Bridge On The River Kwai, The

The film that marked David Lean's transition from small, personal stories to epic tales told on an epic canvas (and at epic length). Set in a Japanese POW camp, it depicts the prisoners' forced labors to build a bridge crucial to their captors' plans, under the direction of colonel Alec Guinness, who's determined to do the best job possible, because they're British. Also starring William Holden as a Yank resolved to escape, Sessue Hayakawa in a career-defining comeback as the camp commander, and Jack Hawkins, James Donald and Andre Morell. The film won seven Oscars®: Picture, Actor (Guinness), Director, Screenplay (blacklisted Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, from the Pierre Boulle novel), Cinematography, Editing and Music. It also immortalized "Colonel Bogey's March," the theme whistled by the prisoners when they first march into the camp.