Directed by David Lean • 1957 • United Kingdom
Starring William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins
A highly principled British colonel (Alec Guinness) becomes obsessed with leading a band of World War II POWs to build a bridge at the behest of their Japanese captors in Burma—setting up an explosive ethical conflict as Allied commandos embark on a mission to destroy the structure. Spectacularly produced and morally nuanced, David Lean’s gripping, thought-provoking World War II drama established the director as a master of the intelligent screen epic and won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Guinness), and Best Director.
Up Next in Columbia’s Golden Era
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Suddenly, Last Summer
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz • 1959 • United States, United Kingdom
Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery CliftGay panic, incest, and a sprinkling of cannibalism: Tennessee Williams’s one-act southern-gothic shocker gets an appropriately lurid screen adaptation cowritten ...
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A Raisin in the Sun
Directed by Daniel Petrie • 1961 • United States
Starring Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Ruby DeeLorraine Hansberry’s immortal “A Raisin in the Sun” was the first play by a black woman to be performed on Broadway. Two years later, the production came to the screen, directed by Daniel Petrie. T...
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Picnic
Directed by Joshua Logan • 1955 • United States
Starring William Holden, Kim Novak, Betty FieldWilliam Holden and Kim Novak make sparks in this torrid adaptation of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play. Holden is the handsome stranger who drifts into a small Kansas town to visit an old fr...
