Bridge on the River Kwai

By Mark

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British-American epic war film directed by David Lean and starring William Holden and Alec Guinness.

Based on the novel Le Pont de la Rivière Kwai (1952) by Pierre Boulle, the film is a work of fiction, but borrows the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–43 for its historical setting.

The movie was actually filmed in Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka). The largely fictional film plot is loosely based on the building in 1943 of one of the railway bridges over the Mae Klong—renamed Khwae Yai in the 1960s—at a place called Tha Ma Kham, five kilometres from Kanchanaburi.

While the original wooden bridge was destroyed there is a memorial, several small markets, some floating restaurants and a metal bridge a few meters down river.