Plus

Plus

The bridge that Lean built

By Noel Crusz
When Darwin was bombed nearly sixty years ago during World War II, and Singapore fell, more than a hundred thousand Allied troops were in Japanese hands. This pool of labour was to build the infamous 'Death Railway', an event which David Lean used for his film, The Bridge on the River Kwai.

In 1956, I met David Lean. A week earlier I had received a letter from him granting my request for an interview for the Ceylon Sunday Times.

For more than fifty years, the Bridge on the River Kwai has been repeatedly screened in cinemas and on television, in all languages, all over the world. The making of the film was a scientific and engineering saga.

In 1954 the Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel was en route to London for the premiere of his film On The Waterfront. At a French airport he picked up a copy of the English version of Pierre Boulle's novel The Bridge on the River Kwai. Spiegel was fascinated, and rushed back to France and immediately bought the film rights from a startled and amused French writer, and his small time publisher. He then got Carl Foreman to work on the screenplay, and invited David Lean to direct his film.

By now David Lean, Sam Spiegel and ace cameraman Jack Hildyard had travelled four times round the world in search of locations. Carol Reed had shot excellent scenes in Ceylon for Joseph Conrad's Outcast of the Islands with Trevor Howard. Carol Reed directing Howard in a small boat in the Kelani river. It was an irony that the same tributary of this river would later be used by Lean for filming the Bridge on the River Kwai.

Spiegel chose Ceylon saying, "Ceylon has the most beautiful scenery in the world, and the best climatic, working and health conditions necessary for a vast undertaking."

The role of Colonel Nicholson, the Army blimp who stood up to the Japanese Commandant Saito led to friction. There was a pool to chose from; Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Alec Guinness, Lawrence Olivier, William Holden, James Mason and Jack Hawkins to mention a few.

Olivier said he was not a fool to go to Ceylon to act on the Bridge. Guinness refused the part of Nicholson three times saying it was a 'dreary unsympathetic one'. Lean openly preferred Charles Laughton. Horizon Pictures didn't want Laughton, saying "he was too fat and unhealthy." It was hard to imagine the corpulent Laughton portraying half starved prisoners of war. William Holden accepted the part of the Commando Shears.

The Indian actor M.R.B. Chakrabandhu, who in World War II actually helped Allied prisoners to escape got a significant role. Jack Hawkins (already with cancer of the larynx) was cast as Major Warden, and Anne Sears got the role of the American nurse in love with Holden.

Siegel then flew to Tokyo to get Sessue Hayakawa, the idol of the silent screen to play Colonel Saito, the Japanese Commandant. Hayakawa hedged: "There are no women, no love theme and everything is in the jungle!" But he finally agreed to come to Ceylon.

Nestled in a rain forest with rubber and tea, and a fast flowing river, the film location of Kitulgala was eighty miles from Colombo. It was the largest film set built at that time, even surpassing Cecil B De Mille's Gates of Tanis in the Ten Commandments.

Lean's bridge was 425 feet long, ninety-feet high, and built at a cost of 250-thousand dollars. It would be demolished in 30 seconds with one thousand tons of dynamite for twenty-five seconds visual on the screen.

Local labour, carpenters and craftsmen from Kitulgala saw 1500 trees cut down and dragged to the site by 48 elephants. A Danish firm with World War II parachutist, Keith Best, a civil engineer supervised the construction. The cantilevers of Lean's bridge were similar to what the Japanese used on the real River Kwai. The bracket- like arms projected towards each other from opposite banks and served as spans of the bridge. There were artificial dams also built to control the water levels of the river, in order to meet the film requirements.

Sam Spiegel bought a retired 65-year-old steam engine from the Railway workshop in Colombo. This train was originally purchased from an Indian Maharaja. One mile of narrow gauge rail track was laid on the new wooden bridge in Kitulgala, and a Ceylonese driver fired the engine and got the train on to the rails.

Filming in cinemascope and Technicolor began in October 1956. But on the first day of filming, David Lean's Assistant Director John Kerrison was killed in a motor accident when returning from Kitulgala to Colombo.

The bridge was christened by the Village Headman, along with Buddhist monks and priests from all denominations.

Coconuts were broken, limes squeezed to drive away the evil spirits. Then the headman announced in Sinhala: "This bridge will last forever!" David Lean and Eddie Fowlie nearly choked.

In Mahara was the second location: the army camp. It was an abandoned stone quarry. It was a moving scene: the superbly made-up prisoners of war, in tattered clothes, exhausted and sweating, marching and whistling "The Colonel Bogey March". George Wickremesinghe, the Government Film Unit Director, pointed out to the sound recordists, John Cox and John Mitchell that “the sound track at Mahara will be a disaster.” When the rushes of the opening camp scene came back, Lean and Spiegel were devastated. Wickremesinghe advised Lean to re-record Saito's speech at the Moratuwa sound studios.

The Hoodoo on the Bridge on the River Kwai continued. Eddie Fowlie, the props Director fired a shot gun to drive one thousand flying foxes from the trees: Jack Hildyard got his beautiful visual, whilst the onlookers were sprayed with steamy hot urine! There were delays, illness, monsoon rain, leeches.

The river with the green water turned into a muddy brown, and green dye was used to match the original scenes.

We were now invited for the most dramatic moment of the film. The steam train was primed and ready on the narrow gauge rails. The bridge itself was charged with a thousand tons of dynamite. Six Cinemascope cameras, carefully shielded, and camouflaged were placed very close to the bridge.

Sam Spiegel was at a main control board, which was wired to six trenches, a distance away from the concealed cameras. David Lean held the Master Camera. The cameramen had to start the cameras and run to their safety trenches and press a button connected to Spiegel's main control board.

When all his lights came on, Spiegel would know that everyone was safe, and then he would signal for the bridge to be destroyed, as the train was half way on it. The driver would jump off the engine on the blind side of the track, and rush to press his own safety button.

We held our breath. We heard the whistle of the train as it came into view. There were animated dummy soldiers in the carriages. Then nothing happened. It went on the bridge and crashed into a massive electric generator, and was derailed. There was no explosion. Spiegel cursed.

An English cameraman had forgotten to press his safety switch. Spiegel immediately fired him. He was replaced by Ceylonese cameraman Willy Blake. Then Assistant Director Donald Ashton rang Colombo asking for a loan of a crane from the Railway workshop. The Minister of 'Communication and Works' refused, saying: "You didn't invite us for the explosion!" However, a CGR engineer, with elephants and levers, worked through the night and got the train and carriages back on the track.

Two days later the Bridge and train were destroyed without a hitch, and Clipton said his famous words about the futility of war: "Madness! Madness".

The final hoodoo was that the sound recordists bungled the recording of the train and the explosion. There was no sound on the visual. Lean exploded. So the Government Film Unit studios gave John Mitchell a scratchy 78 rpm vinyl recording of a train and dynamite explosions in a stone quarry. This was carefully dubbed on to the film.

David Lean's film was to win 8 Oscars and 27 international awards. Sir William Slim, the Governor General Field Marshall, attended the premiere in Australia.

Today nothing is left of the Bridge that David Lean built in Kitulgala in Sri Lanka, beyond of course the memories of those who helped in building it, and Guinness' words :"Without law, there is no civilization".

Back to Plus