him was that the audience would have watched the screen "for
more than two hours . . . in the hope and expectation" of just that
event;
if
it didn't happen "they would feel frustrated," and anyway it
was quite impossible to pass up the opportunity for "such a sensational
