The Bridge on the River Kwai is a great war film, a great prison film, a great adventure movie and a great men on a mission film. It adds up to an absolute masterpiece. Its 160 minute runtime may initially seem excessive, but turns out to be fully justified: there’s just so much to enjoy here in a film that just keeps on giving, and the perfectly judged length allows for immense exploration of character, as well as some unbeatable stretches of incredible suspense. The first act is relatively low key: a group of British prisoners of war are marched into their Japanese internment camp deep in the Thai jungle, and a battle of wills ensues between British Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness, never better) and his Japanese oppressor Saito (Sessue Hayakawa, wonderful) over whether the officers will be forced to do manual labour, in defiance of the Geneva convention. The manual labour in question is, of course, the famous bridge. As the verbal battle plays out, an American PoW (William Holden) manages to escape, and before long he’s roped into returning to the camp to blow up the newly built bridge with a squad of commandos.
As the film divides its attention between the commando expedition and the building of the bridge, each is equally gripping. Apparently the latter was an addition at the behest of the producer, who felt the bridge building side of the story would not provide enough thrills, but Lean never shows any disinterest in the less cerebral side of the story. The thrills and incredible suspense of the jungle trek – one sequence in particular, where thousands of bats are disturbed by gunshots and cast shadows over a tense chase, is utter genius – are counterpointed by the fascinating character face-off on the bridge. Guinness’ character is curious, and hard to really pin down – is he just extremely patriotic, simply wanting to show the best of British engineering skills? Or is he a collaborator, willingly helping out his captors? The film never answers this fundamental quandary, leaving its legendary ending open to two divergent interpretations. And what an ending it is: a forty-five minute sustained build of suspense that’s practically unrivalled, reaching an almost unbearable crescendo.
The Guns of Navarone feels like a natural follow-up to Kwai, and was surely designed to capitalise on the earlier film’s success (which it did, earning a Best Picture nomination itself and very healthy box office). The films share a screenwriter, Carl Foreman, which partly explains certain similarities, but Navarone is a more straightforward affair. It’s a pure men on a mission film; indeed probably the very apotheosis of the subgenre – driven by star power (Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn) and a simple plot: a group of British special forces have to blow up a massive Nazi gun emplacement on a Greek island. That’s not to say, though, that it has more in common than mindless modern blockbusters that its precursor Kwai - this is an almost equally satisfying, enjoyable and wholly engrossing affair.
Like Kwai, Navarone takes its time getting anywhere, but never feels indulgently slow. The extra length simply adds to the character interaction and suspense. In fact, the mission itself is underway in the film sooner than you might expect, soon running into difficulties in a superbly realised storm sequence. Navarone never stops throwing complications in the way of the heroes, in the form of double crosses, injuries, captures and other hiccups, but that’s not at the expense of the characters’ integrity – it just amplifies how tough their mission is. The setting of the fictional Greek island (the film was shot on location in Rhodes) adds colour and novelty, and makes for some great set pieces. If the finale feels like a slight anticlimax, that’s made up for by the sheer entertainment value of the whole adventure.
Das Boot takes another tack entirely. It's a World War 2 film starring Germans, made by Germans, and telling the German side of the story. While not unique in that respect, it remains the pinnacle of the films that have attempted to expose what it was like to be on Hitler's side. Following exclusively the experience of a U-boat crew on an Atlantic mission, what Das Boot does so brilliantly is humanise these men: they were just as scared as the Allies, and apparently few of them were blindly loyal to their Fuhrer. There's a world-weariness embodied in the boat's captain, played by Jurgen Prochnow, that captures the futility that must have been sensed by the crew; they were fighting a war that many of them had little stake in, and little hope of surviving. Perhaps there's an air of apologetic German revisionism, but Das Boot feels authentic down to the last rivet.
Director Wolfgang Petersen announced himself on the world stage here, making use of the new Steadicam technology to roam the cramped confines of the submarine with unheard of freedom and realism. Never before or even since has a film so effectively conveyed the claustrophobia and exhaustion that such an environment must engender, and also the nerve-shredding terror of coming under attack while stuck in the ocean depths. From a British perspective U-boats have always been seen as invisible instruments of death that mercilessly attacked vital trade routes, but Das Boot exposes that they were far from invincible, opening with a sobering text telling us that 30,000 of the 40,000 U-boat crewmen in the war died before it ended. Despite the film's harrowing message, though, it's also an extraordinarily thrilling adventure, its three and a half hours (in this Director's Cut) positively sailing by in a blur of edge-of-seat intensity.
Release Information
Country: UK / Region: Free / Version: N/A / Discs: 1 (Kwai and Navarone); 2 (Das Boot) / Distributor: Sony
Presentation
Both Kwai and Navarone have received new 4K restorations, and the results are splendid. In Kwai the details of faces and the leaves of the jungle spring to life with great contrast and definition. Its optical dissolves are hazy, however, momentarily disrupting the experience, but nothing could be done there. Navarone looks even better, with great clarity for an older title, only some of its model effects marginally wilting under the scrutiny. Both retain a fine and entirely beneficial grain structure. They also each receive a DTS-HD 5.1 mix, both of which sound perfectly satisfactory but only erratically provide much impact or weight, with limited use of the surround channels.
Das Boot is a slightly different beast. A documentary on its second disc explains that its negative was in dire shape due to flooding, so this is not a new master; it’s probably the same one used for the construction of the Director’s Cut in 1997. Accordingly, detail is relatively weak, with murky shadows and soft edges. There’s not much grain, too, which suggests possible DNR. Its visual shortcomings may also stem from its origins as a relatively low-budget production, though the set design is exemplary. It looks fine, but not great. The soundtrack was completely remixed and redone in 5.1 for the Director’s Cut (even all-new ambient effects were created), and it’s very good, though does not quite make maximum use of the surround sound potential of a submarine-set film; the soundfield isn’t very densely detailed, but directionality is often well utilised.
Extras
Kwai and Navarone are single disc sets but with their extras being mostly presented in SD disc space becomes less of a concern. Navarone, in particular, comes with a handsome array, including multiple commentaries, documentaries and featurettes, but nothing actually new. A nice touch is that you can watch the film with or without its roadshow intermission. The main attraction among Kwai's extras, meanwhile, is a truly excellent hour-long documentary, which is also accompanied by several archival featurettes and an appreciation by John Milius. There's sadly no commentary, but there is a 'picture-in-graphics' track - basically a simple text-based trivia track, which isn't particularly enticing.
Das Boot, its mammoth runtime occupying the whole of one disc, gets a second disc of extras, many new and in HD too. (The first disc features the very good director's commentary from the original DVD.) Several retrospective docs get together some of the participants to look back at the making of what has come to be a seminal film. Amongst the highlights are a featurette on assembling the Director's Cut, and a visit to the studio where the film was shot; it's clear how personal the film is to Petersen (significantly more personal, you'd have to say, than any of his Hollywood efforts). Strangely, the theatrical cut is nowhere to be found, despite it being housed on the second disc of the otherwise identical US Blu-ray release, but it's no great loss.
Summary
Three brilliant films, with equally powerful - but quite different - impact. The masterful Kwai is the true standout here, but Das Boot is also extraordinary, and Navarone is as good a Boys' Own adventure as you're likely to see. Sony's Blu-ray releases do them all justice; Kwai's and Navarone's meticulous restorations are sights to behold and Das Boot's bonus material makes up for its (perhaps unavoidable) visual shortcomings.
The Bridge on the River Kwai:
The Guns of Navarone:
Das Boot:
The Guns of Navarone:
Das Boot:
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