I finally watched The Bridge on the River Kwai all the way through, and Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi) is excellent as the extremely British commanding officer who gets “his boys” to show their Japanese captors how British soldiers make a bridge. In fact, he earned a best actor Oscar and Golden Globe for the role.
On the other hand, I found William Holden, who played the American, quite unappealing — despite the fact that he was brought in for his appeal:
William Holden, then a major star, was brought into the project to provide “box office appeal”. He was initially unwilling, but the offer of $50,000 a year for life was enough to convince him to take the part.
I found much of the movie pretty good, but the climax is a wonderful Hollywood moment — involving the bridge, of course:
While the bridge in the story was constructed by prisoners in two months, the actual one built in Ceylon by a British company for the filming (425 feet long and 50 feet above the water) took eight months, with the use of 500 workers and 35 elephants. It was demolished in a matter of seconds, and the total cost was 85,000 pounds.
They had six cameras rolling when they blew up the (real) bridge with a (real) train on it — no models, and, of course, no CGI.