Cinema: New Picture, Dec. 23, 1957

The Bridge on the River Kwai (Sam Spiegel; Columbia) will be called a tragedy; it is. It will be called a comedy; it is. It will be called a swell adventure story, a slickly calculated piece of commercial entertainment, an angry razz at the thing called war, a despairing salute to the men war makes, an ironic masterpiece; it is in some degree all of these things.

The story is set in the jungles of Thailand during World War II, where British prisoners, at forced labor, are building a railroad from Bangkok to Rangoon. At one prison camp along the way, the...

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