In a Japanese prisoner of war camp British soldiers are forced to help their captors construct a crucial railway bridge. Despite its obvious benefit to the enemy, under the command of the obsessive Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) the project becomes an exercise in British discipline and workmanship (how to whistle while you work, through a stiff upper lip). All the while an Allied commando party led by American navy man William Holden edges ever closer in a mission to blow up the bridge. As portrayed by Guinness, the absurd illogic of the Nicholson character is open to a variety of interpretations, as is the whole magnificent film: released in 1957, it reverberated then as it still does with a bitter irony, imbedded into the script, reflecting on futile endeavors from the British Raj to the Korean War. And the film itself became a chapter in the Cold War story when blacklisted scriptwriters Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson were denied the Oscar, which was given instead to Pierre Boulle, the French author of the source novel. In March of this year Foreman and Wilson were given posthumous Academy Awards for their script.